Closing Doors

IN THE FIRST HOUR of Harvard's September orientation for transfer students, the announcement that on-campus housing would never become available, regardless of the circumstances, sent a perceptible shock wave through the 50-odd students sitting expectantly in a classroom on the second floor of Harvard Hall. It was an unusual welcome to the College.

Harvard's decision to take transfer students off the priority list for on-campus housing--a list they were on in previous years--did not come out of the blue. A series of warnings on the preliminary and final transfer applications, and in the letter of acceptance, detailed the College's reluctance to furnish housing. But after conversations and correspondence with the transfer admissions and housing offices, most students appear to have arrived at Harvard with the impression that, as in the past, transfers could eventually be considered for any vacancies that might occur in the Houses. Certainly, the expectation of permanent exile from the Houses was not part of most students' decision whether to pull up stakes and head for Cambridge.

Since then, the bitterness and anger of many disappointed transfer students has produced a couple of newspaper articles, a series of letters to the administration, a group of Dudley House student council representatives committed to reversing the present policy, a good deal of student sympathy and not much else. Pointing to the statements contained in the applications and the acceptance letters, and discounting conversations on the telephone, the administration--which, it should be noted, is sitting in judgment on its own case--has a distinct advantage over the transfer students. Written evidence, not spoken conversation and implied encouragement, carries the greatest weight, and to the disadvantage of the transfer students, the College holds most of this written testimony.

The question of whether transfer students were misled concerning their opportunities for on-campus housing is important, but more important is the occasion that has raised it this year--the College's decision to increase its off-campus student population. The policy directly affects not only transfer students but also a certain number of incoming freshmen, and it reflects an attitude on the part of the administration with disturbing ramifications.

During its recent history, Harvard has been a residential college. The administration has prided itself on the House system, emphasized it in literature concerning the College, and to some extent built the reputation of the school on the social and academic interchange that occurs in the Houses. By requiring a certain number of student to live away from the campus, the College is unquestionably asking those students to sacrifice one of the more important benefits of attending Harvard.

Involuntary off-campus students experience, to a greater or lesser degree depending on personality and circumstance, an isolation from the Harvard community. As members of Dudley House they belong to a strangely amorphous group of undergraduates which is split between those who for one reason or another have chosen to live out-side the College and those who have been forced to do so. The former rarely seek association within the House, and the latter, resentful of the stigma of the outcast, tend to stay away unless forced to visit for administrative reasons.

Non-resident students incur significantly higher housing costs than residents. And if they are unwilling to continue to pay rent during the summer months or endure the time-consuming bother of finding a suitable tenant to sublet, they face the thoroughly unpleasant task of searching each fall for new housing in the severely overextended Cambridge rental market.

Should the present continue to be implemented, it's a reasonable bet that a fair number of the approximately 400 students who will be forced to live off-campus will end up living in Harvard-owned rental property--a fact that has presumably not escaped the notice of the University Coupled with the additional expense of living off-campus is the inconvenience of travelling back and forth to the College While it may be argued that residents of the Quad Houses face similar difficulties, most non-resident students do not have a shuttle bus to terry them to and from classes, or a library a minute or two from their doors.

GIVEN THE HISTORICAL, emphasis on the importance of the Houses, it is difficult to conceive that the administration could remain ignorant of the sacrifice it is asking forced non-residents to make. The stated rationale is the need to case overcrowding in the Houses. In trying to do this, the College must have faced two options: reducing the number of students admitted as freshmen and transfers, or maintaining the same number of entrants and requiring some percentage to live off-campus.

The first alternative clearly implies some reduction in income for Harvard if tuition rates remain unchanged, but it assures those students accepted the full benefits of a Harvard undergraduate education. The second alternative maintains income but imposes penalties on two groups of students, one of whom, the incoming off-campus freshman, must be chosen somewhat arbitrarily.

The most disturbing aspect of this situation is that the College appears to have chosen neither option consistent with its stated goal. It has admitted approximately the same number of resident freshmen--assuring that overcrowding within the Houses will not be reduced as these students move into the upper classes. It has also admitted a slightly higher number of transfer students and granted entrance to a larger group of off-campus freshmen. The economic benefits to the College are clear, but such apparent duplicity and lack of concern for the interests of the undergraduates are troubling to say the very least.

Harvard presents extraordinary opportunities to qualified students, and the offer of admission is a difficult one to turn down. Depending on one's attitude, the fact that the College has chosen to use this educational market dominance to the detriment of its students is either consistent with a pattern of valuing economic concerns over the welfare of the undergraduates, or a puzzling reversal of an interest in the long term welfare of the College and its students. In either case it is a policy which demands to be changed.