Anyone who walks the Infinite Corridor near the turn of an hour on a day when classes are in session at MIT has to be impressed. First of all, if you do not keep moving you are likely to get run over, as large numbers of students are hurrying to their next classes! Second, it becomes immediately obvious that we have an extraordinarily diverse group of students, especially undergraduates. This is a wonderful success story. During the past two decades we have greatly increased the racial, ethnic, and gender diversity of our undergraduates while at the same time, by any quantitative measure we have, maintaining the high academic standards which characterize MIT Admissions and an MIT education. This is truly an accomplishment of which we can all be very proud.

However, some of us have become increasingly concerned that we may not be taking full advantage of the wonderful educational opportunity which this diverse student population offers. Many people have noticed that, while our student population is diverse in general, students very often live in largely segregated local situations. Some of our students appear not to interact significantly with people from diverse backgrounds except during scheduled class time. Because MIT has traditionally offered students the opportunity to choose where they live from the time they arrive as first-year students, students often will never live in a local situation which reflects the rich diversity which characterizes the class in general. Recent changes in housing assignment procedures have not changed this feature of our system. As a result, we may well be losing an important educational opportunity for our students. The opportunity to be in an intense living and learning community with bright people from very different backgrounds and perspectives in some ways defines a successful university experience.

I am not naive about the conflicting goals at issue here. Many of our students speak passionately about the importance of having a comfortable and supportive living environment to help them deal with the challenges of the academic side of MIT. It is clear that we must not ignore the importance of providing this type of support for students. We must balance the goal of providing a supportive environment for students with the goal of challenging them academically and culturally. While each of us may come to somewhat different opinions on this, my sense is that we are not balanced properly at the present time. I believe we must find ways to take more advantage of the educational opportunities offered by our wonderfully diverse student population. Based on my experience in a few talks on this subject, it is clear that this will be a difficult discussion, with strong opinions expressed. But I believe it is an important enough issue that we must engage it. We owe it to ourselves, and especially to our students.