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Dormcon GBM Minutes

Date: April 21, 2022
Time: 6:30pm
Location: McCormick Country Kitchen
Food: SUSHI WOW

Agenda:

  • Discussing Residential Education Principles with Judy Robinson, John Hernandez (Baker Head of House), Raul Radovitzky (McCormick Head of House)
  • Reminders about Elections
  • Upperclassmen Housing Assignments
  • and more!

caragay: three guests today. so do that for the first hour. and then we have a couple other agenda points. we’re gonna save updates for the end. if you guys (guests) would like to start

judy: hi I’m judy the senior something of mit

raul: hi i’m raul and i’m the head of house of mccormick. i would like to know everyone’s names (everyone goes around and states names and roles)

john: very nice to be with you all. we wanna talk about residential education. a discussion we’ve been having. and we’ve had enough of that discussion to prompt interacting with you and getting your thoughts. i’ll do the high level intro and pass on to raul because there’s a few principles he’s familiar with. this idea of residential education came up because we wanted to think about ways we could enhance education in the residential halls. we’re not talking about curricular, for credit graded types of education thing. i think the best way to describe is example. past few months the situation in ukraine has been pretty horrible. there’s some deep history and deep explanation to that thing. one idea of what we can do in the dorms. if we can enlist an expert from mit harvard wherever to join a discussion with students in the dorm really informal not a lot of time commitment, that would really enhance residential education. part of why it’s coming up for me is my assessment of potential for something in a dorm is if there is a demand. a couple baker residents asked if we can do something like this. and we already have a mechanism called baker talks which could maybe host this. and that kind of really targeted high value educational experience is what prompted this discussion. this lead to this document. pass on to raul.
raul: disclaimer. we’re really coming here for input. this is a sort of set of emerged questions. are there opportunities to extend what in practice there is some informal education going on in our residential system through interactions sometimes in workshops and various activities. there could be considerable educational character. is there some opportunity we should try to harness to define what we mean by residential education which means essentially non[?] is there some sort of way of formalizing this kind of activity, is there a role for dsl to play, heads of house to play. this actually came up last summer. we brought it up at heads of house meeting a couple of time. committee on student life. and we started some discussions. my personal interest. i am open person. i am open to this idea personally. i also have some concerns about it. and when we talked about this to heads of house there were also concerns. suzy nelson asked us to look into this. a good look. at one of our heads of house meetings. steven holl head of house of new vassar. former associate of simmons. brought up that before some of us came here in the mid 90s there was a test [] with faculty students. looking at student life and had a very strong component of what does it mean to educate our most precious product here which is you guys. and that document defines the concept of the whole student. not just technical not just curricular academic but essentially what happens here. so that sort of motivation. the document says a lot of things in a way that i think articulates lots of principles of what the concept of residential education might be. i personally believe there are many elements that might be relevant today. i also believe that complexities there are differnet in the sort of things we have today. the document is interesting to read because there are lots of parallels. the key thing to residential education outside the classroom. it is important and it is something mit should do something about officially. led to things like the meal plans and a number of other things. it is possible that some of those principles and outcomes of that exercise need to be revisited. so that’s the idea. i’ve spoken long enough so judy?

judy: the only thing i want to add. we’re here tonight to hear your thoughts. the document (‘96) is interesting to read. residential education is not necessarily the area i oversee but what does it mean. there are formal and informal. when you think about the way you arrived here. how did you choose when you decided to live in the dorms or when you decided to be a dormcon leader. this is an abbreviated

  • building supportive communities
  • promote community shared []
  • []
  • institute should support the implementation of these principles

so that gives you hopefully a sense of what we mean when we talk about educational principles. i’m also discussing these things with senior staff. so what is relevant in your experience in 2022 as a student. so these are very broad concepts by design

john: i’ll add one thing to prompt your thinking. there’s consensus in the HOHs that the differences in the dorms are as important as similarities. so i don’t think there needs to be anything standardized. it’s really more of seeing where there is a demand not an overall approach. that’s kinda vague to give comments on so i understand

bookbinder: would these be subject to approval? ukraine is not really controversial but i could think of more controversial topics.

john: great question. how do you fulfill all of our principles (inclusive, sense of belonging, diverse perspectives) that’s all going to be part of this. which means some topics are less problematic. so for example. what if a dorm or HOH or students wanted to run a discussion on critical race theory that’s a little more edgey. quality is absolutely [] we benefit from embarrassment [] so when the students asked about ukraine. it took me time to find 3 world-class experts. so we have access to that sort of expertise. the quality is paramount. the second thing is that it would have to be a topic where there is collective interest. a student introducing a topic might be problematic. there needs to be a sense that the community standards are being upheld and there isn’t a single perspective. how we regulate that? we’re not there yet. and it may be done differently in different dorms

