Although the old CHUL sent the question of retaining student choice back to its executive subcommittee, there appears to be little doubt that the new board will favor retention. Indeed some speculated that the representatives-elect were responsible for the old board's shift on the question of student choice. In straw votes on January 14 CHUL indicated that it favored recommending that a system of random student assignments at the end of freshman year be used for one to three years. But a week later, in its final meeting, the 1975 CHUL turned a quick about-face, recommending to Rosovsky that any future assignment system allow student choice. Yet betraying some lingering uncertainty CHUL decided to send the proposal back to subcommittee for further study.
Hopes that the new CHUL will quickly dispatch its housing recommendations have faded principally because the administration, has objected to the so-called "Grabar proposal." This plan, named after the outgoing North House Co-master Oleg Grabar '50, would ask Rosovsky to give each House spaces in the Yard proportional to the number of freshmen the House was assigned.
After a series of straw votes in December, the old CHUL appeared ready to recommend that all freshmen be housed in the Yard, which would eliminate four-year Houses. But representatives from the Quad continued to argue for a system that would maintain freshmen in Currier, North and South Houses. The Quad Committee had drawn up proposals backing up these CHUL members and nominally permitting other Houses to include first-yea students also.
At the January 21 CHUL meeting Grabar offered his proposal, which was much like the Quad Committee's, but did not call for permanent freshman assignment to Houses in the fall. Grabar's proposal passed after about an hour's debate, without the Quad Committee proposal being introduced. The Grabar proposal never achieved the status of a final recommendation to Dean Rosovsky, however, because the committee voted to send it back to the executive subcommittee for further discussion.
The evidence indicates that the proposal will not make it through the new CHUL without substantial change, if at all. Dean Whitlock told Grabar last week that this plan could not be implemented next year because it requires too many new administrative arrangements. Grabar admits there are weaknesses with his proposal. He said yesterday that he made his proposal assuming, incorrectly, that CHUL wanted eventually to move to having only four-class Houses. The reconsideration of the Grabar proposal is the first item on today's agenda. The administration will make its objections to the plan's feasibility and rejection of the proposal is expected.
Bruce Collier, assistant dean of Harvard College and the University's resident housing and computer genius, said he believes that the Grabar plan would have a destructive effect on the Quad Houses. For every freshman a Quad House puts in the Quad, he says, an upperclassman would be forced into the Yard. If the Quad Houses housed students who liked the Quad in the Yard or if they put students disenchanted with the Quad in the Yard, those students are likely to remain disenchanted with and isolated from their Houses. Either way, Collier says, the Quad Houses would lose.
Why did CHUL look favorably on the Grabar proposal if it had this inherent flaw? One major reason was that some Quad representatives, including Grabar, saw the plan as their only hope for keeping freshmen in the Quad Houses. Alan E. Heimert '49, Eliot House master, while no advocate of Quad causes, is a defender of master's interests and saw the Grabar resolution favorably as "the first time in seven years that the CHUL has voted in favor of any form of House autonomy." And so the Grabar proposal passed with the rare alliance of Heimert and the Quad.
While the "fruitful affiliation" resolution recommended by CHUL will not come up before the meeting today, administrators are also uneasy with its provision that "a system of fruitful affiliation of freshmen with the Houses be established." As the words "fruitful affiliation" might suggest, the committee never stated specifically what kind of connection it wanted between first-year students and Houses. The tie might mean that freshmen would eat their weekend meals at a single House throughout the entire freshman year. This plan would replace the present system under which freshmen rotate their meals between as many as eight Houses until they are assigned permanently to a House in the Spring.
The final trap facing the new committee is the touchy question of implementation. The biggest brouhaha could center around which Houses should be blessed with a 1.5-to-1 male-female balance, especially a nine River Houses try to battle for the one or two slots with the more attractive ratio. This inescapable problem arose repeatedly during the old CHUL's discussions, but a pre-set agenda prevented serious debate over which Houses would be 1.5-to-1.
This issue and others such as the precise meaning of "fruitful affiliation" could significantly shift student positions on the overall housing system. Indeed several CHUL members felt restricted by the piecemeal debate of housing conducted by the old panel.
The mystery man in the debate over the housing system is Dean Rosovsky. In consultation with Bok and Horner, he will make the final decision on what to do with the housing system and he isn't saying what he believes. Rosovsky said yesterday he will not comment on any of the proposals before CHUL until he has studied the panel's final recommendations. All of the CHUL's straw votes, debates, tentative recommendations, and final proposals won't matter at all if Rosovsky doesn't want them to.
What has the CHUL accomplished in its discussions since last spring? It has probably eliminated any chance for adoption of the 1-1-2 proposal that would put all freshmen at the Quad, all sophomores in the Yard, and the two upper classes in the River Houses. The plan to create a system of 16 four-year Houses was also rejected as too expensive, although it was voted the "most desirable" of all the options.
What is left, the, is a recommendation to create 1.5-to-1 sex ratios in four Houses and a vague desire of CHUL to "fruitfully affiliate" freshmen with Houses. Beyond that not much is certain. The new panel will reconsider Grabar's proposal today after hearing objections from administrators. If the Grabar plan is voted down, two prominent alternatives will remain: a system of all three-year Houses, or a continuation of the present system with four-year Houses at the Quad. If the old CHUL's January straw vote strongly favoring a unified housing system is a reliable indication, the three-year Houses have the inside track.
Perhaps the only statement on which CHUL will definitely agree today is the old saw that the camel was a horse designed by a committee.