One of the ways houses guarantee fairness and interest is to require residents to participate in projects directly relating to the theme of the house. Although this is a great idea in theory, it becomes the source of many poorly thought-out projects that do nothing to contribute to the communal spirit of the house, much less enrich the entire school. At this point only the Charles Drew house stipulates in its charter that residents formulate a project each semester-it would be to the other houses' benefits to introduce a similar requirement.
Formally making these projects compulsory will help house leaders and those who screen the applicant pool weed out those who are simply trying to avoid Room Draw.
The additional funds that individual theme houses now get should henceforth be aggregated into a central fund, as the council has recommended. This would serve to eliminate residents hurriedly trying to use up all their money at semester's end for fear of losing the funds.
The number of rooms granted to each individual house should not be decided before some objective party reviews the size and quality of the potential applicant pool. If, for example, this year there is a marked interest in Porter's Russian side and a corresponding decrease in the German, this should be taken into consideration when assigning relative amounts of space to the two houses. Guaranteeing rooms on a competitive basis will leave many more rooms for opt-outs than are available now, making it harder to scam the system.
For the most part, the suggestions that the executive council made at their last meeting provide an excellent starting point for reworking the theme house system.
Some minor reforms to the theme house system would greatly improve the experience of the residents and the rest of the campus as a whole.