*** COMMUNITY INTERACTION AND STUDENT SUPPORT *** From: Jen Frank To: "Christopher D. Beland" Subject: Re: Section on dorm security Date: Sun, 03 Oct 1999 13:52:13 EDT Hey! One comment on the security section (good job otherwise!) > Currently, for example, there is nothing to stop a student visiting > Baker Dining from wandering the entirety of the dormitory. > Residents have also often become dangerously accustomed to opening > doors for anyone who requests entry, on the assumption that they are > on their way to a community area visiting a friend. Visitors also > often find explaining themselves to desk workers to be a hassle, > which discourages them from visiting friends at other dormitories, > or eating in another in-dorm dining hall. On the other hand, due to > the high volume of legitimate traffic in many entryways, desk > workers are not always diligent about questioning every person who > wanders by. Since you start with Baker as an example, the rest of the paragraph initially reads like it is about Baker, too. A little confusing. Maybe the example should go at the end of the paragraph... Jen =) *** ORS *** From: Abbe Cohen To: "'advise-feedback@mit.edu'" Subject: squatting for sophomores: o/res sel minutes Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 16:14:53 -0400 Hi, I've been reading the orientation and residence selection minutes as they get posted and I had a question and a comment on the decision about squatting guarantees during the sophomore shuffle vs. getting a heavier weight for staying where you are in the lottery. I realize you all are hosed and would rather spend time writing the unified proposal rather than carefully documenting all of your reasons in the minutes for us concerned alum-types to read, but I'm curious why the switch back to squatting. I'd like to know if you can answer these questions, because I think if you can't give some believable answer to all of them, then saying "we want squatting" is going to be taken as the usual students whining about the status quo where people live in the same place for 4 years. If you've thought through why it's a good thing and won't break the part of the system that depends on their being a lot more mobility (as opposed to a lot more introduced instabilities ;) ) then you're going to need to be able to argue that convincingly. * how can you predict that enough people will move if they can stay in the place where inertia's set in after a year? * What are the contingency plans for making room for the next years' frosh (and for other people who want to move into the dorm) if more people opt to squat than there's room for in a given dorm? * what other things are you doing to encourage moving around in general, and to encourage people to think about moving to a new dorm or an FSILG after freshman year? --Abbe --- To: advise@MIT.EDU Subject: Res. Sel. ideas - Re: DRAFT Orientation and Residence Date: Wed, 29 Sep 1999 05:41:37 EDT From: "Christopher D. Beland" Regarding the Residence Selection section, I think we should underline how *critical* actually meeting people in the dorms is, rather than having freshmen move in "sight unseen." I would try to make the following points: - It is very difficult, as hundreds of freshmen discover every year, to get a real sense of the character of a given residence hall without meeting upperclass residents. - It is important to maintain distinct characters in order to preserve heterogeniety and diversity of practice in the residence system. If frosh chose their residences over the summer, the system will become homogenized because the real essence of dorm character is only really transmitted in person. Cambridge University's college system shows this happening in practice. Students applying there chose their college based on printed literature, and perhaps a pre-admission visit. (Students actually apply for admission to a particular college, rather than a university.) Those of us who visited Cambrdige found that students become very attached to their respective colleges. We also found because of their size and weak ability to self-select members, the colleges were more alike than different. The actual culture one experiences in a given college at Cambridge varies drastically from year to year as an entirely new batch of students arrives every three years. This, despite the fact that the unique physical environment and often centuries-old formal traditions of the organization change much more slowly. It is worth noting that one of the most satisfying experiences for alumni is returning to their undergraduate living group and finding a like-minded group of students eager for stories, advice, and informal outings. - The current heterogeneous system does a much better job at tailoring to the needs of specific groups of frosh, based on residence hall. If all of the dormitories become near-perfect mirrors of the larger MIT community, community-driven dorm