AILG Breakfast meeting  2/18/04
Next meeting is April 14, 2004

Officer introductions, Attending Houses introduced (see list at 
bottom of email)


Going forward the Board would like to have this group have more of a 
managerial structure, more commitments and ways of measuring the 
progress on those commitments.  We have no authority, only the 
ability to set an example
First accomplishment, the Cooperative.

Would like suggestions on how we can use our website to be more 
effective.  http://mitailg.org/
Will distribute minutes in a timely fashion
Will attempt to have an agenda out in advance.

Set of one year goals arrived at by the Board, open for discussion & debate:
   Strong house corporations (know them all, get/create tools)
   Economic buttressing (contribution flow through, econ models)
   Strategic assessment reports (govt/press/MIT relationships)  What 
can we do as a body?
   Recruitment intervention (parents, public generally)
   Educational offerings (HM101, TR101)
   Capacity growth (executive director for this org?)

DKE REPORT- Doug Vincent, House Corp President
12/22/03 was the last time that the brothers of DKE can enter the 
house until some time in the Fall.
MIT has told DKE that they do not want them on campus and they are 
having a "trial separation" to see if DKE can repair their 
difficulties, or if they need to leave the campus.  Actives 
understand that their behavior needs to change for DKE to remain on 
campus. "Alums cannot change the behavior of the active chapter, they 
can only council and guide the actives."  This will cost the House 
Corp approximately $100,000.  The time commitment has gone way up for 
the alumni, 5-10 alums are meeting with the actives every week.  They 
have found that the ability to take dinner together and live together 
is more important to them than drinking, but this was a hard lesson 
to learn.  They are a very independent house, which has traditionally 
been a strength, but recently has been a liability.

They would like others to be able to learn from their example.
"Freedom is not free" - they may have to give up some autonomy to be 
able to work with MIT & Cambridge and they feel this is worth it.
They have been working with their actives for 18 months to help them 
to change, but it didn't sink in for the actives until the house was 
closed in December.  It was also very difficult to get the needed 
time and commitment from the alumni until this final disaster, even 
though they had warnings.

Sig Ep removed all of their Seniors, Juniors & Sophomores 4 years 
ago, and it very hard to rebuild from such a situation.

FSILG Office
Panhellenic just finished formal recruitment (end of January), was 
very successful.  Over 25% more women joined this year than last 
year, 122 bids went out, 115 were accepted.
Kaya shared some of their recruitment materials.  They were able to 
send mail to all women on campus for the first time (with Dean 
Norman's assistance).  The sororities worked together all fall term.

GRADES
Fall 2003
AEPhi - 4.78 - non-residential sorority
Fenway - 4.61 top for ILGs
AEPi 4.5 - top for fraternities
We will look at publishing averages, top 1/3 of list.

RA Program
RA Application is ready to go, we're waiting to get it posted on website.
You may begin searching at any time
There have been modifications to the aps, a few short answer 
questions to have a better idea of where the applicants are coming 
from.  The application will be on the web, we will receive a URL via 
email.

The program is constantly changing, being redefined.  Kaya would like 
to convene group to look at role and definition.  Would like 8-10 RAs 
& Alumni to be on a working group, let her know if you are interested.

LGC
Undergraduate housing office, they will be part of the communication 
that MIT will send to 5th year students indicating that LGCs are an 
option for 5th year

INSURANCE
Property Premiums are in, if you're curious, see Laura
Kirkland has a program that might help people save 10% on their 
insurance, see Laura for details.
Renewal date is 4/1/04, you won't be billed until the middle of the 
summer due to internal accounting.

MIT fronts the money for our insurance and then collects from the 
houses over the course of the year.  There is a question as to 
whether we get a good price because we go through MIT.  It is a 
bundling of the AILG that gets us our discount, not because it goes 
through MIT.  Some organizations find that they get a price break by 
going through MIT rather than their Nationals, others do not.  It is 
dependent on your options.

FREEZING ISSUES:
4 major ones: Lambda Chi Alpha, Betas around others.
Encourage undergraduates to keep the heat on!
The deductible on freezes is $10,000.  The recent freezes ranged from 
$4,000 to over $500,000.  They will receive surcharges on their 
insurance, premiums will not go up for everyone.

COOPERATIVE
We currently have 20 full member houses. Out of 37 FSILGs.
Chris circulated a document of information on the COOP, see him for more.

TASK FORCE
Here to observe; has visited over half the houses.  Have not asked 
the alumni what it was about their experience that brings them here 
in the middle of the night years later.  Please send Pat & the Task 
Force mail about that.  He would like additional feedback from an 
alumni group. phw@ai.mit.edu

When will the report be out?
There will be a preliminary report,  it will come to us, President 
Vest and other stake holders before the final document is published. 
We expect to finalize our recommendations in mid-March.

The departure of President Vest is not having a substantial impact 
because we had anticipated addressing the next president as well as 
President Vest.

The http://fsilg-task-force.mit.edu/  for details.  5 members of the 
AILG are on the Task Force (Peter Cooper, Laura Dean, Bryan Adams, 
Jim Bueche, Alicia Hunt)

GOALS
Discussion of one year goals,  would like to have volunteers around 
these issues.  The Board has already committed individually to 
working on these topics, would like to see others involved as well.

