Date:    17 Sep 1999 23:19:49 EDT
To:      advise@MIT.EDU
From:    amu@MIT.EDU (Aaron M. Ucko)
Subject: notes from meeting with MacGregor housemasters


I just got back from meeting with Munther and Jinane Dahleh about the
residence system and the RSSC report.  Here's my summary of their
comments:

The RSSC's proposal would probably badly hurt the cohesiveness of
individual dorms; a summer mailing is inadequate for frosh to make
well-informed decisions.  Encouraging phone contact might help, but
probably wouldn't be nearly as effective as visiting everything in
person; SEORT would be much better here.  On the other hand, temporary
housing inherently adds some amount of hassle to the system; we should
argue that it is worth the hassle.

Students generally settle in as frosh, so any residence-selection
system should make it possible for most students who want to live in
dorms to end up with dorms they like freshman year without being
psychic; otherwise, a lot of them will probably end up being less
happy than they could have been.  Therefore, making frosh choose dorms
over the summer and not letting them switch readily for a whole year
has a good chance of destroying the character of the housing system.

Reducing the housing guarantee to 3 years may be necessary due to
space issues, and might help to encourage pledging.  Another way to do
that might be to offer them a financial incentive like the subsidies
for grad students.

In general, the residence system appears to have been abandoned, and
the RSSC is only focusing on the most vital issue.  Dining, safety,
etc. also really need to be addressed.  (The dining committee's report
was good; will it ever be implemented?)

Encouraging grad students to live in FSILGs may end up making them
more first-worldish.

A six-month FSILG rush is *way* too long, and would probably be tough
on both the ILG residents and the interested frosh.

Having in-house rush depend only on freshmen's preference may not be
such a bad idea; upperclassmen probably wouldn't move *that* many
frosh around, and randomization would avoid frosh feeling excluded
from halls they wanted.

-- 
Aaron M. Ucko, KB1CJC <amu@mit.edu> (finger amu@monk.mit.edu)