[202] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: Recent Discussions
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (SMITH)
Wed Apr 25 05:24:13 2001
Message-Id: <200104250923.FAA24721@quickstation-2.mit.edu>
To: Brad Ito <bito@MIT.EDU>, mit-talk@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 25 Apr 2001 04:20:44 EDT."
<4.3.2.7.2.20010425034529.00bff780@hesiod>
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Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 05:23:45 -0400
From: SMITH <cdsmith@MIT.EDU>
>What I was reading for was more discussion relating to activism at MIT. I
>mean, here's this perfectly good example of students getting their views
>aired only just up the river. Maybe something could possibly be learned
>from it. I know MIT is not Harvard. But does that have to be a reason
>why, for example, the sit-ins to protest FoC made hardly any real
>difference at all?
>
>Activism at MIT seems to be made up of policy writers, email-list flamers,
>some outside activist groups, and not enough people. There have been some
>successes, I suppose things could be far worse. Then again, we've not had
>a mass media-covered, discussion-provoking event that I've heard of. And
>that's kinda sad.
I've seen four really inspiring examples of public activism in my time here.
Two were essentially initiated and executed by residents of Senior House and
EC; the other two were the IFC demonstration of fall '99 and the original
Unified Student Response to the RSSC proposal. In each of these cases, one
key was exceptional leadership and teamwork. The leaders in each instance
weren't simply willing to sacrifice their own time and effort; they were
able to do "what was necessary" to get others to do so as well. I think
we've got a ton of leaders at this school, all of whom would be willing to
sacrifice for a cause at significant personal cost. What we don't have is a
lot of people capable of getting others to sacrifice. This is a function of
the fact that there is a strong, pervasive individualistic ethos, and that
there aren't very many "social unifiers" here that would allow us to get past
that
instinctive individualism.
MIT-TALK was intended to be such a social unifier; it's a virtual townhall.
It's
only been in existence for about 2.5 years. I think that as people continue to
discuss, flame, and strategize on this list, we are building toward a critical
moment when campus leaders and activists will be familiar enough and trusting
enough of one another that they will be able and willing to coalesce and
jointly sacrifice to stop whatever "evil" that may pose a threat to
undergraduates' livelihoods.
Or maybe not.
-chris
