Dormcon GBM Minutes
Date: December 2, 2021
Time: 7pm eastern
Location: New Vassar First Floor Lounge
Food: Pork and veggie buns
Elections! run by Alan yay
[insert alan spiel about how elections work. that was so fast alan i can’t keep up]
We’ll start with i3 chair. [insert summary of i3/rac position]. Currently nominations include Marco. Is Marco here? [silence] does anyone have nominations?
shuli: i nominate jordan
jordan: i accept.
jordan: i nominate you two, who I’ve never seen before and don’t know the names of.
the two people: we do. Mateo and Tamid.
tamid: i nominate you back [jordan]
jordan: i decline.
jordan: i motion to close.
let’s gather the candidates in the center.
alan: each of you will have 60 seconds to discuss your platform.
jordan: hi i’m jordan. i live in ec. i think i would be a good fit for this position because i’m chair of bad ideas weekend and that’s communication between students and admin and getting things approved and i would be able to be a good bridge between those two groups
tamid: hi everyone i’m tamid. i’m the vp at new vassar. after hearing jordan’s platform i would like to step down.
mateo: hi i’m mateo serving in the nv house govt. i think i would be a good candidate because i’m a good planner and i like to stick to plans. generally i think communication is important.
questions
mitali: did you watch the i3 videos and how did that influence your decision
jordan: i did watch the i3 videos and i watched several years to see the trends across the years and the different themes.
mateo: i also watched them but just one year. it was a really good way to see what each dorm was like
sarah: any interactions with admin you’ve had so far?
jordan: i’m chair of bad ideas weekend. i haven’t had much interactions yet but my role will be interfacing with ehs and students and getting things approved.
mateo: i have not had any experience.
branden: how familiar are you with the position of rac and how would you best support them
jordan: i don’t know specifically
mateo: i have a general idea but i don’t know specifics
shuli: other than i3/rac are there other things in dormcon that you would be interested in being involved in
both: idk
shuli: maybe other things related to dorms?
mateo: i generally care a lot about house government. being able to speak up and having conversations with figures like admin about the way we live is very important.
jordan: one of the things that makes mit unique is the strength in dorm culture and that’s one of the things i care most about
zawad: how are your skills with listening to concerns of people that you would have to use in talking about i3 videos
meghana: for example last year next house i3 videos had red solo cups and they had to be changed to gray solo cups that said h2o
jordan: understanding from both sides the reasons behind the concerns. if the i3 chair thinks it’s important
mateo: i have had an experience where i had to communicate to a team why we had to something that was out of our control. i think i can understand both perspectives at the same time
caragay: are any of you interested in cpw/rex chair
both: no
jordan: what are your favorite colors?
both: blue
[candidates leave. discussion of candidates]
cpw/rex chairs! [summary of responsibilities]
this year’s cpw is tentatively planning to be in person
olivia is here!
fatima is here!
[nominations…none]
one minute
fatima: hello im fatima i live in next house. next was not on my list when thinking of dorms. i went to a couple of cpw events and it became my first choice. i went to the rex events and it made me realize that next was where i want to be. cpw and rex both influenced my decision a lot and i want dorms to be able to represent culture.
olivia: hi im olivia im a freshman and i live in new vassar. cpw definitely confirmed that i wanted to be here and that i would have a great time here. i think new vassar especially because we’re new it would be great for us to have more rex events.
brendan: commitments for the spring
olivia: a lot of piano stuff. shine on wednesdays [something] on thursdays
fatima: i am on motorsports. south asian students. running for next exec but idk
caragay: negotiating when we get pushback?
fatima: no prior experience. seeing the issue. if the issue is important for the dorm’s representation i would explain to admin why that’s important to be shown. if not possible compromising
olivia: no prior experience. but speak for what would be right. admin have a lot to say about why something would not be the best thing
shuli: one big part is being the go between. sometimes you need to reach out to the entire student body. for example when we don’t have enough people to host. any experience reaching out to a large group of people
olivia: i’ve been learning how to do outreach when we do events on the student events board. im not afraid of talking to people and reaching out.
fatima: as a frep i’ve been trying to reach out to different people about events. i want to talk to people and spread by word of mouth as well.
zawad: because cpw/rex affects so much of campus and lots of things can change suddenly. also how excited are you guys about possibly first in person cpw in a while
olivia: incredibly excited. also enjoyed the online version. i’m a pretty flexible person as someone who does a lot of piano accompanying.
fatima: pretty excited. i’m also pretty adaptable to changes.
meghana: there’s going to be a lot of things that seniors know. how would you feel about doing things in old vs new ways
fatima: reaching out to the people who have previous experience with old cpws. and finding a balance
olivia: yeah i agree. in person events a whole new ballgame online. there’s also always something new to do here. freshmen and sophomores would probably want to be involved.
jordan: what’s your favorite color
olivia: blue
fatima: purple
updates
mohan: funding request for bad ideas weekend. request for 2500. we have plenty of money. so i see no issues.
shuli: any objections to funding bad ideas weekend at half (a bit more than 3500)
caragay: another event item. trinidad from cpw reached out for thoughts. tentatively want in-person. open the floor to vibes about hosting people in dorms.
brendan: decisions of admin should be uniform.
caragay: update on the mask thing. originally we were going to discuss removing the mask mandate on the upper floors. because of the new variant they want to wait a little longer. but over winter break or beginning of iap you will officially be able to be maskless in rooms in groups of 4-6. rest of the update. after that they’re going to evaluate how that goes and see if case levels go up and start piloting upper levels of halls being able to take off masks. off ramp of some of the policies but not rushing.
ashley: what about suitemates. 6-8?
caragay: probably a separate group of people
madi: i know for athletic events all the people need to test a certain time range before the event.
