A THIRD trouble-maker in the housing scandal is what Dean Whitlock calls the "unreal" number of students returning next Fall from leave. This is part of the reason "why the House secretaries are tearing their hair out," Austin says. As of June 1, 160 undergraduates had notified the College that they will return to Harvard in the Fall, the highest number to notify the College by that date in Dean Whitlock's memory.

Whitlock fears that the large number of returnees may signal a reversal of the trend toward leave-taking, a trend which began during the upheavals of the late sixties. "There can always be a fluke, students can always stop taking leave," he said. The number of students on leave jumped from 372 to 437 last year while the volume of returning students increased 52 to 418. Both of these statistics cover an entire year.

Yet another component in the housing problem was the increase in Radcliffe--because of 2.5 to 1--at a time when more women want to live in Harvard Houses. This change from past years was most prevalent among the 200 freshwomen in the Yard. Only 10 freshwomen designated a Radcliffe House as one of their choices, and only 3 put a Quad House as first choice. If these women had not been in the Yard, many more probably would have reacted like their classmates at the 'Cliffe this year. Of these 250 freshwomen, 111 designated Radcliffe as their first choice, while 63 of the 150 male 'Cliffe dwellers asked to remain in one of the Quad Houses. Last year, in fact, the Housing Office received criticism when it compelled 40 freshwomen to move from Radcliffe to the River Houses against their will.

The most serious culprit in House overcrowding, according to Bruce Collier, who programmed the computer which made House assignments, is the small size of the class graduating today. Collier predicts that the number of undergraduates entering the housing pool next Fall will be 140 students larger than this year, with half of that increase--caused by the second year of 2.5 to 1--taken up by the second half of the Continental. However the Houses will have to absorb the 70 additional students, in addition to the 50 or 60 undergraduates spots from Radcliffe. Although the result will be over-crowding in many Houses, Collier says, the situation will not be as serious as it was in the sixties before the construction of Mather House.

At the beginning of the year, the so-called "start-up" figure will be about 10 per cent higher than the standard figures for each House. However, while half of this figure is permanent, the other 5 per cent will disappear, Dean Whitlock says, as students move off campus and others take leaves or live in the Yard as upperclass advisers. However, if leave taking does decrease and Harvard cannot guarantee its students a bed, the College will compel undergraduates returning from leave to live off campus and grant rooms to returnees only on a first-come, first-serve basis.

When will this situation arise? Dean Whitlock admits, "We will have to face it some day, and we may have to face it next year."

Harvard's apparent inability to study the entire problem of housing before this crisis is as distressing as the actual symptoms of the system's malfunctioning. Harvard has failed to formulate long-range policy but instead has relied on often-delayed stop gap measures to partially head off greater disaster. A study of the House system and freshman assignments being conducted this summer by the dean of the College's office is inadequate without parallel action by other facets of the Administration, including among others, the University's fund raisers, planning office and freshman dean's office.

Dean Whitlock observes critically that Harvard's lack of enlightened action in dealing with housing problems is the result of "a tradition of not setting policy the way General Motors does, therefore it [Harvard] tends not to set priorities. If you're going to set priorities, you've got to make policies." Whitlock continues to point out that "because we make ad hoc decisions, no one can tell what the total effect [of the 2.5 to 1 ratio plan] is going to be on the size of the College."

This is indeed what Harvard has done: it has committed itself to increasing by 300 the size of the College without adequately preparing for the effects of the influx of additional undergraduates. The new dorm will compensate for some of the increase but not all. Plans for construction at Radcliffe or a 65-70 student addition to Kirkland House are meaningless until Harvard or Radcliffe receive sufficient funding to complete the construction.

This heavy dependence on large gifts to the University directly contradicts the President Bok's statement announcing the 2.5 to 1 plan. Bok wrote at that time: "In order to accommodate the added students, efforts would be made to provide new housing through methods of financing that would remove the need to raise substantial capital gifts. Such housing might not contain all the special features associated with a Harvard or Radcliffe House. Instead, an effort would be made in consultation with interested students to develop new housing styles attractive to the small minority that will inevitably prefer alternatives to any form of accommodations, even one as attractive as our Houses provide."

Harvard does need substantial capital gifts, and this urgent need for funds continues to place the College at the mercy of donors whose idiosyn- crasies--as in the case of the new dormitory which would have been more useful at Radcliffe--may require the adoption of an unwise construction plan. In the meantime Harvard students have little choice but to tolerate overcrowding.

MANY HAVE attributed the injustice of the system to the concept of the heterogeneous House, which demands that each House have a certain percentage of men and women, of students majoring in the three areas, of the different grade ranks, and of public and private scholars.

The real villain, however, is the House application system itself and the House stereotypes which it helps perpetuate. Freshman spend a year evaluating each House and learning the reputation, advantages and disadvantages of each House. By the arrival of Spring and of the assignment process, the stereotypes, whether valid or in most cases grossly exaggerated, have been passed on to another generation.

The College dean's office will be examining alternative assignment systems this month, and according to Dean Whitlock, three possibilities will be considered. First, should the number of restraints on the computer--such as the field of concentration, the secondary schooling of the applicant or even his or her sex--be reduced? Should Harvard run a straight lottery at the end of the year, a proposal which Whitlock correctly observes, "doesn't fit into the Harvard way of doing things?"

The final and probably most valuable alternative is the housing assignment system employed by Yale, which provides for affiliating freshmen with colleges (Yale's name for Houses) before the new students arrive in the Fall. Yale has succeeded in eliminating college stereotypes, although the colleges retain "a special flavor," and John A. Wilkinson, Yale's dean of Undergraduate Affairs says, this is a result of integrating freshmen into colleges early.