[883] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: The state of dining II
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Peter M Finin)
Thu Oct 4 13:37:12 2001
Message-ID: <200110041715.NAA07947@biohazard-cafe.mit.edu>
Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2001 13:15:54 -0400
Reply-To: "Documentation at http://web.mit.edu/beland/talk/talk.html"
<MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU>, Peter M Finin <pfinin@MIT.EDU>
From: Peter M Finin <pfinin@MIT.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 04 Oct 2001 11:00:38 EDT."
<4.3.2.7.2.20011004101935.00d3dbd0@hesiod>
Brad Ito sez:
|> So it seems that some significant progress has been made in getting the
|> pertinent administrators to back up and collaboratively come up with a
|> better plan. Furthermore, unlike previous similar situations (RSSC and
|> FoC), the decision we don't like isn't being offered as a necessary design
|> parameter. That is, there's a chance that, given a concerted effort, we as
|> students can come up with a much more effective design of the MIT Dining
|> System. This is a "Good Thing" (tm). Bravo to those who helped to raise
|> sufficient fuss to start some real change.
This is good.
|> Yet temper that anger with some of the intelligence that brought you
|> here. The phase for merely the exhibition of outrage has passed. They
|> know we are upset, they know lots of us are upset, and they have been
|> forced to the negotiations table. Further escalating the protests to the
|> level of shutting down Athena (as has been suggested) or similar acts is
|> now an inefficient use of resources.
This is where you don't get the key point. The phase more
exhibition of outrage _regarding the dining plan_ has passed. We've
moved into the phase of making sure this kind of shit doesn't keep
happening.
The MIT Administration comes out with a big plan that profoundly
affects student life, and is hated by all students, at least once or
twice a year. We manage to fight off some of the proposals, but we
loose on most of them. As long as we only ever respond to the
individual proposals, they will keep coming up with more, and we'll
keep getting shafted more and more. Spending all of our resources on
each individual plan, while ignoring the larger issue of why these
keep coming up, is a far more inefficient use of resources.
What we need to do is escalate the protests, and make sure that the
admins know why. We escalate the protests because, which they
listened to reason this time, they usually don't. We escalate the
protests to let them know that they way the system works has got to
change, so that the tide if shitty proposals will stop. This means a
lot of MIT students will need to get involved, and will need to be
more extreme than they have in the past. Petitions, committees and
well thought out arguments won't get the admins to change the
structure of MIT's administration in any meaningful way.
|> Brad Ito
-Peter Finin
