The Free Choice Generation

BACK WHEN the class of '95 was not even a glimmer in Mother Harvard's eye, the House system made sense.

In the late 1920s, the Houses were conceived as imitative of the Oxford and Cambridge college systems. In tradition-bound England, there are colleges dominated by would-be lawyers, or replete with aspiring historians or oversupplied with fledgling economists.

To this day, each Harvard House has its own culture. (With enough difference thrown in to add some absurdity.) But with non-ordered choice or complete randomization, the Houses will become bland, confused mini-Harvards. Even now we have creeping blandness, as non-smokers take over Adams' dining hall, Euros crash Eliot's garden party and philosophers question the wisdom of Kirkland's gameplan.

WHEN MY best friend Dan and I entered the lottery, such things were unthinkable. The lottery mattered, because we knew our numbers and we knew where we wanted to go. A good number made or broke your House experience. Although I preferred Adams, where the Conservative Club's president lived in delightful paradoxity, I settled for Dunster's Science Fiction Clubbiness.

Dunster went in the first round that spring of 1988. (I'm dating myself, but hell, I'm OLD!) In a pool of 600 numbers, with each rooming group ordering its choice of three Houses, Dunster went at 147 in the first round. We, luckily, got 143--and our first choice.

Some members of the class of 1991 failed to get any of their listed Houses. And they found themselves "randomized" into Currier, but they weren't any worse off than those in the system after Harvard implemented non-ordered choice. Those of us lucky enough to actually have a first choice and get our first choice revelled in our chosen cultural mileiu.

My advice to first years is: Have fun being bland. The days of rampant choice are over.