Chopra argues that the real target of the cut from 16 to eight was not athletes—few teams are large enough to have 16 players in a single class—but black students, a large proportion of whom traditionally block in black-only groups. The new limit has resulted in more of these groups to distribute among the Houses, delighting diversity-conscious masters but irritating black students for the same reasons of dilution that many racial minorities opposed randomization in the first place.

One uncontroversial success of the change is that the College has been able to create greater gender balance in the Houses. The housing office gives the Office of Instructional Research and Evaluation, which conducts the lottery, a floor and a ceiling for allowable gender ratios in each House that are based on the composition of the first-year class as a whole. Since the reduction from 16 to eight, it has been easier to stay farther away from that ceiling and floor.

The ratio of women in the Class of 2002 assigned to a single House ranged from 41.60 to 54.63 percent of the House—a 13-point spread. But for the Class of 2003, the spread was less than eight points, and in this spring’s lottery it dipped below seven.

The desire to balance the sexes in all the Houses was one reason administrators gave for the change, but it was not “a driving thing,” recalls Associate Dean of the College Thomas A. Dingman ’67, who oversees the House system.

Getting Together

The real driving force was a desire to reap the full benefits that were supposed to result from randomization—fully integrated House communities where students would be encouraged to transcend the boundaries of insular blocking groups and reach out socially to other groups. But while the smaller blocking group sizes have increased demograhic diversity, the masters largely say they have not witnessed an increased sense of overall House community, class spirit or involvement, as hoped.

McCarthy says it is “hard to say” if the cut has had any effect on the level of involvement in the House community.

“I wouldn’t say there’s been any noticeable change,” Georgi says, calling the reduced block size a “move toward more randomization” but emphasizing that he has not seen a pattern toward more socially cohesive classes.

“There’s an ebb and flow,” Hanson says.

And while Adams House Master Judith Palfrey says that eight is “as good as any number,” she laments the fact that Adams students still don’t know all of their classmates in their House.

Chopra agrees that it is hard to see an appreciable change in House communities.

“I saw two classes with the 16, and I think it’s hard to make a characterization that [the Class of 2003] was better than those two,” he says. In Adams House, he adds, members of the Class of 2002, with its larger blocking groups, were “much closer with each other than the ’03 people.”

In addition, Chopra says the College’s main proof of the success of the eight-person groups—the senior surveys—is misleading. He says students’ rising satisfaction with House life tends to reflect their satisfaction with their dining halls, for example, rather than indicating their affinity for their House community.

But consensus is difficult to come by. Some students, such as former Eliot House Committee Chair Emily R. Murphy ’03, say there has been a noticeable change in students branching out socially beyond their blocking groups, for the better.

“It seems from people in my year that there’s a lot of mixing,” Vivero says. “I don’t remember that happening [the previous year].”