In the largest student-led protest in recent Harvard memory, about 200 students rallied outside University Hall yesterday afternoon to oppose the randomization of the housing lottery.
About 25 students carried signs with slogans reading "No dice throw," "If you choose, we lose," "Don't test chaos theory on us" and "82% can't be ignored."
In a recent poll by the Undergraduate Council, 82 percent of students said they were against randomization.
The students gathered to protest a decision by Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57 last week to randomize the housing lottery. Under the new system, students will from blocking groups of up to 16, enter the lottery and be assigned randomly to one of the 12 undergraduate houses.
"This is a rally far beyond my expectations of success," said co-organizer Philip R. Munger '95. "This is the realest thing I've seen at Harvard in a long time."
Although Jewett has emphasized that this decision could be changed after students try it for a few years, his appointed successor, Harry R. Lewis '68, has repeatedly said he supports randomization of the houses.
Lewis had no comment yesterday on the protest.
After the outside protest, about 100 students filed up the south steps of University Hall into Room 4 in order to present to Jewett a petition with 1,000 signatures against randomization. The dean was not in University Hall to receive the document, however. He was attending a meeting of the Administrative Board, as he does every Tuesday afternoon.
Reached at his home last night, Jewett said he could say little about the substance of the rally because he was not there. He said he looked forward to meeting with some randomization opponents later this week.
At the end of his speech, Munger demanded that the administration listen to him and the other protesters.
"You are not going to get away with destroying this University!" Munger said. "We will not let you."
All six speakers--Master of Adams House Robert J. Kiely, Pforzheimer House resident J. Lewis Ford '97, Mather House resident E. Michelle Drake '97, Adams House resident tutor Carsey Yee, Dunster House resident Adam D. Feldman '95 and co-organizer Philip R. Munger '95, who lives off-campus--roused the crowd "The least diverse of our houses are more than100 times as diverse as University Hall--diversityis a relative matter. So you wonder, who are theyto tell you to be diverse?" Kiely said. Kiely argued against three reasons commonlygiven for randomization: that it is too stressfulfor first-years to decide where they want to live,that randomization will make the houses uniformand that randomization will produce realdiversity. Between speakers, the crowd chantedcatch-phrases such as "We won't lose our right tochoose" and "Hey, Dean Jewett, you'd better not doit." Ford, a resident of Pforzheimer House, saidthat non-ordered choice has allowed him to groupwith other Blacks and make his voice stronger. Read more in News