The Eliot Touch

To the Editors of the Crimson:

One would think that Harvard had enough computerization and impersonalization to go around, but now I see The Crimson is leading a vanguard to eliminate one of the last vestiges of a personal touch left in the University. I refer to the absence of a room lottery at Eliot House (March 19). One wonders if it is the lack of a lottery which annoys The Crimson or simply the fact that The Crimson refuses to accept anything Eliot House does in its own fashion.

Edie Holloway, the assistant to the master at Eliot, works considerably harder than most computer programs I know to ensure that the needs and interests of Eliot residents are met most equitably in their rooming assignments. Edie spends her summer doing what a computer program attempts to do in a few minutes--match diverse groups of men and women to a complex labyrinth of rooms and potential suites--only Edie does a much better job. She, I am sure, would probably much prefer to spend the summer lounging in Eliot courtyard, but she sees the rooming assignments as something worth doing. And so do most Eliot House residents.

In my three years in Eliot, with the perennial angst and confusion regarding roommates and such, my roommates and I were comforted to know that someone was actually taking an interest in seeing that the assignment process was not entirely surrendered to the luck of the draw, and that when various roommates did not return from summer vacation for one reason or another, or when they did return unexpectedly, we were able to work things out so that every-one's needs could be met.

The Crimson has long had a running antagonism with Eliot House; once, in my senior year, the editors referred to the residents as "little Podhoretzes" whose land-holdings in Latin America are only outnumbered by their investments in South Africa. I personally am getting a little tired of it, and I wish the staff would be at least more subtle in their bias, if not less biased at root. Paul T. Keenan '85

Ed. Note--In houses other than Eliot, students receive a random lottery number and select their own room. The masters' assistants assign rooms to sophomores.