programming will be tuned to the lowest common denominator, and thus be less relevent to a significant fraction of the freshmen. Cambridge University, despite its fairly homogenous residence system, achieves outstanding levels of student satisfaction and academic performance. It does so with a nearly one-on-one tutoring and advising system that in effect creates a custom programming experience for each student, something which is unfortunately currently infeasible at MIT. - The ability to meet people in a living group before moving in is a positive opportunity which many other institutions do not provide incoming students. Would you want to move into an apartment without meeting your roommates? Would you buy a used car without giving it a test drive, or at least seeing it? - Little or no logisitical advantage as opposed to RSSC plan (?) --- More comments of the rest of the residence selection section follow... > Upperclassmen should be given the ability to positively select > freshmen for internal divisions of a residence hall (i.e. the halls > of East Campus or the entries of MacGregor) but not the ability to > deny a freshmen the ability to choose a particular internal division > of a residence hall, though they may disallow a freshmen to share a > room or a suite. [I just though of that - is it okay?] Freshmen > should not be aware of the preferences of upperclassmen. How about: "However, we recognize that upperclassmen who share rooms or suites with freshmen must be given the ability to chose mutually acceptable living arrangements." > We believe that upperclassmen, because of their experience with and > knowledge about the living groups within their dormitories, are able > to positively contribute to the assignment of freshmen to rooms, but > we recognize that granting the power to deny freshmen a particular > room is inappropriate. [do we? I don't] Well, would you be more inclined to agree with something like the below? Giving upperclassmen the opportunity to preferentially attract freshmen with compatible personalities improves the frequency and productivity of informal interaction, including everything from help with problem sets to sewing advice. Upperclassmen should not have the ability to unkinldy bounce a freshman somehow labelled as "undesirable" from place to place, nor should an exclusionary attitude dominate the beginning of the MIT experience. Here's another thought or two to add to the mix: All in all, we hope that tthe proposed residence selection system will help elminate roommate, floormate, and housemate "horror stories" from the MIT experience, by allowing freshmen and upperclassmen to make mutually compatible living arrangements in a informative, low-pressure, informal social environment. > In order to provide level access, freshmen should not be required to "level" -> "equal" or "fair" > * enable students to bring all of their stuff with them on the first > trip Umm...how, exactly, are we achieving this?? --- From: Jen Frank To: advise@MIT.EDU Subject: questions and comments on the orientation section Date: Wed, 29 Sep 1999 23:27:14 EDT Hey Chris - a bit of feedback, on an otherwise very comprehensive section! :) When discussing the stapling option for the two frosh, perhaps the language needs to be stronger or maybe there needs to be more detail. WE know what our reasons are, but it is still rather confusing. Maybe say that they can staple in the dormwide lottery so that they do not lose the opportunity to be roommates, and then the houses continue with their internal assignments as they choose, HOPEFULLY taking into consideration that these frosh are doing them a afavor by saying that they want to live together. You give more detail on this in the next paragraph, and that is good, but I think it needs to be stated why we are saying only TWO in a better way. I still don't know what that better way is though... What do you mean by disallow frosh to share a room or suite? Can you think of a case when this is necessary? (besides male/female) Describe positive choice more - they can choose who CAN live with them, but not who CANNOT. And more people can live with them than they choose, so it is in their best interest to meet lots of frosh, and it is in the frosh's best interest... Does that make sense? I just feel that it can be too loosely interpreted the way it is. Maybe give an example of how positive choice would work? Why are we caving on no blacklisting? I agree that we don't want the frosh to know. I agree that it may not be the best method - are we seeing it as a compromise? if so, what/who is it a compromise for? For the dorms and the frosh? For the admins and the dorms? For the RSSC and the dorms? (This is me playing devil's advocate - but I do still feel that we need to explain more) Sunday during Carnival (or at other times during O) - can dorms have tours etc, but no large events? This allows frosh the opportunity to look