In addition to the changing nature of the student body, other problems have surfaced: the rules about house affiliation for non-resident students have varied widely in recent years, Dudley's physical plant has changed, and house officials and University administrators currently disagree about Dudley's role in the community.

Although Dudley serves a similar number of students as the other houses--about 400--it has had to fight against ignorance and prejudice from students and administrators alike, says Arthur Loeb. "Dudley in its uniqueness has had the problems of being out of the mainstream and subject to prejudices about being out of the mainstream," says Loeb," That's a vicious cycle."

Much of the prejudice stems from the fact that Dudley has never been officially a residential house and therefore was not completely integrated into College life. Differences lie in participation in intramural athletics, social events and extracurriculars, Jewett says. Dudley traditionally does worse than the residential houses in intramurals, primarily because it often cannot field full teams in all the events.

Dudley affiliates may feel that their house is unappreciated, but the non-resident house plays a vital role in keeping the College's budget in the black. The 12 residential houses can only accommodate a fixed number of students. However, Harvard's operating budget requires the College to enroll approximately 400 more tuition-paying "student equivalents" than it has beds in the residential houses. The system works because the extra students have traditionally chosen to live off-campus and affiliate with Dudley.

"If there were not Dudley House, the rest of the houses would be in terrible shape," says Lowell House Master William H. Bossert '57. "I could understand the Loebs if they were feeling a bit used," Bossert says.

Stigma is nothing new for Dudley House. Some of the problems the Loebs currently face--including a rapidly changing population--date back to the house's origins in the 1930s. When Dudley began as a center for non-resident students, it catered mostly to local commuting undergraduates, who generally were poorer than the rest of the student body. During the great Depression and the introduction of the house system, these students often could not afford to live on campus.

World War II brought a new group of students to Dudley. the non-residents' center absorbed an influx of students coming to Harvard under the GI Bill; veterans returning from years of fighting often chose not to live in the other houses with younger, traditionally college-aged tenants. At that time, up to 600 undergraduates affiliated with the center, located in Dudley Hall at the present site of Holyoke Center.

In the 1950s, Dudley finally gained a house master, and a decade later, it was given full house status and a physical plant based in Lehman Hall. The 1960s also witnessed another shift in house demographics--at this time, waves of boarding school graduates decided to leave structured living environments and live off campus.

The move out of the residential houses continued into the 1970s and mirrored social trends as living off campus became chic, house officials say. Also at this time, the University decided to give graduate students the option of joining the house in hope that when these doctoral candidates became professors, they would bring their enthusiasm for the house system to other colleges.

Although Dudley seemed healthy only a few years ago, the situation soon changed. The introduction of the University's present-day, need-based financial aid system brought dorm life within reach of all undergraduates, and sky-rocketing Cambridge real estate values made finding a livable appartment a very difficult task. Furthermore, a new social atmosphere that encouraged students to stay in houses on campus for the "Harvard experience." Not surprisingly, the number of Dudley affiliates began to shrink. By the early 1980s, enrollment had dropped to approximately 200.

But the residential houses cannot accommodate extra students, so Harvard has had to find new ways of increasing the student body without upping the residential population. And the solution has been to accept more transfer students, deny them guaranteed college housing and ask them to affiliate with Dudley House. The number of transfer students has risen dramatically from a few dozen 10 years ago to more than 100, and these late-comers to Harvard now make up more than half of Dudley's undergraduate population.

While this step solved the College's crowding problem, it created new dilemmas. Dudley House gained a large group of new students who did not ask to be affiliated with Dudley and were unhappy in the house. The house administration currently has to expend a great deal of energy toward integrating transfer students into the University. But the effort often seems wasted because more than half of the transfer students switch their affiliation to a residential house once their mandatory term in Dudley ends.

"Dudley House is operating as a half-way house," Arthur Loeb says.

Transfer students complain about this situtation because they are given less choice of house affiliation than other students. The College administration has therefore experimented with affiliation rules and introduced special kinds of off-campus housing.

Jewett says, "We thought it was unfair that transfer students were the only ones not given a choice to where they would live." To correct the problem, in 1983 the College changed the rule requiring transfer students to remain with Dudley House until their senior year and allowed juniors to affiliate with other houses if they wished.