To the Editors of The Crimson:

On the morning of Friday March 12--eight hours before Freshman House Selection Applications were due to be filed--the Crimson released the results of a House popularity poll taken by its staff members. The article's headline "Freshmen Choose Lowell First Again, Mather Last" was the first indication to the alert reader of the misinformation of the misinformation he was about to receive. Not only was the wording "Freshmen Choose" completely fallacious (applications had not yet been filed and no tabulations taken--thus Freshmen hadn't chosen anything yet), but it also at the very least assumes that the Crimson's poll was so accurate that the final tabulations would yield absolutely identical results. No poll--even one taken by experienced professionals--is that accurate. Certainly an article by college students which reports the amazing news that North House is fourth in popularity among the University's Houses--and that all three of the Radcliffe Houses are in the top eight--should contain at least one paragraph discussing possible errors and correct procedures for interpretation. The Crimson's only admission to possible error--the cursory phrase "a statistical significance of five per cent--means nothing to your average Humanities major who has not taken Stat 100.

While I am obviously very skeptical of the Crimson's recent poll, my main intention in this letter is to focus on the much broader issue raised by the timing of its release--the effect of Crimson articles on the House Selection Process. This is the second consecutive year I have watched the Crimson run feature and news articles about various Houses in the last two weeks before Housing Applications were due. In Spring 1975, news and feature articles appeared which discussed the dissatisfaction of women in Kirkland House, criticized the "Preppie" atmosphere of Eliot, and praised the "alternate life styles" of the Radcliffe Houses, the Cooperatives, and Dudley House. While no one can argue that these articles and this year's poll were of great interest to Harvard Freshmen, they all revealed similar biases, primarily "lies of omission." First, in the 1975 series of articles not all Houses were given equal coverage--only four were mentioned at all. Second, by concentrating on the positive aspects of some Houses and on the negative ones of others, the Crimson made an obvious effort to "direct" Freshmen choices toward the Houses it felt were "best." Third, by deliberately publishing articles in the last two weeks before the application deadline when they could have been printed later (the poll results would have been just as interesting on Monday) the Crimson becomes overly influential and underinformative.

Jim Chiles '77James L. Kaller '77