4 ms·

I would alternatively suggest not treating groups of people, particularly young people, like monolithic machines. "Put them on notice": who is "them"? Senior H

by mhalle 9y ago

I would alternatively suggest not treating groups of people, particularly young people, like monolithic machines. "Put them on notice": who is "them"? Senior House, like any dorm, is a bunch of people living together. Some were even assigned there without choosing it (I was one). Each resident has no responsibility for the behavior of others. Why should someone following the rules (and they are the huge majority) have any obligation to MIT to "DO something"? It is easy and understandable to think of groups as monolithic. But that doesn't make it fair. MIT administration, on the other hand, acts as a single official entity. And it is the one doling out collective punishment. To be clear, I'm not saying do nothing when problems come up. But there are plenty of established mechanisms to deal with the individuals creating those problems (Committee on Discipline, Committee on Academic Performance, Campus/Cambridge Police, ...). While not perfect, they are mature, they have known rules, they apply to everyone the same. Unlike what happened at Senior House, apparently, at least you're allowed to have a faculty representative with you when you appear before COD or CAP. It's at least a yellow flag for me when it becomes necessary to create new procedures and enlist new powers to special case a problem.

ScottBurson 9y ago
> collective punishment It's not like they expelled everyone who had been living there. They just have to find new housing. Presumably nothing is going on their record about it. I know they don't like it, understandably, but as punishment goes it seems pretty light. I don't completely disagree with you, though. It does seem like more effort could have been made to find out which individuals were causing the problems and focus on those.
- Bartweiss 9y ago
  One bit of useful context is that MIT has way more culture and persistent identity tied to its dorms than most schools. My undergrad shuttled students to a new building every year, and wouldn't let anyone stay in dorms over the summer. "Dorm culture" was basically nonexistent. At MIT, students have significant choice of dorm, can stay in one place for four years, and can stay on campus in their room over summers. There's a lot of culture embedded in choice of housing. I'm not sure I would call this collective punishment, but it's got something in common with evicting everyone in an apartment building because some of them are noisy. Certainly it's much closer to that than it would be at most colleges.
  - mhalle 9y ago
    Thanks for bringing this point up. Without that context, this issue could seem fairly trivial. I would go as far as to say that living group culture (e.g, which side of campus, living group, floor, and even finer grain) is the strongest social bond that most MIT undergrads establish. While students participate is a wide variety of activities and intramural sports, living groups are where you come home to. If you didn't fit in the rest of your life, your living group is usually your best bet to make bonds in a pretty brutal academic environment. To be fair, that's also probably why MIT is cranked up about places like Senior House and Bexley (whole other story) if it gets the (simplistic) idea that bad forces might lead the innocent astray.
    - Bartweiss 9y ago
      > To be fair, that's also probably why MIT is cranked up about places like Senior House and Bexley (whole other story) if it gets the (simplistic) idea that bad forces might lead the innocent astray. Also a good point. I don't think the MIT administration is so clueless that they assume this behavior will disappear when the dorm closes. I suspect they're hoping to change behavior at the margins - that somebody who might have tried acid because so many of their suitemates in Senior did will make a different choice. I think the decision is a mistake regardless, and I think the reasons given are generally pretty small-minded. Does MIT of all places really need to juice its graduation rate? Are the students who don't graduate being harmed, or just taking a different path? But I can certainly see why MIT might take aim at dorms as a means to changing culture.

by mhalle 9y ago

ScottBurson 9y ago

> collective punishment It's not like they expelled everyone who had been living there. They just have to find new housing. Presumably nothing is going on their record about it. I know they don't like it, understandably, but as punishment goes it seems pretty light. I don't completely disagree with you, though. It does seem like more effort could have been made to find out which individuals were causing the problems and focus on those.

Bartweiss 9y ago
One bit of useful context is that MIT has way more culture and persistent identity tied to its dorms than most schools. My undergrad shuttled students to a new building every year, and wouldn't let anyone stay in dorms over the summer. "Dorm culture" was basically nonexistent. At MIT, students have significant choice of dorm, can stay in one place for four years, and can stay on campus in their room over summers. There's a lot of culture embedded in choice of housing. I'm not sure I would call this collective punishment, but it's got something in common with evicting everyone in an apartment building because some of them are noisy. Certainly it's much closer to that than it would be at most colleges.
- mhalle 9y ago
  Thanks for bringing this point up. Without that context, this issue could seem fairly trivial. I would go as far as to say that living group culture (e.g, which side of campus, living group, floor, and even finer grain) is the strongest social bond that most MIT undergrads establish. While students participate is a wide variety of activities and intramural sports, living groups are where you come home to. If you didn't fit in the rest of your life, your living group is usually your best bet to make bonds in a pretty brutal academic environment. To be fair, that's also probably why MIT is cranked up about places like Senior House and Bexley (whole other story) if it gets the (simplistic) idea that bad forces might lead the innocent astray.
  - Bartweiss 9y ago
    > To be fair, that's also probably why MIT is cranked up about places like Senior House and Bexley (whole other story) if it gets the (simplistic) idea that bad forces might lead the innocent astray. Also a good point. I don't think the MIT administration is so clueless that they assume this behavior will disappear when the dorm closes. I suspect they're hoping to change behavior at the margins - that somebody who might have tried acid because so many of their suitemates in Senior did will make a different choice. I think the decision is a mistake regardless, and I think the reasons given are generally pretty small-minded. Does MIT of all places really need to juice its graduation rate? Are the students who don't graduate being harmed, or just taking a different path? But I can certainly see why MIT might take aim at dorms as a means to changing culture.