Faulty Assumption for Enhanced Choice Stats

Three years ago, statistics revealed that the ordered choice system was allowing houses to become too homogeneous. The administration wanted a system based on total randomization; students, however, wanted to preserve their choice. The Undergraduate Council drafted the present non-ordered choice system. Diversity has increased, but students are still not satisfied.

The Undergraduate Council has worked on the issue again, this time trying to move back towards ordered choice because as Jennifer W. Grove wrote in an editorial "Students should be allowed to live where they want" ("The Case for Enhanced Choice," November 24). In order to pass any proposal, however, the Undergraduate Council must convince the administration that diversity will be maintained because the administration has the final word on the matter.

Obviously, the Undergraduate Council has had to compromise between the two opposing factions. Grove explains her solution "The position I have advocated on the council as co-chair of the residential committee is a compromise which will allow students more choice, yet will maintain the heterogeneity of the houses." This solution has been termed "enhanced choice."

I laud her efforts if her claims were true; however, her claims reflect the intellectual dishonesty characteristic of real world politics. Let us study the veracity of her claims one at a time.

First, let's examine the claim that this system will allow students more choice. This could be true; however, she has misrepresented the degree to which student choice could be enhanced. "Under enhanced choice, that percentage [of students receiving their first choice] is closer to 45 percent." This is not true.

With non-ordered choice, approximately 25 percent of students receive their first choice house. With enhanced choice, 45 percent (actually 43.75 percent) is the mathematical limit of students who could receive receive their first choice, and this number is only true under the asinine assumption that students will equally request every house.

To see what this percentage could be if all houses weren't requested equally, consider the possibility that only three houses (average-sized) and no other houses were requested, each by one-third of the first-year class. In this case, only 11 percent of students would get their first choice. This is obviously an extreme case, but it shows that the Undergraduate Council either didn't know their math or attempted to misrepresent the data. Even The Crimson was misled when it titled an article last week "44 Percent Would Get Top House Choice."

Now let us look at the claim that enhanced choice would maintain diversity. If diversity managed to be maintained by this system, it would be by random luck because there are so many ways that houses could be homogeneous. First, all student selected into any highly requested house will have put it as one of their four choices.

That means that no one will be put in a house with a character they dislike. Second, a group composed of a certain type of person could request an unpopular house and be nearly guaranteed of getting it. This would allow for the potential creation of stereotypes in houses that were previously randomized. Surely it can be seen that in no way will enhanced choice foster diversity.

I understand that reaching a compromise between the students and the administration is difficult, but surely the Undergraduate Council can do better. They tried to make students happy but lied as to how happy they'd be, and they told the administration that miraculously diversity wouldn't be threatened. The Undergraduate Council shouldn't feel the obligation to pass a proposal if it will mean lobbying for that proposal based on a rhetoric of half truths and lies. Gaston de los Reyes '96