Minutes of the MIT Dormitory Council meeting of October 30, 2008 In attendance were: James Torres, DormCon president, BC Yi Huang, Next president Karl Wolff, W1 interim president Aziz Albahar, Baker president Keri Garel, Senior House president Michael Poon, DormCon tresurer, Random Kristen Felch, MacGregor president Brittany Holland-Marcus, DormCon dining chair, proxy for Simmons James Ostrowski, DormCon dining chair Vinayak Ranade, DormCon risk management chair, East Campus president Sidra Khan, McCormick president Chris Palmer, DormCon housing chair, MacGregor Geoffrey Thomas, DormCon secretary, Next Kip Landergren, DormCon JudComm chair, BC president Preeya Phadnis, DormCon EVP, Random president Guest: Noah Jessop, Undergraduate Association President Updates: W1 James: As I'm sure you've all heard, W1 has been postponed. The meeting where Phil Clay told Noah, me, etc. told us didn't seem like they were happy about it either, but they had a legitimate financial problem. Noah: They called the Engagement Committee together in the morning, and said, "We have a problem, what do you think we should do? ... How about we postpone W1?" And after I left I went to my course 15 managerial psychology class and they taught us about this concept called "problem sharing", and I thought 'This sounds familiar...' Chris: At the HSG meeting, I asked who really decided to cut it, and they didn't know. They said "We all decided, as a group." James: Now we have this problem, and the Founders Group. Does this allow us to get more student input regarding W1? Karl: I can address that. Chris Colombo and Steve Lerman told the Phoenix Group that evening, and apparently they were impressed by our response (I'm not quite sure why... because we didn't freak out?). Right now we're in a pretty good position and we'll be looking at the architectural issues. It's really a nice breathing opportunity, to take things a little bit slower and make changes. Yi: Are you staying as a founders' group in NW35? Karl: The freshmen who are currently in the Phoenix Group are guaranteed to remain in that group until they graduate. Housing is a little more iffy but Lerman and the housemaster say there's no immediate plans. Noah: I spoke to Chris Colombo this morning. He said the only reason they'd kick you out of NW35 is if there's no concrete plans, and the founders' group would just shrink as people graduate. James O.: Is there a chance you might get expanded at some point? Karl: Several years in the future. Vinayak: The premise under which the founders' group was made is that there's this community who will be the seed group. If W1 is postponed until all of you guys graduate, What's the point of having these people? Karl: That's a good point. Ideally they'd figure things out to the point where the delay is minimized. But they said in order for the building being done and ready for living in there, they'd have to sign the contract the week they told us about the postponement. So even in the most opportune case, construction jobs have been delayed, so it will be a couple of years. But it's nice -- instead of just showing up at a meeting and voting on what the culture will be, it can grow. James T.: Are you going to continue to fill with freshmen? Karl: Yes. They'll have minutes of our meetings. Vinayak: I don't know if institutional memory will go that far. Do we here ever look at Dormcon minutes, for instance? Keri: That might be just because there are other things we look at besides minutes. Geoff: Maybe now is a time to force things into policies such that they can't be reneged in the future. Karl: We're working on Dining. The way we do now is we pay $600/year and we get AYCTE. It averages out to $8/schoolnight, but the grad students pay $8 per meal when they want to eat with no plan. Aziz: Didn't Simmons have that? Brittany: They tried to. They said they would keep preferred dining costs the same for the next term, but that worried us. Blue Ribbon James T.: Blue Ribbon had their meeting last night. We have the possibility of actually making some progress. We're finally kind of done starting at the large packet of data that they gave us. They actually have a Stellar site, and there was a "homework" assignment where you wrote down what in your opinion the dining plan would be. They compiled the results anonymously and summarized them and looked for general themes. Vinayak: I thought you were gathering data on other students' opinions...? James: Yes. The assignment was based on data, come up with a plan supported with data. What is now suggested now by Martin Holmes is we have a retreat where we sit down for seven hours and crank out a plan. What ended up happening yesterday is we talked about too many things and no progress was made. Although some good things were said, some of the discussions were productive, they didn't go anywhere because