more, without the pressure of the big activities at dorms to seduce them, and it doesn't detract from the carnival, etc... dorm lotteries: the november one is for spring housing, I assume? This is based of off the confirmation card idea, I think, but I just want to be sure I am reading it correctly... why not kick out seniors instead of sophomores in part D? Does anyone else think this makes more sense...Why are we even suggesting sophomores get the boot? just a note on numbers: Straight from the mouth of Phil Bernard - In the 2001 system, assuming a 350 bed dorm onVassar St is ready, there are 2946 beds. 1100 frosh/2946 beds = 37.3% of each dorm will be needed for frosh, assuming no crowding. This puts LOTS of people on the streets, not just a few. He anticipates "record crowding" to occur, and seniors to be the first to be booted off campus (with the possible exception of grad students.) All common sense, but just to reinforce it... Jen Date: Sat, 02 Oct 1999 14:18:06 -0400 To: advise-feedback@mit.edu From: Paul-Gabriel Wiener Subject: rough drafts nice job, guys! i've only got a few complaints this time . i'll start with the grammatical stuff, since that's easiest. summary, V1C, " During rooming assignments, entries and suites may request that particular freshmen to live with them, but may not prevent a freshman from living with them." needs some work. get rid of the "to," and you might want to make the phrasing a little clearer. or maybe not. without the distration of the "to," it does seem much clearer... in the section on residence hall selection (7-II) the paragraph starting with "We believe that upperclassmen, because of their experience..." needs to be restructured. it makes some of the same points more than once, and bounces from whitelisting good to blacklisting bad to whitelisting good to blacklisting bad... moving on, i have one problem with the way you've set up orientation. i kept hoping and figuring it would be changed by now, but evidentally not. the thing is that you've only set aside ONE DAY for ALL OF DORM RUSH. one day of open houses, and then you have to enter the lottery ON THE NEXT DAY. i don't care how much summer info you get, or how much the options are narrowed by cutting out FSILGs. one day is not enough. besides that, you've got them looking at UROPs and labs that day. i could understand it if they had the time between the midway and the lottery to look at dorms, but you've got athletics, activities, and the carnival taking up that time. ok, so the midways only take a few hours each, but still. come on. so, you may ask "where will we find more time?" i've said it before, and i'll say it again. have dorm rush take place over a series of evenings, with academic orientation going on during the daytime. btw, as you've got it set up, it looks like carnival will turn into dorm rush anyway. i don't think that's your intent. it looks like it's supposed to be a way to relax, meet people, and take some time off of r/o to have fun before term. sounds like a pretty good idea to me (actually, reminds me of dorm-design-team's mini-iap...). i don't think you want to spoil that with upperclassmen being busy trying to rush frosh. of course, looking at the people you've set up to be sponsoring events, i may be completely wrong. maybe you did mean to extend residence, activity, and athletics midways into a full informal day. btw, what's going on with the frosh who choose not to attend pre-orientation stuff? or is that even an option? do they come on campus wed? do they just sit around on campus with nothing to do? and what have you done with international orientation? hmmm.. maybe you want to put dorm rush in on sunday, and move carnival over to where you have "open social time." theme houses- i still say theme houses should be able to choose frosh, but if not... what happens to frosh who get lotteried into theme houses if they don't fit? they can't choose to squat in the soph shuffle lottery because the theme house gets to choose them then, right? or do they? very uncomfortable situation either way. boot the guy who's been living there for a year, or be forced to live with him? on dorm lottery "As the RSSC notes, the current system can perpetuate the idea that each student has only one place where they could find a home." and who's to say that's not right? i, for one, am as certain as i can be that if i hadn't lived in baker 4th my freshman year i would have transferred out of mit. ok, so i found a few more issues while writing. sorry. i thought it was just going to be 2 gramatical things and a brief thing about dorm rush. oh well. anyway, good job on all the rest of it (and that is a lot). i may not agree with you everywhere, but who can really expect that? anyway, i've got to go. thanks for putting this together! Paul --- To: "C. M. R. Rezek" Cc: billyb@MIT.EDU, trup@MIT.EDU, madmatt@MIT.EDU, abbeyrd@MIT.EDU, beland@MIT.EDU Subject: Re: DRAFT of O/R