Most first-year Yardlings take for granted that they will head to a House for their upperclass years.

Since Harvard guarantees all of its undergraduates housing for each of their four years, the housing office can boast that 96 percent of students live in the residential Yard or House system.

Currently 253 students live off-campus. Another 33 live in the Dudley Co-op and 12 in the Jordan Co-op.

Many students who live off-campus have tried and decided against the residential system, saying they felt restricted by the constant amalgam of their academic and personal lives.

"I feel stifled...You don't have a private space. You feel like a Harvard student 24 hours a day," says Jeremy D. Kleiner '98, a student who plans to live off-campus next year. "Paradoxically, you feel less inclined to participate with activities on campus."

Other students say they feel that the residential system bears little resemblance to "real" life outside of college.

"[The House system] teaches that privilege is good and other people should take care of me, "says Melissa S. Weininger '95-'96. She now lives in the Dudley Co-op.

Weininger says she sees the communal cooking and cleaning responsibilities in the Dudley Co-op as necessary life skills she felt she should learn before graduation.

Maggie Y. Han '79-'95. a resident of the Jordan Co-op, says she agrees: "[In a Co-op] you cook, you clean, you are an adult. You're not part of that cattle drive three times a day [in the dining hall.]"

Many students living in the Co-ops and off-campus have taken time off or transferred from other colleges.

Housing alternatives provide more "mature" options for non-traditional students, said one resident of the Jordan Co-op.

"The Co-op [is] really nurturing and warm," said transfer student Heather H. Phillips '97. "Transfer students need that and don't get that from Harvard...[One feels] very isolated [in the Houses] without the freshman experience...[It's] not random that we find this."

The Dudley Co-op: Social Responsibility

The Dudley Co-op is a 10-minute walk from the Yard down Massachusetts Avenue toward Porter Square.

Thirty-three students and two tutors live in two Victorian-style houses, one of which includes the kitchen, dining room and sitting room. Suspended above the main entrance to the Co-op is a sign which reads: "Center for High-Energy Metaphysics."