House System Faulted for Lack of Diversity

Sixty years after President A. Lawrence Lowell (Class of 1877) proposed the House Plan in 1928, that residential system, which places students into one of the University's 13 houses after their freshman years, is coming under fire.

Critics of the system, citing a report that documents vast imbalances in the numbers of student atheletes among the houses, have charged that the system has failed to create a residential life for students that is truly diverse.

In a move that troubled many students last March, the student-faculty Standing Committee on Athletics (SCA) recommended the University set quotas on the number of student athletes who could live in each house. The upper and lower limits suggested by the SCA for varsity and junior varsity athletes were 9 and 27 percent respectively.

Currently, athletes make up 54 percent of Kirkland House and constitute only 5 percent of Adams and Dudley Houses.

In its five-page report, titled "The Ideal of the Harvard House System," the SCA based its quota recommendation on Lowell's original conception of the house system. Lowell saw the houses as a means to preserve the diversity of the College in smaller residential units while improving students' academic and social environment.

The committee said that house populations should be a "microcosm" of the University-wide student body in order to give students the "experience of learning from one another." University officials said that major policy moves such as the 1968 decision to make the houses co-ed and recent efforts to put Quad facilities on par with those of River houses were geared toward this end.

The issue first came up when Kirkland Master Donald H. Pfister raised concerns about the lack of diversity in his house at an SCA meeting last December. At that time, he told the committee that 180 of 331 Kirkland residents were athletes, prompting the committee to investigate.

In ensuing campus debate, several University officials expressed their support for the report's intent, including SCA chairman Leverett House Master John E. Dowling '57, Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57 and President Bok.

Students, however, complained that the committee singled out athletes from other student groups because of their visibility and vulnerability to stereotyping. For example, some asked why musicians or artists were not considered for quotas. Others protested that adopting quotas would dilute the identity of individual houses too much and that the right of students to choose where to live outweighed the University's push for diversity.

House masters, who must approve any change in the lottery system, tabled debate on the issue in March after a meeting on the subject resulted in a split in opinion and what Mather House Master Jeffrey G. Williams called, "one of the liveliest masters' meetings that we've had." They have not yet reached a decision.

Citing the fear that more information on house populations could reinforce house stereotypes, the 13 masters also refused to release demographic breakdowns of the houses beyond athlete populations. Similar studies released in 1982 and 1984 indicated wide disparities in the percentages of minority students, private and public high school graduates, and top students among the houses. The differences closely paralleled contemporarily-held "stereotypes."

For similar reasons, the masters also denied SCA's April request for information outlining house assignments for this year's freshman athletes. The committee sought the date to determine whether publicity surrounding the threat of quotas has corrected the uneven distribution of athletes.

Student SCA members said that the refusal was based on masters' concerns that the information would be distributed to the press. They added that the masters believed the report on athletes became public through unauthorized channels. The report was distributed officially by the SCA chairman, Dowling.

This concern about publicizing house differences also prompted the masters to restrict comment on the issue to their chairman Alan E. Heimert of Eliot House and spokesman Dean of Housing Thomas A. Dingman '67.

Some College officials, who asked not to be identified, speculated that the focus on athletes may represent tentative attempts to introduce the more explosive issue of minority distribution. In 1982, the last time the University made such information public, Currier housed 18 percent Blacks while Eliot and Kirkland housed less than 3 percent each.

Although the SCA report did not specifically discuss introducing quotas on minorities in the individual houses, it compared the athlete imbalances to hypothetical gender and minority imbalances, stating, "It would certainly vitiate the Lowell ideal (and the current coeducational ideal) if any house became disproportionately male or female. The same would be true if any house became disproportionately minority or white. We believe the same is true when any house becomes disproportionately representative of either athletes or non-athletes."

College officials have said that current imbalances between minority representation in the Houses are "not statistically significant."

While administrators toyed with measures aimed at preventing imbalances in the outcomes of future housing lotteries, this year's procedure continued in its three-year-old format. Under that current system, freshmen receive their lottery numbers from the housing office and then give the office their first three house choices. The College then uses a system designed to maximize the number of students who receive their first choice.

Before 1986, students were not told their lottery numbers, and that change sparked attempts to outwit the system and calls to return to the old method or a random lottery.

"Better than ever" was how Housing Officer Lisa M. Colvin described this year's lottery, which was 10 days shorter than last year's 27-day process. Fewer freshmen called in with problems or complaints than in years past, Colvin said.

The outcome of the lottery also indicated increasing parity among the houses and equilibrium in the system. Virtually the same percentage of students received their first choice house as last year--76.5 percent--and the same number of houses were filled in each round as last year--five in round one, one in round two, two in round three, and four in the random round.

Also significant was the dramatic rise of the popularity of the Quad among students, who have traditionally ignored the old Radcliffe dormitories. The University has just spent two years and $33 million renovating the Quad. According to North House Master J. Woodland Hastings, his house was the first or second choice of as many students as any other house.

Overall, a Crimson poll showed more students picked Leverett first than any other house. Eliot, Quincy and Winthrop Houses followed Leverett. In a shake-up at the bottom of the list, Lowell House sank to 11th displacing all but one Quad House.

In other developments, the College created subsidized off-campus housing last fall for the first time ever. Designed to ease overcrowding in the houses, the "annex housing" program also benefited transfer students, who are not guaranteed on-campus housing.

College overcrowding eased this year as large classes graduated and fewer students returned from leave, so University officials decided to use annex housing primariy for transfer students. The move allowed Harvard to accept a record number of transfer students, 100, this spring for the 1988-89 academic year.