section Date: Fri, 01 Oct 1999 02:42:05 -0400 From: William Dichtel Chris, My comments on the section, overall not too bad... -Will ------- >FSILGs provide >more cost-effective housing and meal options than do MIT residence halls. >Also, as the Phase II Status Report of the RSSC says, "the FSILG system has >been a leader at MIT in mentoring and advising freshmen" and allowing that >relationship to continue to grow can only benefit the freshmen and MIT.] Seems to be weird language to use, considering that we are actually restricting frosh involvement in FSILG's, not "allowing that relationship to continue to grow" >["Fly fishing house," by the >above criteria, should not be approved. ] I think this line can be removed... it was kind of a snide comment on the phase II RSSC report, which no longer is the working document for the residence system. Besides, this is a separate document not a response. >[The second method consists of compelling all >future Freshmen to sign a commitment that says they will be willing to do >the house duties that are required of them for membership, and that they >satisfy whatever requirements the Cultural House in question wishes its >members to have (for example if German House were to institute a language >requirement of 1 year of German in High School).] This contains a subtle difference from what we agreed to in the subcomm. meeting. I was under the impression that if a theme house wanted to take freshmen, the only contractual obligation was participatatory (cooking, cleaning, attending events...) We did not discuss that personal/historical characteristics were acceptable. I was under the impression that a theme house (say German House), if it chose to accept frosh, would have to take frosh that were willing to cook, clean, take german, whatever. They can not expect frosh to have already taken German, or to have come from a family of German descent. This was my understanding, and why I was ok with it. *** Something about the rush section should say that the institute should expect the IFC to not run a rush that would compete with orientation, but that the IFC should otherwise remain in control of the timing and rules regarding any recruitment periods it wishes to designate. The administration should work together with the IFC as much as possible in order to ensure periods of recruitment that fit well into the MIT calender and are as free of academic pressure as possible given the time(s) of year in which such periods take place. (Wow, quite a run on) That being said, the IFC will probably choose to hold one such recruitment period in mid to late September targeting freshmen as non-residential new members. The institute should be aware of the continued importance of successful FSILG recruitment to easing the strain on the dormitory system, and should take measures to allow recruitment periods to run smoothly and with as little stress as possible to those participating. >[However, supporting the FSILG system also makes sense from a financial >standpoint. The cost to create and maintain a 'bed' in an FSILG is >substantially less than in a residence hall. To make the point >dramatically - MIT could give every FSILG $1 million for a total of $38 >million and it would still be less than the $45 million estimated cost of >building the new 350-person residence hall. It would be foolish for MIT to >attempt to save money by being parsimonious with FSILG support. ] Possibly, toss a reminder number in here that the FSILG's house many, many more people than the new 350 person dorm as well... >We recommend that MIT make a one-time contribution to the Independent >Residence Development Fund of [XX million dollars - suggestions?]. 10 million? I don't mind having MIT invest in FSILG's outright rather than through IRDF... but that creates issues that we talked about. Don't really have a concept of how big IRDF is currently, but probably large. >We recommend that MIT purchase houses for the two sororities that are >currently un-housed. The sorority system at MIT has grown dramatically >since the founding of Alpha Phi in 198?. Might want to say that these should be high in the priority for use of houses that go under, assuming that the sororities want to move into them... don't know if MIT wants to throw a sorority out into Brookline if ET or ZBT went under for example. Though in the model of 4-6 year transition support, maybe sororities need houses sooner... could be worth investing in esp. to clear another chunk of people out of dorms. >MIT will support FSILGs that wish to move closer to campus. The Institute >can provide this support in allowing three basic options will be: (1) an >FSILG may lease land from MIT and build a building on it; (2) an FSILG may >lease a building built on MIT land; and (3) an FSILG may purchase land from >a non-MIT entity and build a building on it. This doesn't need to be in the report, as it is already happening. MIT