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But the greater narrative pushed by wired have pretty much everything to with the great battle for the future of America’s history. It's not about Trump vs Cli

But the greater narrative pushed by wired have pretty much everything to with the great battle for the future of America’s history. It's not about Trump vs Clinton it's about yesterdays failed rebels failing to let at new generation emerge as it's own thing and that's universal for both parties, and not even confined to just America. Whatever senior house was 10 years ago it cannot be 10 years from now because the world aren’t static so maybe it had to go to give way for something new the alumni have no right or reason to expect to be a part of. We are turning into a society of loud senior citizens and subdued youths because of the reverence today’s youth are told to have for the communities that were created by past generations despite those communities failure to tackle that many big problems head on and that’s a dangerous thing to have because it cannot lead to anything but cultural stagnation.

mrgordon 9y ago
Thats not what happened here. Current and former students are overwhelmingly united on the same side. The administration misused some voluntary response data as a pretext for shutting down a community that they didn't like. There are no loud senior citizens subduing youths unless you mean the administration. Au contraire, the students and alums were fighting together to prevent Senior House from being replaced with a generic dorm with no community spaces that will lead to cultural stagnation and isolation. Do you see how you're still trying to force a narrative that has nothing to do with the reality of the situation? If we have to force a political analogy, a better example would be if veterans and current military personnel banded together to prevent closing an important base that had produced tons of great ideas, high ranking generals, etc. because the Trump administration decided there was too much risky homosexual activity and partying going on. As an aside, your blanket classification of MIT alums as "yesterdays failed rebels" is comically inaccurate. Lawrence Summers lived in this dorm for crying out loud.
- Stranger43 9y ago
  the reality of the situation is that a dorm was closed by the people whom it's financial viability depended on because it never grew into something fully independent, nor into something that the people running MIT's budget found especially useful. Already there we have a narrative break, sure a lot of people who's identity have gotten mixed with a particular community feels they lost something but that don’t mean society did. And the fact that one of the people responsible for tanking the US economy lived there don’t actually change anything. This debate is classic and symptomatic for any kind of bohemian community, who always have a super important pedigree until it have to be quantified at which point the super important narrative kind of falls apart, and this is not a isolated case every city on every continent have it's Senior House. The problem is that your asking people to fight for something utterly insignificant(more of a local petting zoo then a civil rights landmark) as if it had an impact on the battles worth fighting which it frankly don’t. Yes there is a trend on the way towards the institutions to stop financing and sanctioning counter culture but again what good is a counter culture that only exists when it's sanctioned and financed by the establishment?
  - mrgordon 9y ago
    Its a college dorm. It was never meant to be "fully independent" and there is absolutely nothing wrong with a dorm being "sanctioned and financed by the establishment." MIT made a decision to cover their own asses in case anything went wrong in the dorm as they've been doing since famous hazing / suicide cases happened in other dorms / living groups fifteen years ago. More college-bound eccentric geniuses will end up considering other institutions of learning if MIT's campus becomes devoid of spaces that they find inspiring, creative, fun, etc. Luckily MIT still has some solid living groups despite this but removing two undergraduate dorms in quick succession will definitely have an effect. Society doesn't know enough to judge whether they lost something. That doesn't really matter ultimately as MIT is the one that made the decision. If MIT could have gotten everyone in the dorm to sign a legal waiver then they would have been more than happy to let it stay. You say the people running MIT's budget didn't find it "especially useful". It is a dorm that houses people. Its not like the option is to have no dorm. They still need a dorm. It was a specific cultural purge to shield legal liability.

mrgordon 9y ago

Thats not what happened here. Current and former students are overwhelmingly united on the same side. The administration misused some voluntary response data as a pretext for shutting down a community that they didn't like. There are no loud senior citizens subduing youths unless you mean the administration. Au contraire, the students and alums were fighting together to prevent Senior House from being replaced with a generic dorm with no community spaces that will lead to cultural stagnation and isolation. Do you see how you're still trying to force a narrative that has nothing to do with the reality of the situation? If we have to force a political analogy, a better example would be if veterans and current military personnel banded together to prevent closing an important base that had produced tons of great ideas, high ranking generals, etc. because the Trump administration decided there was too much risky homosexual activity and partying going on. As an aside, your blanket classification of MIT alums as "yesterdays failed rebels" is comically inaccurate. Lawrence Summers lived in this dorm for crying out loud.

Stranger43 9y ago
the reality of the situation is that a dorm was closed by the people whom it's financial viability depended on because it never grew into something fully independent, nor into something that the people running MIT's budget found especially useful. Already there we have a narrative break, sure a lot of people who's identity have gotten mixed with a particular community feels they lost something but that don’t mean society did. And the fact that one of the people responsible for tanking the US economy lived there don’t actually change anything. This debate is classic and symptomatic for any kind of bohemian community, who always have a super important pedigree until it have to be quantified at which point the super important narrative kind of falls apart, and this is not a isolated case every city on every continent have it's Senior House. The problem is that your asking people to fight for something utterly insignificant(more of a local petting zoo then a civil rights landmark) as if it had an impact on the battles worth fighting which it frankly don’t. Yes there is a trend on the way towards the institutions to stop financing and sanctioning counter culture but again what good is a counter culture that only exists when it's sanctioned and financed by the establishment?
- mrgordon 9y ago
  Its a college dorm. It was never meant to be "fully independent" and there is absolutely nothing wrong with a dorm being "sanctioned and financed by the establishment." MIT made a decision to cover their own asses in case anything went wrong in the dorm as they've been doing since famous hazing / suicide cases happened in other dorms / living groups fifteen years ago. More college-bound eccentric geniuses will end up considering other institutions of learning if MIT's campus becomes devoid of spaces that they find inspiring, creative, fun, etc. Luckily MIT still has some solid living groups despite this but removing two undergraduate dorms in quick succession will definitely have an effect. Society doesn't know enough to judge whether they lost something. That doesn't really matter ultimately as MIT is the one that made the decision. If MIT could have gotten everyone in the dorm to sign a legal waiver then they would have been more than happy to let it stay. You say the people running MIT's budget didn't find it "especially useful". It is a dorm that houses people. Its not like the option is to have no dorm. They still need a dorm. It was a specific cultural purge to shield legal liability.