the discussion was too open. Brittany: I can't believe there would be some consensus on dining. James: There was definite disagreement, but one of the broad themes were choices, the ability to choose rather than having a dining option forced among you, choose a menu... the specifics of those choices were disputed and that's what we're working on now. Chris: ...Is anyone _against_ choice? James: We're deciding what choices. What plans, what menus... Risk Management Vinayak: The meeting that happened was for online party registration-- Kip: WOO! Vinayak: Everything about it sucks. Apparently we went through the exact same process last year in getting the online system approved by the Campus Police. James T.: It kind of half got approved last year, but there were personnel changes, and now we're in contact with the new person and they're taking it to their new superiors. Vinayak: At this rate there's no way it will get done in the next 6 months. Brittany: Maybe while we're getting it done, you can push back on the deadlines? Move them closer? Kip: Basically they're an organization who works entirely on paper. Vinayak: The committee is just me, James, and Danny. But the people the three of us talk to keep changing. Judcomm: Kip: Dave Kennedy was supposed to be at this meeting, but he couldn't make it. i3: James T.: We should probably get an i3 chair before IAP. Chris: I met with Robin Smedick and we talked about i3. Every single dorm made a new video last year. However, it's a hard job for the i3 Coordinator, and it's a backlog for them, and the individual dorms have produced really funny videos that have delivered zero real information for people. Well, that is somewhat the point, that it presents culture to people. But last year one thing was to do a walkthrough ... did anyone do that? [EC says yes] We could continue as previous, or get an i3 Coordinator who gets the videos from the dorms but also makes sure there are slideshows about what the rooms look like. Vinayak: Isn't this what REX is for? Chris: Kind of, but we get a complaint that people don't know much about the dorms for their temp rooming. James: What are people complaining about that they don't know? Chris: The size of the room. The idea Robin had was some sort of diagram with room size... A MacGregor single could be the size of a suit case or golf cart or tanker going by the pictures on the website. Noah: floorplans.mit.edu. Chris: If you go to UConn's housing website, they have 3D panoramas of rooms. Preeya: Yes, but our housing system is substantially different. The key factor in housing is not how nice the rooms are. Noah: The other thing if you do a 3d panorama of Simmons... they'll complain "Why is my wall slanted?" Chris: An average room? Maybe there isn't one. Chris: They want to make it a major facet to import real information and not new videos. Vinayak: If we do that, _none_ of the dorms will make videos... Chris: If we make it a 2-minute video, they can both fit on the DVD. [someone]: Can we keep the existing video requirements and add more? Chris: Well, that's a lot of work. We're asking for the existing work, which is already hard enough to get by the deadline, and more. Preeya: If all they care is the size of the room, can't they get the numbers online? Keri: This year our frosh were obsessive and did look online. James T.: This should be done in the Guide to Residences. Can we make the i3 Chair force dorms to update the Guide? Chris: Well, they can force them to do so if they want an i3 video... James T.: I think that's completely fair. If they don't properly update the Guide, they don't get an i3. [murmurs of consensus] Chris: so they're also updating desk. They're getting a system like in Baker to every dorm... But they're contracting to some outside company. [murmurs of unhappiness] Geoffrey: *explodes, something about trusting student coders and open-source APIs* Noah: It's joing to integrate with the checkin/checkouts from dorms. Chris: Also the card systems. Chris: I've been trying to convince Robin and Karen to pay a student to update the website... They're considering getting some company to do it for 4 million dollars. Chris: I think they're concerned about the student who wrote it graduating and nobody knowing how to do it. Dormcon Retreat James T.: When was it last year? OK, end of IAP. Most new presidents will be elected by then. Discussion James T.: Campaign for Students... the Lobby 7 one. So as you may know there were six students that met with Dean Colombo. He supposedly will bring up their points at the Task Force on Student Engagement. I want to get your opinion on this situation. Brittany: I don't see them as taking over our role. They're demonstrating, we go and do the discussions. Vinayak: Susan Hockfield is having a forum at UA Senate on Monday at 7. You should tell your house's residents to go.