Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1999 00:57:56 EDT To: advise@mit.edu From: Jeff Roberts Subject: Ideas for Goals Around the end of the past week, I started thinking about how best to articulate the goals our residence system tries to achieve. I got some of my ideas while attending a founder's group meeting on Thursday and from reading Matt McGann's ideas and excerpts from the Task Force Report. My motivation for doing this is to separate the goals of our system from the mechanisms we would like to use to achieve them. My idea was a three-part goal structure, which can be modified and expanded on if people feel that to be necessary. After listing each goal, I give a brief explanation of how to use that goal to justify the specific mechanisms we want to use. Here goes. Our residence system should house students. This is goal #1. Of course, this seems like a no-brainer, but it's very important that it's not forgotten. This goal should be the rationale for any proposed future developments and expansion of the system. This goal is also at the heart of any discussion of crowding; the reason why crowding exists at the moment is because of MIT's commitment to house all its undergraduate students. This should also be the basis of the argument against narrowing the scope of the system, as has been proposed by the RSSC. So this is a very useful goal to have in place. Our residence should provide students with some sort of a home (goal #2). Not only should students have a place to live, but it should be a place in which the student feels comfortable living. One of the pieces of reasoning which supports this goal is the fact that so many students come to MIT from far away parts of the country and the world, and need to have some security though they are far away from their "real" home. This goal would be the argument for letting students make an informed choice about where they live, and might also be used to argue for an expanded dining system (if we wish to include dining within the scope of our report, as I think we should). It would be the main argument for the value of FSILGs. Essentially, anything which is done for the sake of "making students happy" could have this goal as its basis. Our residence system should promote, and probably provide the main support for, an Institute-wide community (goal #3). This would be the basis for many of the new ideas proposed for the system. It would be at the heart of a wide range of issues, such as faculty-student interaction, GRTs, and other issues which involve more than undergraduate students. It would also be fundamental to promoting relations across the dormitory system and in recognizing the value of FSILGs as not just living environments but also social environments and learning environments. Anything which attempts to bring the system closer together, or to make it closer to the academic and research aspects of the Institute, would be justified under this goal. So there's my basic idea for an approach to residence system goals. Give me whatever feedback you like, or you can tell me what you think at the next meeting. Jeff