Her best friend smiled and said, "That's OK, we won't leave you out there by yourself. We'll come visit."

I can see how conversations like these can get frustrating. The pressure caused one distraught young man in my English class to exclaim, "Why do you people insist on talking about housing all of the time? It's only December for God's sake. We can't do anything about it for another couple of months. We can't do anything about it then either. All of you should just calm down and think about something that we can actually have an effect on--like nuclear disarmament or Third World human rights violations. Read a book if you don't like activism. Play Nintendo. I don't care. Just leave me alone."

IN the three months that we have been discussing this issue, I have encountered only one person who approached the debate with the appropriate tone. An Indy comper walked up to a first-year student while he was sitting in the Union and the comper asked him what lottery policy he liked best.

"It would be a toss up between partly-rational-Harmonization and completely-partial-free-non-choice," the interviewee said.

"Why?" the comper asked.

"Because they sound good," he replied.

The only interesting aspects of the new housing systems are their names. I just hope everything sounds this good when my class finds out where they are living next year. We'll probably end up with "part-partial dissatisfaction" and "completely randomized ire."