[864] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: Discuss Mandatory Dining at the UA Town Hall Meeting Tonight
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Anil K. Varghese)
Wed Oct 3 23:27:06 2001
Message-ID: <200110040324.XAA21215@m1-142-21.mit.edu>
Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2001 23:24:09 -0400
Reply-To: "Documentation at http://web.mit.edu/beland/talk/talk.html"
<MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU>, "Anil K. Varghese" <akvar@MIT.EDU>
From: "Anil K. Varghese" <akvar@MIT.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 03 Oct 2001 21:54:27 EDT."
<200110040154.VAA25565@all-night-tool.mit.edu>
About making the list of admins to heckle... why bother. Just do it to
anyone you know to be an admin. It's not worth trying to pick out the few
who are good.
This direct venting of anger and venom strikes a chord with me. I like the
idea of telling admins how much they suck and just letting it all out of my
system in a way that satisfies my need to hurt somebody (excepting physical
hurt, unless it was a sparring session. Think of it, me and Chuck Vest
in the ring. Sure, he's got a few inches on me, but I can take him.)
What these admins don't have enough of is feedback. They need more feedback.
They talk about getting input, which the student government types always
manage to provide some of, but we're never giving them the full feedback that
they need.
I know there are plenty of people out there with as much venom as Peter, if
not more, for all the crap MIT's been doing. I've got some myself. These
admin types have to be human. And that means that there's some basic, internal
emotion inside of them that lights up every time a student goes up to one of
them and tells them in no uncertain terms how much they dislike them
"fuckwads". Guaranteed to make them feel uncomfortable. And they, like most
people, don't like being uncomfortable.
The problem is, like Niko says, traditional input is easy to ignore and only
makes the most sensitive of admins uncomfortable. Most of these guys won't
flinch at doing something students don't want, if they think it's a good idea.
Protest e-mails and petitions are way too impersonal to get at an admin's gut.
But if you call them an "asshole" and say "you suck for doing what you did",
(bonus points for doing it in their office or in front of their staff)
you'll get past their intellect and start hitting them in their emotions.
You gotta get up close and make it personal.
You get a couple of dozen people who do this to a lot of those guys in the
upper administration and you can have a serious effect. I'm talking about
degrading their resolve to do what they're doing, and even having some of
the ones with a soul to start questioning themselves.
If you're angry at the administration, clench your fists now and resolve
yourself to let some admins experience some of that anger. Don't be shy.
They need to know. The worst that can happen is that they come to hate
students and start going out of their way to screw students over. But that's
not much of a change from how things are now. If we do it right, we can give
the more moderate protesters the edge they need to convince admins to change
their ways.
-Anil Varghese
PS Stay tuned for my one-on-one matchup with Vest...
} Here are a few ideas:
}
} We can compose a list of administrators with a history of fucking
} students over, and circulate their names and pictures to all
} undergrads at MIT, along with a description of what they've done.
} Everytime one of us sees these administrators in the hallway, in an
} elevator, on the street, in a restaurant in Boston, or wherever, we
} need to tell the something like, "Hey, fuckwad, you are a maggot
} ridden sack of shit. You are ruining MIT. You are personally
} responsible for ruining this school, your worthless, scum-sucking
} whore."
}
} We can invade the offices of whichever adminstrators most deserve
} our ire, and refuse to let them in for days on end. This worked
} fairly well for the Harvard living wage folks.
}
} We can surround Chuck Vest's house one afternoon, and refuse to let
} him back in for several days. For administrators who don't live so
} conveniently close to campus, we can surround their car and refuse to
} let them drive home.
}
} We can take the list of admitted prefrosh, come April (or whenever
} they release it), and contact each and every prefrosh on there and try
} to convince them that MIT is a horrible school, and that they should
} go to Harvard or something.
}
} We can wait until the next time MIT has a bunch of multi-millionaire
} alumns gathered in some classroom to try to squeeze them for
} donations, and then burst into the room, en masse, ranting about how
} the MIT administration is fucking over the students and running the
} school into the ground, and tell them to not donate any money at all.
}
} -Peter Finin
