The spring ritual of blocking, with all of its tense and sometimes bitter diplomatic maneuvering, was a more political ordeal for the Class of 2003 than for any first-year class since Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 randomized House assignments in 1995. In spring 2000, Lewis’ decision to cut the maximum blocking group size from 16 to eight students spurred a petition signed by over half the first-year class.

Three years later, there are no 16-person groups left at the College, and memories of the bitterness of the fight have faded away. Some graduating seniors concede that the class may have overreacted to the change.

“Since we didn’t know what was going to happen, I think we dramatized what the possibilities were,” says Richard J. Vivero ’03, a former Pforzheimer House Committee chair. “Once we got into the Houses, it wasn’t on the forefront of people’s minds.”

Even petition organizer Alistair M. Rampell ’03, whose meeting with Lewis concerning the issue erupted into a shouting match, admits that “it’s kind of hard to look back and say it would have been better, because you don’t know what would have been”—though he maintains that he would have still preferred the larger groups.

But though students say the change has not been as catastrophic as initially feared, the House masters and administrators who pushed through the change also acknowledge that the move from 16 to eight has not alleviated all the problems of House life it was expected to address when proposed. Instead of significantly increasing involvement in House life, the restrictions on blocking group size have led most dramatically to an unintended decrease in coed blocking.

Randomization Fulfilled

Halving the size of blocking groups would force students to socialize outside their particular group of friends, leading to more vibrant and cohesive House communities, according to the main assumption that motivated the change.

Lewis points to surveys showing increasing student satisfaction with the Houses—the Class of 2002 was the first class to give their Houses an average score over 4 on a 1-to 5-point scale—as evidence that the reduction has had a positive impact.

And masters say the policy has succeeded in the extent to which it has broken up concentrations of groups like racial minorities and athletes while evening out gender ratios across the Houses. In short, it has ensured the full randomization of the Houses, they say.

“We have really been committed to attempting to create a demographic diversity within the Houses,” and the cut in blocking group size has helped to “avoid concentrations of particular groups,” says Winthrop House Master Paul D. Hanson.

The type of group usually cited is a single athletic team. Leverett House Master Howard Georgi ’68 notes that when he first became master, there was a 16-person group of men’s hockey players in the House which had a “significant” effect on House life.

With the new eight-person groups, the College can guarantee that 16 hockey players will never again be placed in one House because the lottery is not completely random, explains Undergraduate Council President Rohit Chopra ’04. The Freshman Dean’s Office can tell University Hall if certain groups—for instance, two groups of eight athletes from one team—should not be put together.

And Georgi doesn’t think that they should. “It’s more fun to have a greater cross-section of students,” he says.

But Pforzheimer House Master James J. McCarthy, who had advocated for maximum groups of 12 as a compromise solution, disagrees that groups of 16 are necessarily negative. “Groups that size,” he says, “could be the critical mass that could have an effect on the House for the next three years.”

Not all of these groups need be single-sex athletic teams—McCarthy cites a group of 16 ballroom dancers assigned to Pforzheimer early in his tenure that he says had a positive impact on the House. In the Class of 2002, only three of 28 blocking groups of 16 were single-sex.