Doug, an Asian-American, was forced to choose between a blocking group that included his roommates and one that was entirely Asian-American.
With such small group sizes, he was unable to combine the two groups of friends.
"What the eight-person group does, in essence, is make you cook everything down, and make everything very specific," he says. "You can't have the diversity in the group that you might have had before."
And students say the eight-person limit does not easily accommodate blocking groups with both men and women.
"Girls who can only block with seven other people will block with seven other girls," says Jennifer. "They need roommates."
She adds that many blocking groups she knows of are single-sex. "If there were more people, they might like to [mix things up], but there's not enough room."
But Lewis says the change was intended to promote diversity by preventing a few large, homogenous blocking groups from affecting the overall composition of a House.
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