The Committee on House Life approved with little fanfare yesterday a tentative plan for 10 of the 12 Houses to offer student evaluations of resident tutors during January—though such evaluations continue to draw some opposition.

The committee also formalized the extension of party hours for House-sponsored parties, the extension of universal keycard access hours and the loosening of requirements for transferring Houses during its first meeting of the year.

While some House masters have expressed in the past misgivings about the move to evaluate the effectiveness of resident tutors, questioning whether students knew enough about the role of tutors and noting that the tutors comprise only part of the House experience, the plan was approved with little debate yesterday.

Following the example of Cabot House, which kicked off a pilot evaluation program last February in an attempt to address student concerns about the quality of House life, the electronic tutor evaluations would take place during a 10-day period in January for those Houses that plan to participate, said Eliot House Master Lino Pertile, who was instrumental in forming the plan.

Eliot, Kirkland and Pforzheimer also offered surveys last spring.

“It is important to do the evaluations all at the same time. Students will be more likely to participate if we do it all together,” he said.

Pertile added that the committee has heard the concerns of those who have issues with the survey, but said the evaluations would be valuable because they would make students feel more a part of the Houses and the House system.

Leverett House Master Howard Georgi, who was not at the meeting, said he had not heard of that plan and that Leverett would not participate in the move.

“It’s not something that Leverett House will be participating in. I think it would not be positive for us,” Georgi said, adding that he has been discussing the surveys with House residents for “quite awhile.”

Though he declined to enumerate yesterday why he disapproved of the evaluations, he sent an e-mail to the other masters last year as discussion became more serious, arguing that the surveys would only be detrimental to his House.

“We think of Leverett House as a very large family,” Georgi wrote. “Like a family, it is organized in a very complicated and not entirely logical way...But it works because we are in a community in which people care for one another.”

He also wrote that he does not think evaluations are the answer to working out the kinks.

“When something is not working, we don’t think that the way to deal with it is to have people fill out forms,” he wrote to the other masters. “That generally leads to a hardening of positions and more polarization. We live together. We can do better than that.”

Leverett House resident tutor Kate Holbrook echoed Georgi yesterday in criticizing the evaluations, saying they would interfere with natural interaction in the House. She also used the analogy of a family to describe Leverett.

“In Leverett House, the cons of evaluating the tutors would outweigh the pros. In families you don’t fill out forms rating each other,” she said.