Shelby E. Watson '97 will choose housing with the rest of the first-year class next week.

Watson says she and her blocking group will be requesting all three Quad houses as well as one river house--they haven't yet decided which one.

"Probably a house a lot of people want, so we can be assured of getting the Quad," Watson says.

Watson says the prefers the Quad for several reasons. For one, the housing there is modern and wellequipped.

But more importantly, Watson and her blockmates will feel at home living there. Watson is Black, and "there are a lot of Black people up on the Quad."

"That's where my friends are," Watson says. "That's where I feel more comfortable."

Five years after it became policy, the non-ordered choice system of housing assignments has succeeded in breaking down numerous stereotypes and making some houses more diverse.

Non-ordered choice, however, has not changed the fact that many Black students choose the Quad houses--Cabot, Currier and North--because they feel more comfortable there.

But it is unclear whether the high number of Black first-years choosing to live in the Quad is connected to non-ordered choice or whether it is symptomatic of a campus that is largely hostile to minorities.

Designed for Diversity

Harvard's system of non-ordered choice was designed to bring diversity to the houses, according to Associate Dean of the College Thomas A. Dingman '67.

Prior to 1989, students' first choic- es were given added weight in assigninghousing. Seventy-five percent of students gottheir first choices under this system. Dingmansays.

In this way, students were guaranteed theirfirst choice for all but the most popularhouses--a system which led to increasinghomogeneity.

"If everybody who was selecting X house hadsimilar interests and backgrounds, they would alllive in X house and that would very little reflectthe diversity of Harvard," Dingman says.

Under the present system of non-ordered choice,85 percent of students get one of their fourselections for housing.

However, because those four selections arerandomly shuffled by computer, students selectinga less-popular house are no longer virtuallyguaranteed their first choice.