Helen H. Gilbert '36, chairman of the Overseers' Visiting Committee on the Harvard-Radcliffe Relationship, admits that the house all sophomores in the Yard is "the weakest link of the whole proposal." To me, this is the epitome of understatement. As the South House Committee wrote in its letter of April 16th to Mrs. Gilbert, "the present house system integrates sophomores in the only meaningful sense; it places them in full social contact with students of other classes." The "special efforts which Dean Pipkin envisions as necessary if all sophomores were to live in the Yard are not now required. The Whitla-Pinck report, Perspectives on the Houses at Harvard and Radcliffe, states, "No student ought to live in a House merely for the sake of bed and board and to study and enjoy his university life elsewhere." This has been the chief virtue of the House system since its inception.

The resultant restriction of the Houses to only two undergraduate classes clearly presages the death of the House system. It is often an academic necessity for seniors involved in the rigors of thesis research to withdraw for a substantial portion of the year from extra-curricular pursuits. The result, under the proposed system, would be the placing of an undue burden of organization and participation in House functions on the junior class as well as a denial of a good measure of the diversity for which Harvard so ardently strives.

Moreover, full psychological attachment to a House, or to any organization, for that matter, takes time. Under the present system, students are members (not merely residents) of Houses for three, or even, in some cases at Radcliffe, four years. The vital and exciting programs and activities now happening in the Houses are the result of a fairly stable residential population. At present, only one-third of each River House changes each year: a slightly higher turnover is found at the Quad because freshmen are housed there. Under the proposed plan, turnover would be fifty percent each year. Continuity of residence, with the concomitant sentiment of membership, is the only basis for commitment to a House. Having moved three times during his or her college career. I maintain that a student will develop no true House loyalty, and that the "small college within a large university" concept would therefore be doomed.

At the Radcliffe Quadrangle, the old individual forms have been institutionally if not architecturally amalgamated into two Houses, North and South. On the official Harvard University map, the label "Radcliffe Dormitories" has recently been replaced by the more unified title of "Radcliffe Quadrangle." It is not the proper character of this or any university to be regressive; we cannot let the Houses at the river or the quad river to dormitories.

I am aware that Harvard alumni have historically cultivated "class spirit," so beautifully satirized by the caricatures of "professional alumni" in John P. Marquand's H.M. Pulham, Esq. Such esprit de corps has traditionally been used as a fund-raising vehicle, and for this reason, there has been considerable alumni opposition to the abolition of the separate freshman year. However despite the fondest wishes of the Development Office and the Harvard College Fund, the "class identity" which F. Stanton Deland '36, chairman of the Board of Overseers, exhorts is being considerably eroded by the taking of leaves of absence. In fact, recent statistics indicate that as many as 20 to 25 per cent of the students in each class take voluntary leaves in the course of completing degree requirements. Yes, official affiliation remains with one's entering class unless there is a specific request to the contrary, but after a leave one's peer group is bound to change at least partially, and one's psychological attachments, if not one's computer affiliation, are likely to change as well.

In this time of economic insecurity, the University is certainly in no position to weaken its financial base. But it has already recognized that the base of contributions must be widened. This is precisely the time to appeal to alumnae/I for funds, not on the basis of class identity, but on the basis of loyalty to the college or, if necessary, to an academic or institutional subset thereof. In his Letter to the Faculty. Dean Rosovsky bemoans the fact that the diversity of the students body, the size of the University, and its location in an urban environment have a "fragmenting effect" on the student body. The proposed residential isolationism would only hasten such fragmentation and would, in fact, carry it to a dangerous extreme.

This is in many ways a very personal statement of The Education of Nancy Toff--in a four-class Houses. It is an opportunity for which I am extremely grateful, and one which I would not want to see destroyed. I greatly appreciate the Radcliffe Trustees' openness and receptivity to students' thoughts and opinions, and look forward to further discussion of these issues.

...Enthusiastic about housing all freshmen in the Quad and all sophomores in the Yard.

Nancy Toff '76 is a junior living in Eliot Hall.