Moving From the Gold Coast

To the editors:

In "Advice for Cornell," The Crimson Staff attacks randomization on the grounds that it has eroded the "individual character" and "distinguishable flavor" of the Houses. This critique would been more convincing had it not been based on a flawed conception of the origin of the House system.

What The Crimson fails to mention is that it was in the days of the legendary "Gold Coast" dormitories--luxurious buildings built to accommodate Harvard's wealthiest students--that the seeds of the Harvard House system were first sown. President A. Lawrence Lowell recognized that a great evil lurked in the rise of these private dorms; he dubbed them "an enemy to democracy." As early as 1913, Lowell authorized the construction of new freshman houses along the river. Students were eventually drawn away from the Gold Coast dorms.

The critical point here it that it was precisely the homogeneity of the Gold Coast dorm--the-fact that the "Gold-Coasters" were a self-selected and elite group--that ultimately led to the establishment of Harvard's House system in the 1930's. When, by the 1990's, the Houses bore "too much character," or, what is another way of saying too much exclusivity, the Houses themselves became doomed to reformation through randomization.

In this post-randomization era, rather than mourn the fading of a nebulous notion of "character" in the Houses, we should examine whether they are becoming the heterogeneous, open communities they were originally meant to be. MARC ROMANOFF '01   Oct. 30, 1998