Undergraduates will no longer need to call friends from Centrex phones outside or "piggyback" off good samaritans to gain entry to Quincy House thanks to a universal keycard access pilot plan scheduled to begin at the end of this month.

The experiment, which will last for a year, will probably expand to include Winthrop, Cabot and Dunster Houses, according to Quincy House Master Michael Shinagel.

After the trial year is over, the Committee on House Life and the individual masters will evaluate the results and decide how to proceed.

The arrangements for the participation of Cabot, Dunster and Winthrop have not been finalized and may include additional restrictions, according to Associate Dean of Harvard College for Human Resources and the House System Thomas A. Dingman.

"They have not made a commitment to doing it, and it may be that if they do it, they don't do 24-7, but I think that those masters are also thinking of open access," he said.

The Winthrop, Cabot and Dunster masters were unavailable for comment last night.

Keycard access advocates are enthusiastic about the plan.

"This is the most significant headway we've seen thus far," said Eric M. Nelson '99, who served on the Committee on House Life last year and who is also a Crimson editor.

Nelson added that undergraduates have been calling for universal keycard access throughout his entire four years at Harvard.

Undergraduate Council President Beth A. Stewart '00, who made universal keycard access one of the central planks in her presidential platform, said the plan is an important first step toward campus-wide access.

"We hope this is one giant domino, and that others will follow," she said.

But College officials stressed that the trial plan's primary purpose is to gather information.

"[The masters will] collect some data, and see whether they were as safe as they wanted to be and whether students felt that it really was that much more convenient, and then make a decision," Dingman said.

Even after the trial results are in, the College is unlikely to take any unilateral action on the issue.

"I think that we would count very much on the individual masters to make the decisions," said Dingman.