"All-male dorms are a more intense experience," Duffy adds. "For guys, it makes things more normal to have women around and it diffuses the pressure. My freshman year, Straus people weren't inhibited from running naked through the halls during a water fight. The Straus Rape and Pillage Society, a group made up of Straus freshmen who are notorious for 'boisterous activities,' is a group whose very nature is contrary to code living," says Duffy.
"Guys get more confused right away--in the first semester. But women are more restrained and get down to work right away. When the guys are getting over their conflicts, the women are starting to have them. I suppose the big conflict is trying to find your place at Harvard. All the old ways of defining yourself are gone," Duffy adds.
Many freshmen find that during their first year away from home they took the first steps crossing from the last stages of adolescence to adulthood. "It's a passing phase," says Katherine M. Elliot '81. "I'm glad to have had the experience of living in the Yard, and I'm glad it's over."
The Freshmen Dean's Office instituted several programs this year to make freshman year more enjoyable. They issued a series of dinner tickets to proctorial units in hopes that the students would visit all the Houses before the housing lottery. The dean's office sponsored several Sunday suppers, with live entertainment in the Freshman Union, and encouraged intermingling with faculty members and upperclassmen by holding student-faculty dinners.
Moses plans several more new programs for freshmen. He has invited faculty members to become associates of the Yard and join Union activities, asked head tutors for upperclass advisers for freshmen in every concentration, and gone ahead with plans to refurbish the Union to give it more seating capacity, a study library, and better lighting and sound-proofing. He has tried to streamline and improve the proctor system and is continuing to boost intramurals. For the Class of '83, Moses plans a pre-Freshmen Week excursion along the lines of Outward Bound, so that freshmen can meet each other and smooth the transition into coed dorm life.
David Riesman '31, Henry Ford II Professor of Social Sciences Emeritus, and a member of the task force which last year studied student life, says it is unfair to house freshman women, who mature more rapidly than males, with freshman boys. He prefers the older system whereby women lived at the Quad with the upper classes and the Harvard "fresh men" lived in the Yard.
But House popularity is determined by a number of factors--not just its architecture. Among the most subjective determinants of popularity seems to be the House image. One of the most extraordinary phenomena of the past few years has been the loss of popularity of Adams House, once the perennial favorite because of its proximity to the Yard, as well as its physical accouterments, which include a swimming pool and enough tunnels to keep mole happy.
One Adams senior who wished to remain unidentified thinks the recent association of Adams with homosexuality has been a major detriment to the House's popularity. The image, he said, is based on the immature reaction of freshmen to the open attitude with which homosexuality is viewed in Adams House. "You can call it liberalism or realism, but such tolerance certainly comes with maturity," the senior adds. Images, however, are often misleading, and stereotypes may destine a House, or a collection of Houses, to remain unpopular among deciding freshmen for many years to come.
Elliot agrees with Riesman that some freshmen men seem immature. "I could carry on a conversation but I couldn't talk to them about anything that meant anything to me. I'm used to men; I'm not used to all those little boys running around. When you find someone they usually turn out to be winners, but it's a long, hard road in between. The guys here are into this boyfriend/girlfriend, try-to-get-laid attitude, and I find this immature. There's a need for communication, too. Either they are capable of a physical relationship and incapable of a friendly relationship, or they are incapable of both."
"Regardless of the truth that female freshmen are more mature than the male, it seems ridiculous to say you should house the freshmen in one place and the freshwomen somewhere else," says Kevin M. Kennedy '80. "It doesn't seem to me to be a very good idea to have the freshmen separate from the upperclassmen. I lived at Currier, and it was much easier for me to have contact with the upperclassmen than for the present freshmen. All I had to do was walk around the dining hall to meet them."
By March, most freshmen have begun to aspire to upperclass life and everything that accompanies it--especially the Houses.
Regardless of one's level of maturation, March is the month when freshmen must choose their favorites from among the 12 Houses. The House lottery system has changed over the past three years, from a procedure where all 12 Houses were listed in order of preference to one where only the top three choices are considered. Both methods of selection have made use of the principle of "maximization of first choice." The 12-choice system was frowned upon by a large number of freshmen who received their bottom choices, because most thought there would be little chance of receiving anything below choice number eight. In addition, the 12-choice system seemed to promote speculation for choices. Students thought there was a vast difference in one's chances of being assigned to choice one, and those of being placed in choice 12, Ann B. Spence, associate dean of the College, says. "Basically, when you maximize first choices, the chances of getting the last three or four are pretty high," Spence adds.
One of the results of the three-choice system is to make freshmen consider a strategy for getting into a House they like, or staying out of a House they dislike. The lottery application process became reminiscent of the college application process. "Safety Houses," ones which students felt lacked popularity, but which they wouldn't terribly mind living in, were often ranked third.
McCullough says Mather House was faced with a real problem in past years when there was a 12-choice lottery system. At that time, Mather "was not a top choice. Perhaps with the new system, more people will put Mather down as third choice in hopes of staying at the river," McCullough speculates.
Strategies such as this one were very common, and students relied on housing polls to give them hints as to which houses are the most popular. However, Quad Houses were among the least popular, and this situation was only aggravated by the Fox Plan.
