These days, Harvard’s housing system dictates that all first-years live in Harvard Yard and upperclass students fill the College’s 12 Houses.

But what is now a fact of Harvard life was known in 1977 as the Fox Plan—a proposal which incited opposition from all corners of the College and made for one of the biggest news stories of the academic year.

Named for its author, then-Dean of the College John B. Fox `59, the plan was an attempt to impose a logical order on the chaotic housing system that resulted from the “non-merger merger” of Harvard and Radcliffe in 1971.

The three Houses on the Radcliffe Quad—Currier House, North House (now Pforzheimer) and South House (now Cabot)—offered a substantially different experience than those on the river.

In addition to their greater distance from the Yard, their physical plant was considered vastly inferior to that of the River Houses.

And in keeping with their heritage as Radcliffe dorms, they housed first-years as well as upperclass students (which River Houses did not) and their male-to-female ratio was much lower than the River Houses’.

Moreover, while the Yard was primarily inhabited by first-years, about 200 upperclass students lived in Canaday Hall, which then served as overflow housing, and had to commute to their dining halls.

As a result, Fox says, dissatisfaction with housing arrangements grew consistently between ’71 and ’77.

The Plan Takes Shape

When Fox announced the plan in January 1977, he highlighted five salient problems with the system—the inequities between Houses’ locations and gender distributions, the unpopularity of the Quad Houses, the differences in housing and advising between first-years, some upperclass students’ distance from their Houses and unfair lottery procedures.

“It was a system that resulted in a lot of people feeling they had drawn th short straw,” says Fox, now secretary of the Faculty.

Fox’s proposal attempted to address all of these weaknesses.

By standardizing residency in Houses to three years and moving all first-years to the Yard, it homogenized the first-year experience and ensured that all upperclass students would live in their Houses.

In addition, major construction on the Quad began in order to normalize the experience from House to House. And by instituting a “limited-choice” system where students could list their three top House choices, the plan would minimize the random selection of students sent to unpopular Houses.

Backlash

When Fox first revealed his plan, he ignited a firestorm that did not end until the proposal was implemented three months later.

The Crimson editorialized against the plan, calling it “singular in its lack of sensitivity for the Quad point of view” and arguing that four-year housing, a lower male to female ratio, and “an alternative for many to the overbearing, ‘old Harvard’ atmosphere of the River Houses” presented valuable options for first-years.

Eric S. Roberts `73, a tutor in Currier House, resigned over the plan.

Roberts, now a senior assistant dean and computer science professor at Stanford, says the Quad was culturally distinct from the rest of Harvard, housing more public school graduates, academics and feminists—as well as offering greater interaction between first-years and upperclass students due to their status as four-year Houses. He says that opposition to the plan on the Quad was nearly unanimous.

Roberts speculates that by putting all Harvard first-years in the Yard and encouraging bonding within classes, Harvard may have boosted reunion attendance and, through it, the amount of money it reaps in alumni donations.

In February, opponents of the plan distributed leaflets discouraging students from giving money to Harvard after they graduated if the Fox plan were implemented.

According to Fox, one student even spat on him when he arrived at Currier House to discuss the proposal.

The Dust Settles

But opposition to the plan was clustered in the Quad Houses themselves.

Fox says that at the outset the majority of the community was ambivalent about the plan but opposed unilateral change by University Hall.

Many students told The Crimson that they supported the plan in principle, but wanted it to be implemented in the future so that they would not run the risk of being sent to the Quad.

In March, then-Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovsky approved the plan. According to Fox, by the time the plan was accepted by the full Faculty, it had been endorsed by all but one House Master, the Freshman Dean’s Office, the relevant student-faculty committee and the Faculty Council.

After a generation of students had come and gone and incoming undergraduates were scarcely aware that the Quad Houses had ever housed first-years, resentment over the Fox Plan naturally waned.

“All that survived,” Fox remembers, “was a sense that the Fox Plan had been a terrible thing. But no one could remember why.”

—Staff writer Dan Rosenheck can be reached at rosenhec@fas.harvard.edu.