Currier May Change Lottery To Reduce Freshman 'Anxiety'

Currier House may change its own spring housing lottery next year by excluding "rising sophomores," a move which many officials and students believe will eliminate unnecessary worry strong freshmen who received bad lottery members and as a result would not be assigned a room until the fall. Currier residents said this week.

Under the new policy, the House will assign all "rising sophomores" rooms during August, once the total number of vacant rooms becomes clear after the deadline for leave-taking passes.

Every House has about 10 percent more students than available rooms during the spring but by fall most generally decide to take time off, vacating the needed space College statistics from the past several years indicate.

Because Currier and the North House have included freshmen in their lotteries, about 30 rising sophomores every year headed to each house have left for the summer without knowing they can expect a specific room.

Currier officials and students said they will probably which their assignments methods by next year, and North House residents said they plan to consider a change Both lotteries are student run.

If Currier and North were to change their lottery systems, the entire House system would then be assigning rising sophomores rooms during the summer, including South which changed three years ago and Winthrop which changed this year.

My feeling right now is that we will probably change," said Alan Anderson '83, chairman of the Currier House committee it's just not worth getting so many people disappointed."

College administrations have encouraged Houses to assign freshman rooms in the summer for several years, saying it is unnecessary for some students to worry about not having a room because sufficient rooms have always been available by fall.

But students in Currier and North said this week that annual polls in their Houses on the question shows overwhelming support for allowing freshmen to choose rooms.

Saying North's policy should not be changed "just because of administrative convenience," North House Master J. Woodland Hastings said this year's poll found the sophomores who had just gone though the process in question were" most interested in keeping at the way it was."

Other students and officials said that the system at North and Currier also aggravated anxiety among students who had not chosen to live an either Quad house, making some feel that they had "lost out" not only in the College wide freshmen lottery but also in the once can their house.

Curner and North officials send they did not expect final decisions to come until at least later in the fall because the next house lotteries will not occur next April.