[998] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: Fwd: The Crowding Problem
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Z Maze)
Tue Jan 15 14:53:40 2002
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Message-ID: <y683d17xuh6.fsf@no-knife.mit.edu>
Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 14:52:21 -0500
From: David Z Maze <dmaze@MIT.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <jvpy9iz8mb3.fsf@woodcarver.kendall.akamai.com> (Brian Sniffen's
message of "Tue, 15 Jan 2002 14:08:00 -0500")
Brian Sniffen <bts@AKAMAI.COM> writes:
> It appears that Chancellor Clay has -- intentionally or not -- left
> out an option: deny housing to some upperclass undergraduates. If
> it's really only a few hundred, that could be accomplished with a
> simple lottery -- and in the future, that lottery could be done
> *freshman* year, so students can plan effectively.
One of my larger fears, even worse than "half of the FSILG system
dies", is that the current trend in housing will lead to this
situation. MIT seems to be fairly unusual in that undergraduates are
basically guaranteed four years of housing, and stay in the same
place. One of my best friends went to UCLA; there, only two years of
housing are guaranteed, though it's frequently possible to stay a
third year if you're on Dormcom-equivalent. The result is that
there's basically no social continuity in the dorms the way there is
at MIT, and the available housing near campus is disproportionately
expensive.
Evicting upperclassmen from dorms, really, seems like pretty much the
worst thing that could happen to the MIT housing system. I guess if
the admins really were set on this as their end goal, they could
consider it, but it would do a good job of failing to Build Community
(TM).
--
David Maze dmaze@mit.edu http://www.mit.edu/~dmaze/
"Theoretical politics is interesting. Politicking should be illegal."
-- Abra Mitchell
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