is talking about leasing land to FSILG's for $1 for 50 years... then building housing on it, and switching that property for FSILG property in a capital gains free like- for-like switch. The details might interest a few, but this process is already in motion. Not sure if I just let a big cat out of the bag or not... >There will be two options for billing: either (1) MIT will pay the full >regular house bill for each graduate student, and may bill the graduate >student whatever it wishes; or (2) FSILGs may set their own house bill for >graduate students and bill the graduate students directly. Not totally sure about this, but probably don't want MIT as the middle man... if they want to encourage grad students to move into fsilg's, they could provide a subsidy for those that do. However, FSILG's would probably not want to go through MIT for all of them. Can someone see a benefit in doing it that way? Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1999 07:51:58 EDT To: "Christopher D. Beland" cc: advise@MIT.EDU From: Jake Parrott Subject: Re: Residence system population simulation (take 2) [snip] I hope we can find room for the following statement (or similar) somewhere in our report: "MIT's promises to house all undergraduates for four years, to house all first-year graduate students who want housing, and to find beds for students who wish to leave FSILGs, are empty. The only solution is to provide more beds on a permanent basis." The RSSC has abrogated their responsibility to advise the Chancellor by mentioning the Doomsday scenario of throwing out sophomores, but not making an attempt to find a real solution. Not having time is not an excuse. This issue is WAAAAY more important than whether or not there is dorm rush. Jake *** GOVERNANCE AND MANAGEMENT *** Date: Fri, 01 Oct 1999 18:08:42 -0400 To: advise@MIT.EDU From: "C. M. R. Rezek" Subject: Nominations to SLC This process suggests that the UA and GSC nominations processes will be bypassed, and we will also create a whole new committee and process to sustain the SLC. What was the rationale behind this? * * * * The student members shall be chosen as follows: One member shall be the President of the Undergraduate Association, or a designee approved by the UA Council. One member shall be the President of the Graduate Student Council, or a designee approved by the Council. The remaining two members (graduate and undergraduate) shall go through the following selection process: they shall first be interviewed by a Nominations Committee appointed by the Student Life Committee. The Nominations Committee shall select several candidates for each position. The student body shall then receive ballots listing the candidates for each position, along with a c.v. andstatement from each candidate. The students shall then rank their choices for each position, and the top vote-getters, as determined by preferential balloting, shall be appointed to the Council. *** MULTI-SECTION FEEDBACK *** Date: Fri, 01 Oct 1999 03:07:51 -0400 To: advise-feedback@mit.edu From: Paul-Gabriel Wiener Subject: late-night comments on everything as you probably know, most of what i want to say is in my proposal (the final version was sent out to rssc & bacow earlier this week). i did, however, want to make a few specific comments on what you've got so far. first off, i hope you're going to include a TOC. if the rough draft of section 6 is anything to go by, you'll need it. minor point- in the goals section, second paragraph, it says >the reason why >crowding exists at the moment is because of MIT's commitment to house >all its undergraduate students. "the reason is because" is an ungrammatical statement, due to redundancy. correct grammer would be "the reason is that." it's a family pet peeve. more importantly, i hope you include reasoning for everything. it's the best way to convince bacow that what you've said is right, that you've actually put thought into stuff, etc. capitol expendatures people- co-ordinate with everyone else... there may be more costs that come up, such as funding whatever means people come up with to keep 4year housing. ok. the big thing- section 7 (hey, it's what i do... 8-P) >Residence halls shall not be able to single out particular freshmen >and deny them the opportunity to live in a particular >hall/entry/house/room. ok. if they can't black list, can they white list? (btw, watch singular/plural) >The number of freshmen in each dorm shall not >exceed a certain percentage (say, 45%), nor fall below a certain >percentage (say, 25%). > >Allow evolution in the system. Some houses may evolve to have >significantly more freshmen than other houses. upper bound is fine. don't see why you want a lower bound, but 25% is too high. the reason for this is the same as the reason why the thing about evolving doesn't make sense- the # of frosh in a given dorm is a 4-year cycle. if x ammount of people graduate in year 1, there will be