[918] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: some thoughts
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Grant Gould)
Fri Oct 5 15:23:08 2001
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Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2001 15:08:51 -0400
Reply-To: "Documentation at http://web.mit.edu/beland/talk/talk.html"
<MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU>, Grant Gould <ggould@alum.mit.edu>
From: Grant Gould <ggould@alum.mit.edu>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <v04020a01b7e3a707a3f1@[18.246.1.161]>
First, thank you, Dean Randolph, for a much needed perspective.
Second, of course, this being mit-talk, I'm going to disagree with you
or at least ask for elaboration on almost all of your points.
> 2. b. There is a myth that the administration thinks it does not
> have to work with students because they will graduate in four or
> fewer years. Wish we did think that way since it would make things
> simpler if not more successful, but we do not and you do not
> (graduate in four years; some stay for decades). We know that.
Of course, this rather raises the question, "if the administration
does not think it doesn't have to work with students for this reason,
what is the reason that the administration thinks that it does not
have to work with students?" You have eliminated one reason, but not
explained the phenomenon. Or do you mean that you think that the
administration does think it needs to work with students?
Moreover, or perhaps reinforcing your "the administration does not
speak with one voice" point, your statement more or less contradicts
President Vest's characterization of student culture as "transitory"
that got a lot of riled up a while back.
> c. The administration is often deceived by the myth of
> student "buy in" to shared conclusions. Simply put this is the
> notion that things talked about two/three years ago will be
> remembered today.
I'm not quite sure which side you're accusing of short memories here
-- in my experience it is the administration that has little memory.
It is for example the administration that seems to have forgotten the
Dining Report of a couple of years ago, and the students who are
standing by it.
> There will always be the need to explain and justify and
> modify. Conclusions in life are always (often?) tenative. There is
> no place that is more true than student life. So the appropriate
> response to administrative actions is not: "here we go again,
> screwed over." But "Here we go; it is our chance to affect the
> process." You should ask questions and we should have to
> explain. That is the way it works.
Um, you seem to be saying that the students should approach every
conflict with the administration naive of all the previous ones. But
that's not at all true -- we need to learn the techniques (stacking
committees, making decisions right before finals, talking to ten
students and calling it "community input," floating an idea in one
forum and then telling another that the first approved it, etc.) of
negotiation. In fact, the usual student reaction is neither of those
that you mention. It's more often, "yikes, they're about to screw us
over again, maybe this time it's not too late to stop them." Students
want to affect the process, but are made cynical by the outcome of
previous processes.
Conclusions in life are always tentative, but it is by repeated
experience that we gain confidence in them. Repeated experience in
the case of student experience of administrative policy-making has
been quite consistant. If we are not at the point of being able to
draw firm conclusions by now, how many more times must it be?
The essential problem in the end, though, is power. The negotiation
space, means, participants, and process are all defined in every case
by the administration. When one side is deciding the process, the
deck cannot help but be stacked against the other side. If the
administration-defined process does not yield acceptable results to
the administration, they can simply ignore it; if it does not yield
acceptable results to the students, we have no recourse but "throwing
sand in the gears."
> d. There is the myth that we will all agree on outcomes,
> i.e. every conclusion will be acceptable to all. Now you know this
> is not true (e.g. frosh on campus); this is a community and
> decisions always rankle some and the some are not just students. We
> work hard to get good outcomes and then live with the results and
> modify them as they prove fallible.
This is certainly true. And yet, it seems to me that on the big
issues the administration generally wins, whereas when students win,
it is only on small issues. Again, I suspect that it is because the
processes that the administration defines tend to be of the
committee-and-concensus form more comfortable to managers and
administrators than the estimate-test-and-commit form more comfortable
to engineers (or engineers-in-training).
Note that when students have won -- the "dot" for instance -- it has
been by taking a non-negotiating stand. Committee negotiation is a
skill of the administration, and a process that relies on committee
negotiation is one which is biased toward the administration. If our
administrators are unaware that the processes they define stack the
deck in their favor, they are clumsy but blameless; if they are aware,
and intend it, they are clever but in my view morally questionable.
> e. There is the myth that the best tactics are those that
> stop the process. Sand thrown in gears gets ground up; those who
> change the gears change the outcome.
Tell us, then, how we change out of "administration makes policy"
gear. It seems to me that "change the gears" is a polite way of
saying, "you're limited to what's in the gearbox." But life is not a
transmission -- innovative solutions are not merely possible but
required.
The "sand in the gears" attitude comes from a feeling that the gearbox
needs to be replaced -- the manufacturer seems to have left out
"neutral" and "reverse", and the administration is holding the
steering wheel.
> Talk is easy and the process of involvement takes time; I know that
> and we all do not have enough time--except for some of you who seem
> to major in writing on this list--but change is the nature of the
> universe and we are going to change here at MIT. Always have,
> always will. The question is always "How is change mediated?" That
> needs to be a communal activity.
I agree entirely. "How ought change to be mediated" is certainly the
larger question. What is unclear, however, is how students can take
power over answering that question. The answer now seems to be,
"however the relevant administrator decides it ought to be." But
students are tiring of always having the terms of debate laid out by
the administration, the topics of debate chosen by the administration,
and the conclusions subject to veto by the administration.
As engineers, taking a system view, I think that students are very
cognizant of the danger of having those people responsible for
administering policy also have control over making it. That creates a
positive feedback loop, and the question that concerns me most is,
"how do we force a separation between those who make policy and those
who administer it." As long as the policy debate is conducted in the
methods and on the terms of the administration, that feedback loop
will exist.
--Grant Gould
