(Re) Building Blocks

Harry R. Lewis '68 thought he had weathered the storm.

More than seven months after a College decision to halve the size of House blocking groups drew outrage from first-year students, Lewis, who is dean of Harvard College, said the Class of 2003's anger had finally subsided.

He even received complimentary letters from members of that class, thanking him for making the change, he told The Crimson last month.

But first-year Undergraduate Council member Eliah Z. Seton '04 says the issue isn't quite as dead as Lewis might believe.

Acknowledging that the council's combative strategy last year may have been counterproductive, Seton says he hopes to work within the system to persuade administrators to consider a compromise on the blocking issue.

He'll have an upward fight.

Lewis--who says he hasn't been contacted by any members of the Class of 2004 regarding the issue--says reconsidering the Committee of House Life's change in blocking size is "not on the agenda."

But Seton says his door-to-door campaigning for a spot on the council convinced him this was the right thing to do.

"Students in the freshman class this year are upset about it," Seton says. "They felt like eight people was just too small."

Confrontation

Last September, Lewis announced that beginning with the Class of 2003, the maximum blocking group size would be restricted from 16 to eight.

It was to be the biggest change in House policy since 1995's randomization, which eliminated student choice from upper-class House assignments. Behind the change, administrators and House masters said, was a desire to get students more involved in House community while making it easier for the College to regulate gender balances in the Houses.

Yet first-year students, just getting used to living in the Yard, were slow to anger over a limit to their freedom in choosing House blockmates. Many seemed oblivious to the fact that a reduction had been made.

Eventually, though, council member Alex M. Rampell '03 took up the cause.

Arguing that the students who were to be affected by the change had not been represented on the Committee on House Life (COHL) when it debated the issue, Rampell drew up a petition that asked Lewis to reverse the decision.

To many first-year students--877, to be exact--Rampell had a point.

In two days of tabling at Annenberg Dining Hall, on Feb. 17 and 18, Rampell and other first-year council members collected the signatures from just more than half of all first-years.

Rampell presented these signatures to Lewis at a March 2 meeting with other council leaders. But the meeting did not go as well as he had hoped, says Rampell, who walked out mid-way through.

"We definitely raised our voices at each other," he says. According to Rampell, Lewis wasn't in the least bit interested in the petition and called it "a worthless piece of paper."

Although Lewis maintains that he didn't use those words, he acknowledges that signatures from more than half of the class did little to change his mind.

"Petitions are never a good way to deal with issues that have to do with limiting choices or expanding requirements--as individuals we would always vote to give ourselves more choices and fewer requirements," Lewis wrote in an e-mail message last March. "I have no doubt that a plebiscite would favor a larger maximum blocking size over a smaller one."

Further, according to Rampell and then-Student Affairs Committee Vice-Chair Paul A. Gusmorino '02, Lewis argued that Harvard was not a democracy--a point that Rampell says was a cop-out.

And in spite of a concession by Lewis that he would look at the petition, Rampell says he stormed out of the meeting, signatures in hand.

"I'm not going to give it to someone who just spent 20 minutes ridiculing me," Rampell says.

Learning From Mistakes

Rampell, who didn't run for reelection to the council, acknowledges that he made mistakes in the tactics he used last year--including starting too late and failing to appeal to higher-ups in the University administration.

For his part, Seton says students need to get worked up about the issue in order to get the ball rolling again.

"The first thing we need to do is bring [blocking group size] to the forefront again," he says. "We need to re-ignite the students' outrage about it."

Although Seton says he doe snot have a clear plan of action for approaching the issue, he says that as a member of SAC, the committee that most often deals with College administrators, he's well-positioned to start working from within the system.

"Possibly we can work out some sort of compromise," Seton says--arguing that a 12-person blocking group would be better than no increase at all.

Seton will have help from other first-years, including Phyllis G. Maloney '04, who ran unsuccessfully for the council on a platform of increasing the blocking group size.

Maloney agrees that SAC could be a good place for the campaign to start. But she also thinks it might be necessary to follow Rampell's advice and go over the heads of the College administration.

"Maybe someone just needs to go to Neil Rudenstine's office hours," Maloney suggests.

A Long Shot

But getting the administration to agree to a compromise may be harder than Seton and Maloney think.

Associate Dean of the College for Human Resources and the House System Thomas A. Dingman '67 says House masters are solidly behind the change.

Large blocking groups, many said, discourage sophomores from becoming fully integrated into their new Houses.

And the maximum number of 16 is very close to the number of students that can be housed in one entryway, meaning that many blocking groups needed to be split up within the Houses.

"[Sophomores] started out somewhat sour that they weren't living near each other," Dingman says.

Plus, he says, large blocking groups made it more difficult for the College to prevent "skewed" gender ratios within Houses.

Rampell and others have made counter-arguments, but Dingman and Lewis say that these have been heard, considered and rejected.

Dingman says that entirely new arguments would have to be made for him to consider a change back to larger groups.

"I don't know what it would take," he says.

Lewis goes further, saying students' efforts could be better spent.

"We don't change the housing system often or without careful consideration," Lewis writes in an e-mail message. "I am at this point far more interested in improving the quality of House life where that needs to be done than in revisiting the blocking policy."

Nobody, even Seton, expects Lewis to have a change of heart.

"The elder statesmen on the council told me that it's very unlikely," Seton admits.

Some have gone as far as to say that what the first-years are trying to do is virtually impossible.

"This academic year, there is not going to be a change," Gusmorino says.

But they're going to try it anyway.

Gusmorino says he wouldn't hesitate to bring another petition before the council to ask its support before going on to Lewis--provided that the petition is done more thoughtfully than last year.

He thinks there might be some benefit to polling the student body and asking for Lewis' help in crafting questions that he would consider fair and helpful in discerning how strongly students feel on the issue.

To hear Rampell talk about it, they feel very strongly.

"It's a very long shot," he says. "But it's worth fighting for."