shuli: one thing we know. most of the students who come to cpw end up coming to mit so theyre thinking of adding everyone to covidpass and having them upload vaccine records and everything we had to do.
jordan: the heads of house would have to be on board with it.
madi: it’s not fair for students living on level 1 to not be able to take masks off
caragay: upper floors means where people live. so if this policy becomes enacted we will make sure that the wording is clear.
ret: in random our lobby area is a floor..
caragay: yeah we would be able to talk this out about random.
ret: i will also say that random would be super excited to have in person cpw again. but how many people are willing to host would be lower than usual.
madi: for recruiting trips i know recruits had to stay in a hotel. i know that adds a barrier of cost. we could do hybrid events if some people aren’t comfortable.
shuli: one thing that admissions is definitely thinking about is that there are going to be not only people that don’t feel comfortable coming but also can’t come for covid reasons.
tina: questions about feasibility. signing in to every dorm when entering. how will this work for prefrosh?
caragay: this is something we can raise to admissions and we can talk.
shuli: probably similar to rex system where we were doing contact tracing.
meghana: getting food policy ironed out more than 2 weeks before.
shuli: usually we don’t feed prefrosh at all. admissions gives them money for food and they get the rest off free food.
meghana: what’s the plan if there aren’t enough hosts.
shuli: i think this is something they’re going to try to work out now.
zawad: what is it usually?
shuli: usually we beg people to be hosts and it works out just well enough
sarah: are they having fsilg residents able to host?
caragay: they didnt say so i would think so
sarah: usually off campus residents can’t host?
shuli: yes.
tina: usually frosh that host?
shuli: usually everyone.
shuli: any other last thoughts?
caragay: any other agenda items from exec? [silence] ok cool.
caragay: ok then let’s do updates.
jordan: start with president updates then?
brendan: ec renovations were delayed a year. core concerns. getting real fake walls in ec to get a feel for them?
sarah: first reopening committee meeting. discussions about what our values are. how they want everything to sound. they were trying to eliminate floor culture from the statements?? so we’re starting to talk about how we decide who gets to live in bc. so if someone asks we we have our lounge pretty empty bare but hopefully getting things in there. we’re pubbing elections and there seems to be some interest.
caragay: pushing back on values?
sarah: it went pretty ok. the heads of house actually seemed to have more say in this. taking out this statement of “anyone can find a home on every floor.” they also had some wellness stuff on there and we said let’s make it a little bc specific. the original statement came from judy or zach.
shuli: if you can’t really get stuff into your lounge then let us know if you want help. also finding people to get into bc that topic can be in a housing meeting. let us know
meghana: elections are happening. 3w died? documentation on places that do winter swap? we decided to do a spreadsheet thing.
ashley: we used to have a transfer process between entries.
meghana: we’re gonna talk to keith at some point about guest lists
madi: we are also about to start our elections and our new ad starts sunday
tina: i think our guest list is going to be approved by keith soon. he recommended 5 so we might switch it up depending on how it goes
maseeh: elections are happening next week
mccormick: also elections. we wanted to know if we could apply for funding since we’re doing our new gym. is there a formal process?
mohan: there is a funding request form on dormcon website
ashley: have we funded things that aren’t events?
caragay: we prioritize things that are campus wide. then 2-3 dorms. then dorm specific events. for something like that, i’m not sure but you could submit an application and we could discuss it.
shuli: also you have to tell us your other sources of funding so we could recommend other sources of funding
ashley: also elections. our big finals week breakfasts again.
ret: also elections. also finals week breakfast
mohan: elections happened.
jordan: we also have fun construction happening anymore
mohan: oh also it’s not 8am anymore it’s 9am.
shuli: for elections generally. we’ll send you information about how to get mailing lists switched out and getting new president to dormcon and stuff like that. it’s not going to be a lot.
shuli: exec?
alan: if you ever wanna think about how your dorm govt is structured. i read all the constitutions
zawad: we put a lot of updates in the doc. issues of undergrads being improperly assigned to rooms. housing algorithm. bunch of other things that are in the process of happening.
meghana: this seems like a lot more than we used to know but doesn’t seem to answer the question
zawad: we tried to push but they wouldn’t give us more than this.
meghana: are all the new staff that are doing the hand placements aware of nuances between dorms.
zawad: these are lucy and tasha and they are working with the racs.
mitali: do you think we can organize time for them to visit dorms and talk to residents
zawad: we can do that but they are doing a lot of work. we can see.
ashley: one thing to highlight. mark really wants to come talk to dormcon about phasing stuff. so i told him probably february. this is about bumping up the minimums of meal plans.
zawad: is this something we can raise to suzy?
caragay: we did raise this to suzy about long term dining sustainability. but basically they are pretty strapped and suzy was like we can’t have that conversation right now. it’s definitely something we want to bring up at some point but to bring to suzy’s level it will take some time.
ashley: i think for mark it would be good to have more voice. whether that’s putting together another working committee or anything like that.
caragay: we have a couple more updates. mask thing we talked about. also trying to have student admin reflection on past collaboration event over iap. look at past events and maybe be like oh we made this decision but maybe we were both unhappy about it. like a post mortem. we are looking into logistics of discussing this. and also clothing optionality discussions. we’re hoping this will be a pilot for discussions that will happen in the future
shuli: we asked suzy about your next house nightwatch issue. she will talk to david and rich.
meghana: this nightwatch was asking to be put back in next house but they kept saying operational demands. a lot of people were on board (ads, heads of house, gras). but they said for 2021-2022 the schedule was fixed. we asked why and they basically were like we will not broker any more discussion on this. so the transparency.
caragay: i think the transparency is definitely important. we made an analogy so hopefully it will help. if it was an hr staffing confidential issue maybe they couldnt say but even in that case some kind of communication should go to you guys about this.