Perhaps the biggest and most immediate problem facing administrators and students is what to do with the House system.

The unpopularity of the Quad Houses, and the large numbers of sophomores living outside the House system--about 360 this year-- have left the administration with little choice but to change the system, or leave a status quo that is unsatisfactory to almost all concerned.

In the next few weeks, students will receive a letter from the dean's office explaining the various housing options that the Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life will be debating this fall.

Those options include:

* Doing nothing;

* Improving the Quad sufficiently and then instituting a system where rising sophomores have no choice in selecting Houses;

* Housing all freshmen at the Quad and turning the Yard into upperclass Houses; and,

* Instituting the so-called 1-1-2 system of housing all freshmen at the Quad and all sophomores in the Yard, and placing juniors and seniors in the River Houses.

Each option has its pros and cons. The status quo has in its favor no additional costs. But it fails to deal with the problem of assigning rising freshmen to the Quad against their wishes and does nothing for sophomores remaining outside the House system. Improving the Quad and instituting a system of no choice could preserve the mixture of four classes of the Quad Houses.

But with this plan 20 per cent of the sophomore class would still remain outside the House system.

It is questionable how much full-scale improvements of the Quad would cost. Some people involved in weighing the House options feel that $5 million in renovations, including a new master's house and a new dining hall, may be enough to bring the Quad up to the River Houses' level of popularity.

Another $10-million plan, which includes the construction of athletic facilities on Observatory Hill, has also been considered.

Putting all freshmen in the Quad and making Houses out of the Yard solves the Quad popularity problem, opens up new opportunities for freshmen, and allows an increase of about 200 students into the College by crowding freshmen.

But the plan requires additional capital to turn Lehman Hall into a House dining hall, and to turn the Freshman Union into a dining hall for both the Union dorms and Dudley House.

Memorial Hall would also have to be reconverted to a dining hall as at the turn of the century.