room for x freshmen that year. in year 5, when those x people graduate, there will again be x freshmen taken in. so, evolving doesn't really work, and you may end up with less than 25% frosh if the graduating class is small (which indicates a larger # of sophs & jrs). it's just the way things work out. this works even with the soph shuffle, because that's just a redistribution, not change of #'s. theme houses- i don't know why ingbert et al are shooting so low, but that doesn't mean you should follow their lead. upperclass choice of theme house members (white listing, actually) is a necessary part of theme house culture. the system doesn't work if you just stick in random frosh x, even if frosh x *thinks* s/he would fit in. you really can't tell, even with dorm rush. stapling- it is good because it keeps friends together, reduces the probability of roommate problems, reduces frosh stress, etc. you don't want more than 2 stapled because you don't know what kind of room they'll be assigned, stapling more kills chances for getting high pref, and generally clogs up algorithm. how's that for rationale? as for r/o, consider this- residence open houses in the evenings, after orientation activities are done. does that clear things up a bit? btw, it does let you have a longer r... other than that, read my proposal and think about it 8-P. i want the damn thing to do some good, and only managing to give rssc a few days really dropped the odds. so, my best hopes are you guys and the thought that bacow may take the time to read it and seriously consider it. ok. i meant to be asleep nearly an hour ago. good luck with everything. expect more flames when i get some free time sometime this weekend (after the promised updates). Paul "Life is like a box of chocolates... without chocolate, it's empty" "...and who, disguised as a mild-mannered MIT student, fights a never ending battle for Truth, Justice, and Lo-Cal Hot Chocolate With Little Sugar-Free Marshmallows." --- To: advise@MIT.EDU Subject: Status update; Minor suggestions for several sections Date: Sun, 03 Oct 1999 14:11:17 EDT From: "Christopher D. Beland" Someone from the Community Interaction and Student Support section still needs to finish the draft, and incorporate all of the stuff that's mentioned in the Executive Summary. People also need to be drafted to write the (8) System Implementation and (9) Reconciliation of Objectives and Policies sections. I have not yet received the minutes from the Sept. 28 meeting; just the agenda is posted right now. I am going to try to coallate all of the feedback that's been given on various sections so far so whoever does the next draft will have it all there in one place. Below is the non-controversial portion of my thought process... Hope to see most of you at Jeremy's in a bit to hash out the rest. -B. --- ***COMMUNITY INTERACTION AND STUDENT SUPPORT*** Space in W20 should be used before space in Ashdown. (Did we decide to add this, or ignore it?) Note: Tuesday Nights at Baker is an Orientation program, not a community-wide event sponsored by the Baker residents. Add the stuff that's mentioned in the Executive Summary. *** INTRODUCTION *** The name of our report is given sometimes as "Unified Student Proposal" but the web page lists it as the "Unified Proposal for an MIT Residential System." Is it just me, or shouldn't it be "MIT Residence System" and not "MIT Residential System"? Or what about just the UPMRS, or "SAC report" for short? 9) ::ducks:: > We are encouraged that community members have responded to our calls > for feedback by helping us build a better system, rather than > criticizing our ideas as a narrow-minded proposal from an isolated > group of people. I should have phrased this better the first time I wrote it: We are encouraged that community members have responded to our calls for feedback by helping us build a better system, rather than criticizing our ideas as a narrow-minded. We take this as an indication that our proposal really does appeal to the needs of the broader community, and that it represents more than merely the opinions of a small number of student activists. ***OBJECTIVES*** Excellent! Implied goals of Home: Also includes properly maintaining facilities. A dangerous or decaying infrastructure is not very supportive of student needs. Philosophy of Community: I think the primary emphasis of the PTFSLL report with regard to "Community" was that it is the third pillar of the Academic Triad. That is to say, part of an MIT education includes a non-academic and non-research aspect that is often overlooked. Learning how to cook, how to manage one's time, how to be a community leader, how to maintain a building, how to run a meeting, and how to have fun - these are lessons not learned in the classroom or the laboratory, but the Community at Home. I think we should also emphasize, however, the limits of the residential system in supporting this third