Diversity Over Choice

In the early 1920s, Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell effectively banned Black students from the University by making living in the first-year dormitories mandatory. Lowell said he could not compel a white student to live with a Black student, so the Black students were forced to find other living arrangements, making them unable to enroll as first-year students. Alumni and civic leaders protested Lowell's rule and eventually Lowell rescinded it.

Harvard housing has never had a particularly even-handed history, but it has made progress. We have moved forward from a time when house masters sorted through applications and selected the students to live in their houses. We have also advanced from a time when the houses were single-sex dormitories, and the women were secluded in the Radcliffe Quad.

Now it is time for Harvard to make another progressive step in the housing equality. The Committee on House Life should fully randomize the first-year housing lottery.

Three years ago, the house masters and the administration wanted to move to a lottery system that would diffuse house stereotypes. In order to promote diversity and harmony in campus relations, they were ready to forego student choice in housing assignments and institute a system that would distribute housing evenly.

There are two elements involved in changing the lottery system--diversity and choice. When the Committee on House Life compromised on a three-year experiment with non-ordered choice, they placed a stronger value on student choice than on diversity.

In the era of non-ordered choice, however, there has not been a significant decrease of the influence of perceptions about house character on housing decisions. In fact, non-ordered choice has highlighted this issue. Students now have to choose where they don't want to live, because they have to list four choices that have an equal chance of being picked.

There has not been a significant increase in student choice (which is why the Undergraduate Council's new "enhanced choice" plan had to be introduced). Roughly 12 percent of each class for the past three years has been completely randomized. The houses that have gone random were the same houses that always go random. Those who did get into one of their four choices didn't get much of a choice either, with one-third of the houses at the University listed on their forms.

And there has been a marked decrease in fairness and morale in the lottery system. First-year students still spend an enormous amount of time discussing and fighting over what their choices are going to be. At the same time of year when they must pick their concentrations, first-year students spend more time comparing the art work in dining halls than the requirements of their prospective departments.

What non-ordered choice retains is a glimmering hope for those really afraid of getting put in the Quad. But if you talk to people who got randomized there anyway because of bad lottery numbers, they will tell you that their chances for one of their choices were better off under complete randomization.

The issue of choice comes down to thinking that you are going to get a good lottery number. While an optimistic trend for first, years, this luck makes students slaves to their self-interest. When we consider the principle involved, however, placing the value of diversity makes more sense.

Randomization isn't going to solve all of the University's problems, but it will make a start and it will show the University's commitment to diversity. While procuring a diverse student body and a diverse faculty are the best ways of ensuring that Harvard reflects a mixtures of race, ethnicity, income, geography and interest, random housing assignments are the best way for making sure that all of these people come in contact with each other.

The first-year dean and proctors currently socially construct the assignments for first-year dorms. Anyone in the University will admit that their contact with different people was an enlightening experience.

That type of contact shouldn't cease when students move to upperclass dorms. Students need to continue to meet different types of people and not seclude themselves within one group. The most important housing relationships for students will always be with roommates or blockmates. That will not be compromised by a random housing lottery.

The other elements involved in house choice should not matter. Location, architecture and size of rooms are all factors that cannot be changed and should be equally distributed. House character--especially when it means that a group feels uncomfortable living in a certain house--should not be a factor at all. Under randomization it would not.

A random housing lottery with the current interhouse transfer policy and improvements in the houses to make their facilities more equal would be a great step for the University in making Harvard a more diverse, welcoming place for students of all backgrounds.

Harvard should have the courage--and students should let go of a little of their self-interest--in order to allow this new level of diversity to occur.