At the meeting, Quincy residents also attributed the overcrowding to the congregation of large sports teams. Apart from barring freshmen at dinner, they discussed other possible remedies, including a guest policy.

Kirshner said he initially wanted to keep the People’s House open. “We wanted to believe that oh, things will go away, but the facts don’t agree.”

Quincy would not be the first to enact such restrictions: Adams House banned freshmen from its dining hall altogether last March—except as guests—and keeps strictly-enforced hours on other visitors. Eliot, Kirkland, Leverett, Winthrop, and Lowell Houses have restrictions at dinner.

Currently, only Quincy, Mather, Dunster, and the Radcliffe Quadrangle dining halls are open to all students. Annenberg Hall, where freshmen dine, is only open to upperclassmen at breakfast.

With 16 percent of all dinners at Quincy eaten by students from Houses with restrictions on Quincy residents, students at the meeting also considered a tit-for-tat strategy where they reciprocated the restrictions on the Houses that banned them.

“I’m hoping it will be a more long-term situation where we get ourselves a little more respect,” Melissa M. Trahan ’07 said.

Though Trahan expects heavy backlash from freshmen if the ban on them is instated, “to cut them out is the most reasonable solution at the moment,” she said.

At the meeting, Quincy residents agreed to reconvene in a month to reevaluate the situation and any restrictions they decide to impose.

—Staff writer Ying Wang can be reached at yingwang@fas.harvard.edu.