More and more, administrators at these colleges are feeling discomfort in facing campus residential systems which they say are not reflective of the experiences that students can expect to encounter in the real world.

Last year, Dartmouth President James Wright announced the end of the Greek system "as we know it," and said that, after 158 years of single-sex Greek life, fraternities and sororities would have to go coed.

Administrators at Dartmouth say they proposed the move away from a Greek system because of concerns about binge drinking, and because they thought it would improve a student's education to live with a broader cross-section of his or her peers.

"The way I think about it, you're buying a product, which is education," says Dartmouth's Dean of Residential Life Martin W. Redmond. "It's defined as residentially based. Both the in, and the out-of-classroom experience is the entire product."

At Cornell, President Hunter R. Rawlings proposed forbidding first-year students from living in theme houses such as Ujamma and instead housing the entire class in yet-to-be constructed campus housing.

"He wanted to create this big residential experience," says Aron B. Goetzl, editor-in-chief of the Cornell Daily Sun. "He wanted to generate a lot of interaction in the dorms and where you live, but you should have the right to chose that and where it happens."

These moves toward Harvard-style housing have been met with resistance, however.

In the weeks following Dartmouth's announcement, a thousand students marched on Wright's personal home to protest the change and alumni groups came out in opposition to it. A poll conducted by the Dartmouth, the campus' student newspaper, found that 83 percent of students supported single-sex Greek organizations.

The massive opposition forced a re-consideration of the decision, and Dartmouth administrators approved a plan in which Greek organizations would remain single-sex and residential, but called for centralized housing for first-years, and the enhancement of a system of "clusters" smaller residential communities that may come to resemble the Houses at Harvard and the Colleges at Yale.

Cornell's proposal--which would have allowed students to join theme houses, but not during their first year--met with widespread opposition. Again, evoking the ideas of privacy and self-determination, students were up in arms. A few went on a hunger strike.

In a series of public statements, Rawlings backed away from his earlier plan. While first-year students will still be required to live on campus, Rawlings pledged his support to the continued operation of the themed houses.

When a housing shortage at Wesleyan led the administration to house white students in an under-filled Malcolm X house, the subsequent protests led them to renege on the decision.

For students, these sorts of interventions are very personal intrusions. For administrators, there is nothing to intrude upon--the residential system never belonged to the students in the first place, it was simply one more place outside of the classroom where learning took place. For them, if the liberal arts education is to be a complete experience, it cannot be relegated to the classroom. It must be a constant presence during a student's four years and to deny the college's access to the residential system is to deny the principle of immersion that is so crucial to the liberal arts education in the first place.

Facing the Challenges

But while Harvard's residential communities are diverse in the ways other schools hope to emulate, they are also fractured.

Masters have reported consistent difficulties integrating incoming sophomores into House communities. Last year, in response, the Committee on House Life slashed the size of blocking groups from 16 students to eight, hoping the smaller size would force students to get to know others in their house.