Swan Sit's decision to transfer from Cabot House to Winthrop wasn't an instance of a roommate-gone-bad or an excessive hatred of the Quad.

Instead, Sit '99-'00 says that when she returned from a year abroad in London, her blockmates had graduated and the House just wasn't the same.

"It's kind of a chicken and egg thing," she says. "I don't know if the suburban environment is what makes people quiet, or if they're quiet when they come, but when they graduated, the House definitely changed."

Sit's successful transfer is not unusual--it's one of hundreds of attempts to switch Houses since the dawn of randomization.

But despite fears that randomized housing assignments would cause the inter-House transfer rate to balloon, the number of transfer applications has remained relatively steady.

The numbers seem to speak for themselves.

This spring, the College accepted 97 out of 121 House transfer applications for next year.

But in the spring of 1996, just before randomization was implemented, even more students--a total of 171--applied for transfers.