[1189] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
A note on taking credit
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Matt Cain)
Thu Mar 14 13:26:57 2002
Message-ID: <200203141822.NAA01437@m56-129-17.mit.edu>
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 13:22:49 -0500
From: Matt Cain <mcain@MIT.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
I'd like to throw in some perspective on the idea of claiming
responsibility for changes and such. As the leader of another student
government, I've been involved in a lot of the discussions mentioned in
Peter's e-mail and elsewhere. It is rare for any major change to come
about without a lot of input and work from a lot of sides. Some of it is
visible and some of it is not.
To take dining as an example, there were a lot of groups that worked
behind the scenes. I don't wish to slight the work of Vikash Mansinghka,
but his petition was not the sole reason for the change. There were a
number of meetings with a number of administrators. The students
involved came mainly form DormCon and the UA, but there were also some
individual students that helped. No one individual was specifically
responsible for the reversal, but certainly the UA Committee on Student
Life had more of a role in it than most of the people on this list. Even
now, there's still dining work going on. There are individual students
working on the committee, but they're there under the auspices of
DormCon and the UA and they get their bargaining power from those
groups. Individuals do all of the work for these groups, but what is a
group if not a collection of individuals with a common goal?
Change isn't made in a vacuum, but it's not made in public always. The
unsung role of student government leaders is their job as liaisons with
the administration. I spend at least 10-12 hours a week in meetings with
various groups giving the perspective of 'the dorms'. I know Jaime
spends more time than I representing 'the undergraduates'. One
conversation between the CAP and a dean can enact more change than a
hundred bitchy e-mails on mit-talk.
The student governments represent the interests of the students to the
administration. The student governments work to diffuse situations
before they become problems. These positions aren't power trips (there's
not that much power). They aren't resume' builders (no one
cares). They're jobs we do because, for reasons that always escape me
when I read the drivel that comes over this list, we care about the
student body and making life here suck less.
If you don't feel you're being represented e-mail one of the addresses
below and tell them how to represent you:
ua@mit.edu
dormcon-exec@mit.edu
ifc-exec@mit.edu
panhel-exec@mit.edu
Sincerely,
Matt Cain
Dormitory Council President
mcain@mit.edu
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Documentation on the use of the mailing lists mit-talk, all-talk,
mit-news, housing-talk, and the mit-talk Zephyr class is available at:
http://web.mit.edu/institvte/talk/