pillar. Student activities and other aspects of student life also play a large and important role in this area. ***SUMMARY*** > We have the following objectives for this proposal: Incorporate prose version from Introduction section. > A. Provide incentives for students to move to residences that are > underutilized. > > B. Crowd existing dormitory space and spread such crowding as > evenly as possible between residence halls. > > C. Rent non-residence hall space for undergraduates. > > D. Utilize graduate student housing for undergraduates and provide > subsidies for out-of-system graduate student housing for those > students denied housing in those dormitories. > > E. Change the dormitory lottery so that it will not guarantee that > students remain in their current dormitory. This is significantly different from the actual text of the ORS section, which reads: > a. Crowd existing dormitory space and spread such crowding as evenly > as possible between residence halls. > > b. Rent non-residence hall space for undergraduates, either on a > per-room basis or entire buildings. > > c. Utilize graduate student housing for undergraduates. Provide > subsidies for out-of-system graduate student housing. The subsidy > should be equal to the number of graduate students who would be > denied housing in sufficient amounts to equalize the price between > out-of-system and in-system rents. > > d. Deny housing to rising seniors and provide those students with > financial subsidies to equalize the price between out-of-system and > in-system rents. I recommend adding the Executive Summary's (A) to the actual text in the ORS section, and replacing the Summary's (E) with ORS' (d). > A. Starting in June 2001, MIT should transfer funds to each FSILG > equal to 25% of total house capacity times the standard hosuebill. > This subsidy shall decline to zero over six years. This is no longer consistent with the recommendations in the ORS section. > VI. SPECIAL NOTES This part does not appear in the ORS section; it definitely should. In general, the Executive Summary will need to be re-synched with the rest of the report. *** ORS *** > according to the Spring 1996 Cycles Survey (86.8% This should probably get a formal citation in the style of the Governance section. > developed in many cases rival those found in FSILGs. > Dormitory-internal living groups, both the formal Theme Houses and > less formal hallways and entries, provide distinct residential The existing structures are "Language and Cultural Houses" not "Theme Houses." > Residence Hall and Room Selection I think we should add that students should be guaranteed not to be lotteried out of their "temp" dorm if it is their first choice. > "Upperclassmen who share rooms or suites with freshmen must be given > the ability to chose mutually acceptable living arrangements." Well, dorm housing chairs must have the discretion to allow this. We don't want to mandate this if the dorm doesn't want to extend that right to upperclassmen. > Pre-Orientation We should perhaps add that these programs got rave reviews from participating frosh in the Class of 2003, and that there was record participation this year (I'm sure someone around here knows the percentage). > "We were very reluctant to agree to any form of summer pre-selection > but recognize that it is in the best interests of the Institute to > do so." We need to say more about easing parental concerns and about how the choose-a-temp-dorm thing provides some amount of certainty and at least marginally more logistical consistancy. Frosh should get the name and contact info of their roommate over the summer, along with their room number and the contact info for the front desk. The presence of the Metropolitan Storage Warehouse should also be more prominently advertised to parents, and MIT should make more of an effort to educate parents about the residence selection process. It would also perhaps be better to rephrase the above paragraph so it doesn't look like we are contradicting ourselves: "We realize the logisitical and psychological benefits of allowing some amount of summer pre-selection, but also still firmly believe that the only real choices are made after meeting upperclassmen in person." > Housing Guarantee Excellent! Should we add that transfer students and students taking time away for medical or other reasons should be included in this guarantee? Should denying housing to these student be included in contingency plan D? ----------------------------------------------------------- Christopher Beland beland@mit.edu 34 The Fenway (617) 437-1043 Boston, MA 02215-4092 http://web.mit.edu/beland/www Secure (PGP) e-mail: http://web.mit.edu/beland/www/pgp.html ----------------------------------------------------------- Search for extraterrestrial intelligence from home! http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ -----------------------------------------------------------