Being a strong corporation is not necessarily the same as showing up 
here.  We believe there is a correlation between strong House Corps 
and strong houses.  We would like to support those groups who need 
help, whether they know they need it or not.
- Would like to see assistance to House Corps - help HC's to know if 
they are heading in the right direction or the wrong direction. 
Difficulty with Alumni & Actives thinking that the Actives run 
everything with little to no input from Alumni.  This is the house 
that had the pipes freeze & a fire, this is not the first physical 
problem.  It is important to determine which houses have which 
challenges, possibly anonymously so that we can help them.
- Helpful if the AILG could talk about the structure of House Corps, 
understand the membership, # & timing of meetings, understanding the 
roles.  This unevenness could come to the surface. [Should I conduct 
survey?]
- Important to support alumni boards that are trying to take action, 
this is much harder to do than it appears.  [How?]
- 3 issues, behavior problems; physical plant difficulties - one 
fatal fire could close many houses, undergraduates do not have the 
time & ability to undertake large scale renovations, the AILG should 
provide volunteers to help as necessary; what if a good house just 
gets small? (no behavior and no physical problems) should we let them 
fade to zero or should we help them?
- Documenting of best practices.  Belief in need of 5-10 new houses 
for women and/or co-ed groups to sustain the system.  Need large 
capital campaign to support that.

* List of houses that have had successes that can serve as advisors 
to other groups?  (successfully gotten an IRDF loan, completed 
renovation, successful fundrive, cleaned house)
* List of structure as noted above.

- Houses that have trouble because the students are allowed to do 
everything - one house the students feel that they do things like 
electrical wiring themselves.  They found little that was dangerous, 
but lots that was illegal.  We cannot continue to allow students to 
manage the physical plants.
Students don't know that if one person tells them "nothing can be 
done" they should go on and find someone who can fix the problem.
In Boston, if a rental unit doesn't have screens, the tenants don't 
have to pay rent - we should be aware of this.
- These groups are legal entities which have to file paperwork with 
the Commonwealth, perhaps we should require copies of that paperwork 
to come here.
- Can we put together a House Corps for Dummies handbook?  Including 
list of resources on various topics - people who have lived through 
various issues.
- We need information on what is the norm for house corps so we can 
know when we are not functioning to par.  Help houses to know that 
everything is not great, sometimes its not obvious.
- David Rodgers knows what's going on in every house, he knows who's 
in good shape and who isn't.  We should ask him for information on 
which chapters need help and where we can intervene.
- Survey that helps us indicate what are the signs of a house that is 
going downhill?  Seconds going to David for knowledge.  Form SWAT 
teams that could go talk to actives & house corps, either at the 
front end of problems, looking at structural, social, etc.

David has concerns about taking resources from House Corps that need 
them and redirecting those resources to other houses, are you hurting 
your own house to do that?  What about the creation of standards so 
people can help themselves?

We need a follow-up activity to this discussion, the Board could 
perhaps appoint a committee to flush out the ideas discussed here.


ACCOUNTING 101
Accounting 101 was very successful.  Plan to have House Manger 101 
next year.  Will ask the undergrads to do surveys of their 
infrastructure as part of the class.  Will result in students coming 
to House Corps for money & repairs.

INSPECTION UPDATE
Frank Council has updates on the exact status of the houses with 
regards to fire inspections.  Would like to pull together a group to 
review some of the suggestions and proposals.  We have an inspection 
grid of what documents MIT has on file and which may be in process. 
The FSILG Office can keep a copy of current documents in your file so 
it is available if you need the document.  They also suggest you keep 
copies of these documents near your front door. Inspectors tend to 
talk to the first person who opens the door - students have a habit 
of telling them they don't know rather than finding the person who 
knows, this causes problems with inspectors.

Grid was passed around - grey - they have everything on file, gaps 
could be in process or somewhere other than Frank's hands.

Would be useful to have inspectional services as an option on the 
Coop.  They are hoping to have that in place for the fall.

IFC RUSH
Working to improve the system for everyone, will be moving rush to 
the first weekend after classes start.  They are getting a lot of 
pressure to move rush to IAP for the future.  The IFC needs alum 
voices to be heard, please talk to your undergraduates about this, 
talk to MIT about this.  The Administration talks to the House 
Masters, Faculty, but they don't seem to be hearing from alums/House 
Corporations.  This is not coming from the FSILG Office, but from 
above Dean Bennedict.

FSILG DONORS
Now listed in the Alumni Association Annual Report.

COMMITTEE TO HIRE MIT PRESIDENT
Members of the Coorporation & others involved in the hiring of Vest, 
Tom Holtey has a list of their living group affiliations.  This will 
not be circulated in email, please see him if you'd like to know if 
there is anyone from your house.


Houses in Attendance:
Epsilon Theta
Fenway
Betas
AEPi
FSILG Office
Sigma Chi
PKT (National Officer)
IFC President
PKS
DKE
Chi Phi
ACO
Alum Association
Theta Chi
KAT
TDC
Student Life Programs
PBE
Student House
Phi Delta Theta
PBE
FSILG Coop
Sigma Phi epsilon
Pika
Phi Sig
Phi Delta Theta
FSILG Task Force
Zeta Psi
SAE
ADP