In my years at Harvard, there has been nothing more disturbingly asinine than the yarn game we were forced to play during prefrosh weekend. Given a ball of garishly colored yarn and an equally garishly colored yarn necklace, we were told to meet as many people as possible, keeping track by tying yarn around the necklace of each new acquaintance.

Ostensibly, the goal was to make a few new friends. But after an hour of eagerly lining up to exchange our name and hometown for technicolor yarn, many of us quickly became nauseous. Friendship, it became clear, was not about introducing yourself to everybody in sight.

We had no yarn during first-year orientation week, but the spirit of the game lived on. At Annenberg and in the Yard, we mindlessly mixed and mingled until finally, perhaps around November, the game finally ended. Not because it was replaced by a particular aversion to new friendships, but because most of us had settled comfortably into one or more meaningful social circles forged over time.

But now it seems that even time can't kill that dreaded game. Thanks to the College's recent decision to halve the maximum size of first-year blocking groups, our upperclass Houses may now become the newest site for mingling for its own sake.

Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 and the Committee on House Life were concerned, among other things, about the increasing prevalence of large blocking groups and their theoretical implications on House life. Specifically, Lewis and other House Masters worried that these large blocking groups made it easy for students to insulate themselves from the rest of the House. Moreover, many of these large groups seemed "hinged" and "artificially engorged," making them relatively unnecessary in the first place.

The College's concern for preserving House community is an admirable and important one. But capping blocking group size does little more than provide a superficial solution, forgoing a more serious discussion of House community in the post-randomization era.

According to Lewis, an eight-person limit would "ensure that students from one block will get to know other students in the House." Other House Masters have echoed this thought, saying large blocking groups make it hard to "integrate people into the House as a whole."

But is vibrant House life really just about "integration"? Is the College capping blocking groups just so that it can force students to meet one another? It sounds like the yarn game to me.