[4127] in Depressing_Thoughts
Re: assimilation
sethg@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (sethg@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Mon Nov 1 12:16:36 1993
Speaking as someone who was committed, er, started taking classes here
in fall '86, I make two observations:
(1) Most MIT students don't seem to care what the Administration does
*until* there is a substantial threat to their quality of life staring
them directly in the face. At this point, they will frequently make a
big nuisance of themselves to the administration, which sometimes makes
the Deans cancel their plans to eliminate IAP, or eliminate 2nd-term
freshman P/F, or eliminate some other ridiculous plan. But sometimes,
they go through with the plan anyway, and four years later it's just
another part of the status quo.
(2) MIT, excluding Lincoln Labs, is an institution with a 500-million-dollar
budget, ten thousand students, about ten thousand employees, and influential
kibitzers all over the world. When you're a student with a 50-unit course
load, a part-time job for ten hours a week, a circle of acquaintances that
has a fair share of manic-depressives, borderline suicides, testosterone-
poisoned men, and people with just plain shoddy social skills, and
suite-mates who will not wash a dish until the _Star Trek_ food synthesizer
gets invented ... under these circumstances, pushing this institution
around is damn hard.
(3) There *have* been some substantial changes in MIT policy over the past
few years, and student activists deserve part of the credit. For example,
MIT is building a permanent site for the Cambridge and Somerville Program
for Alcohol Rehabilitation; a few years back, when the Short Fat Man With
No Neck was running MIT, activists working on behalf of the homeless were
afraid that MIT would kick CASPAR out.
