Some Dunster residents say the anti-gay graffiti scrawled on the walls of the main entry in the house last week has called to their attention the decrease in tolerance in the house.

While most of the residents do not believe that a someone from Dunster wrote the word "FAGGOT" on the walls, the graffiti made them realize that the atmosphere in the house has changed and will continue to do so with randomization.

Some people say Dunster used to be an expressive, tolerant place to live and that it is losing those qualities.

But others argue that Dunster is still that way. Still others say randomization has made the house more diverse.

According to Moon Duchin '97, a resident of Dunster, the house has the largest number of Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian and Transgendered Students' Association (BGLTSA) members of any house. She says it is more than double that of the next houses, Eliot and Adams.

About 10 percent of Dunster residents are openly gay, Moon said, compared to less than two percent of the entire campus.

Duchin said she worries that the house is no longer as accepting of people like Roland Tan '97, former chair of the Dunster House Committee, who says he likes to be "shocking."

Starkey, who transferred into Dunster from Lowell House in September, echoes Duchin's concern.

"I like that Dunster has Roland Tan, our flamingly gay [former] House Committee chair," says Julia E. Starkey '97. "In Dunster House, in general...deviating from the norm, being a big freak parade is okay."

Chair of Hard-core Erotic Appreciators in Dunster, Starkey says she switched houses because she liked Dunster's personality. However, she said she's scared it will lose that personality as a result of randomization.

Kofi N. Kankam '97, also a Dunster resident, says that although the house may have been tolerant in the past, it was not ethnically diverse.

"In the past, its geographic isolation was matched by the homogeneity of students here relative to the rest of Harvard," he says.

According to Kofi, randomization has added diversity to the house. He cites the paucity of black students over the past few years in the house as an example. Kofi says that a blocking group of 10 to 15 black students was randomized into Dunster this year. A couple of years ago, there were only a few blacks living in the house.

"[Randomization has] given this house a breath of fresh air," he says.

Former House Committee Chair

Tan was not randomized into Dunster House. He says it was his first choice.