[249] in UA Exec
Re: Summer Housing
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mike Bennie)
Thu Feb 25 20:21:17 2010
Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:21:10 -0500
From: Mike Bennie <mbennie@MIT.EDU>
To: Ashley Nash <ashnash@mit.edu>
CC: ua-exec@mit.edu, UA Senate <ua-senate@mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <2a9ffd211002251522r61c926c5x33fd26118382e918@mail.gmail.com>
The Housing Strategy Group (HSG) is currently addressing this issue. The
undergraduate student representatives on that committee are Aziz Albahar
(DormCon President), Lyla Fischer (DormCon Vice President), and myself.
HSG has scheduled weekly meetings for the rest of the term and Aziz,
Lyla, and I have met (and will continue to meet) with Residential Life
outside of HSG to work out even more of the details.
We are currently discussing which dorms will be kept open and which ones
will be closed. This is a very complicated process because some dorms
are scheduled for renovations, some dorms already have summer programs
or conferences booked (RSI, MITES, WTP, Interphase, etc.), and some
dorms have a significantly greater number of students that choose to
stick around for the summer. The number of open dorms is going to be
based on the number of students that stay for the summer. We have been
discussing issues such as storage, transportation of students'
belongings across campus if they need to move, and the number of
dorms/which dorms are open. It seems very likely that there will be a
system to allow people to block together, as both students and the
administration see this as a positive feature of summer housing.
We had not discussed the issue of smoking, but that is certainly
something I will bring to the table next week. Thanks for bringing that
up. To the other members of Senate: I hope we will have a full
discussion on this topic on Monday evening so that details, like the
ones Ashley has brought forward tonight, can be voiced in these summer
housing meetings.
As for a time line, we are trying to get information out as soon as we
can, but we've only had one HSG meeting so far this semester. Hopefully,
we will have a better picture of things after the second meeting (March 8).
Changes to the cultural aspects of the dorm are non-negotiable. Murals
and any other unique aspects of the dorms that are essential to a common
experience must be preserved. I can't stress the importance of this
issue enough.
To address Hawkin's point: I thought the same thing you did about how
Senior House is unlikely to be rented out, but apparently when the
administration rents these buildings out, it does so to people our age
too. These aren't just business conferences and Senior House has air
conditioning.
-Mike
Ashley Nash wrote:
> Do we have any time line for when they will decide and when they will
> announce which dorms will be open for summer and which ones will be
> closed?
>
> If not, is there anything we can do to try to encourage them to keep
> more dorms open, or at least let the dorm residents stick together
> wherever they end up?
>
> Senior House has a culture that thrives all year round, and we use the
> summer to host barbecues in the courtyard and repaint our rooms. We
> like watching the fireworks from the courtyard on the 4th of July, and
> we don't want to move, especially to a place where we can't smoke
> cigarettes. Have they thought about the ramifications of moving a
> bunch of smokers into a non-smoking dorm (which is most of the dorms
> on campus)?
>
> Also, have they considered leaving all (or at least most) of the dorms
> open and renting out a portion of each house, like the 1st or the 1st
> and 2nd floors. We rent out a floor of our house every year anyway,
> and I want to know if all of the dorms have been doing this, and if
> not, could we try it?
>
> A lot of my residents are concerned about whether or not they will be
> able to live in Senior House for the summer. They are concerned that
> if Senior House is rented out, that the administration will try to
> stop Senior House from painting murals, which is what they did when
> Senior House was renovated in 1996. They are afraid that the
> administration will cater to the summer tenants and not the residents.
>
> We are fine with sharing our house with tenants. They usually stay
> out all day and use Senior House to sleep and do laundry. We just
> don't want to be replaced by them.
>
> Ashley Nash
> Senator of Senior House
