The Concrete Elite

To the Editors of the Crimson:

As Mather residents, we would like to express our displeasure at the manner in which you presented Mather House in your March 23 article on the results of the freshman lottery. While we were selling Booze Cruise tickets and T-shirts at the Union, we did not "console" our future co-residents; rather we congratulated them. Furthermore, our actions should not be viewed as "concession prizes." They were a successful attempt to incorporate Mather freshmen into our already cohesive and fun social community.

If your reporter had studied the facts, he would have discovered that freshmen assigned to Mather House were not among the losers in this year's lottery, but among the winners. According to your March 10 Housing Poll, 54 percent of all the freshmen you surveyed selected Mather House as one of their three house choices. This figure is considerably higher than those for any of the other houses. In addition, Mather House, along with Leverett and Kirkland House, was filled in the lottery's second round. Only five of Harvard's twelve undergraduate houses closed earlier.

Enthusiasm was widespread among the new Matherites. Eighty-two tickets for our April 6 Booze Cruise were sold to Mather freshmen and their guests forcing our house council to charter a larger boat for the event. Had you considered the sentiments of the freshmen themselves, you would have concluded that displeasure about being assigned to Mather House was minimal.

It seems that the Crimson came, to the Union with the incorrect notion that any house sending representatives to greet freshmen did so to provide shoulders for them to cry on. This delusion clouded your reporter's ability to accurately interpret our motives. He only succeeded in perpetuation a misguided image of Mather House. Michael R. Epstein '85   Jonathan A. Lesserson '85   Steven A. Nussbaum '86