"Even now no house is totally homogeneous," says Heimert. "And I don't think anything prevents anyone from meeting all kinds of people."

In a Crimson poll last spring, Adams, Eliot and Kirkland House were named by students as the three most stereotyped houses at Harvard.

But even if several houses do have an imbalance of one group over another, some of the masters' opposition to the Jewett plan seems to stem from the fear that increasing the similarities among houses will decrease their overall importance to the life of the College.

As evidence, some point to Yale, where the housing system is completely random and the residential colleges allegedly no longer play an important role in student life. Instead, the housing situation at Yale has led to tightly-knit rooming groups and a lack of esprit de corps within each residential college as a whole, Heimert says.

Further, some of these dissenting masters argue that Jewett's plan is an attempt by the central administration to gain control over house life. Having each house essentially the same would allow the central administration to have interchangeable tutors, advisors and programs and would consequently lessen the authority of the masters.

But Jewett maintains that the present situation heightens first-year student anxiety over where they will live and fosters feelings of exclusion by some houses. And that must be changed, the dean insists.

Although he has not yet discussed the matter with masters formally, Jewett says he plans to send them a detailed report outlining the lack of diversity in some houses by providing specific data on student concentrations and activities within the houses.

But several masters have said that seeing the numbers on paper will likely not influence their position.

Politically Wise

Instead, most observers--including dissenting masters--characterize Jewett's current proposal as politically wise, and most agree his plan in some form will succeed this year.

In fact, some say he has already won a partial victory, as the debate now seems to be framed in terms of 100 percent random or nothing.

"I haven't met anybody who likes the idea of 50 percent," says James M. Harmon '93, the student leader of the first-year students' Committee Against Randomization. "People have said that Jewett just said 50 so that 100 percent would look better down the road--then he could implement the policy without being the one responsible for it."