raul: so what you bring up is one of my main concerns. we exceed by one hour of the length of a pset of any given week. that’s not cool. the students , administration don’t like it. when it comes to academics we go to extreme lengths to define and approve. not to mention that each of us goes through 20+ years to even teach. so I think that concern about the excellence and the content of what should mit be in the business of teaching officially. i think it’s one of my main concerns. and the question is when you look at dormspam. everyday you can see all sorts of things that you guys initiate. it can be very crazy. it’s you guys with your freedom to express yourself. i think (personally) when it comes to mit officially promoting a set of ideas or endorsing a set of ideas it gets a lot trickier. it has to be approved by faculty and so on and so forth. you guys have been here for some time. what do you feel that you are missing. what could you do additionally after your academics to enhance your experience. integral part of your college experience is outside of your academics. is there anything that we could do or dsl could do?

caragay: we’re about 20 mins in so a few students thoughts

arthur: would dsl provide support in reaching out other colleges and actual organization would be done by dorm?

john: it depends on the dorm. so the ad might get involved. it would depend on how the individual community might want to run it.

raul: it could be one or the other or both

alan: a lot of dorm community events are let’s get together and do something social. so i think there is value of getting discussion in a dorm and i like the idea. but i’m not so sure about current events topics because these are likely to generate controversy. the house team see lots of support mechanisms. gras are grad students and HOHs are profs. i think it would be interesting to get perspective of those two sides of the house team. you’re in the dorm already but you could be talking more about subject matter that people would be interested in.

michelle: to your point. random hall used to have this thing where we would bring in profs for dinner. talk to profs about research or what it’s like to be a professor. that’s one way this could be manifested. and the other thing is. i’m still a little unclear on what exactly you’re envisioning this to be. because you mentioned informal education as well. but it seems that this is the opposite of what’s been discussed so far. because that might happen in how people navigate academia.

alan: yes i think informal is like how to do laundry for the first time. in regards to how to be a person in the world comes from other students. and i’m not sure how this could be structured more

meghana: i feel like this already exists to some extent in peer mentors. they don’t get trained as much? i’m a pleasure educator and we receive on the order of 40+ hours. and there were a lot of things that we learned about there that were not taught as much in peer mentors. i think there’s lessons that could be learned from those who want to be support figures.

judy: i think peer mentors could play in on this. your feedback on the training is really helpful thank you.

someone: there are student groups that want to do outreach to dorms that is a bit more educational. like pleasure. getting them more integrated into dorms would be good because there’s some sort of a structure already in place. a lot of work ends up falling on the students to start up these sorts of things.

someone: the ua currently runs lunches with profs. talking to the people who organize that. getting profs into the dorms informal or formal.

meghana: there’s a valuable realization that having these things in dorms is more valuable than having it in building 10. because at the end of the day i’m going to go to my dorm.

john: and yes esp with dinner and sitting down.

judy: sometimes at other institutions it was very hard to get faculty to come into residential hall at night. we already have amazing faculty who live here. i think there’s some networking opportunities as well. and the fact that ua is doing this lunch thing is already great.

jordan: personally i would see something like this more supporting students or organizations or profs coming into the dorms than a formal program as a whole. student led but very supported so you don’t throw more work on the students.

alexandria: i think everyone knows about the training tomorrow.

caragay: the dorm presidents asked for anti-bias/how to respond training that we’re working with spxce on.

alexandria: i think that is a great example of residential education because you’re getting that training based on your role in the residences. and you see a need where you can be supported.

caragay: one thought. generally when approaching this. tonight we focused a lot on this type of event in residence halls. the title of this is residential education principles and i think it could be worth narrowing that scope. this is focusing on faculty side. but i think residential education as a concept is much much bigger. than this specific type of education people were discussing.

judy: thanks for having us on the agenda

caragay: this was great timing! thank you guys for coming. also presidents if you have thoughts on this after talking to your exec feel free to text me the feedback.

caragay: so we are continuing on through our busy agenda. elections reminders. happening at next gbm. happening in the ua senate (fourth floor of stud). if you could forward the elections info to your dorms list. we like to get people from all the dorms. if you see someone who might be interested talk to them. that would be very helpful. any questions?

jordan: less question and more for all presidents. you are very much expected to be at elections or let alan know a proxy in advance. we have missed presidents a few times in the past few years.

caragay: you guys can also run for dormcon exec. you guys have experience on dormcon so include yourself on people who could run

caragay: the other thing is we need an amendment.

Amendment: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d8ggw4Tzzy33XiLwwO47D5zF0Gv5ezXflzopkr1M5ZY/edit

alan: i will first send to dorms prez chat. so we have this position. mitali is our risk management chair because dormcon has historically needed a risk management chair.

mitali: risk management. when i ran for risk management. they were on exec doing other things not related to risk management. and i also over the past year. i went to one hazing prevention meeting and most of what i’m doing on dormcon has not been related to risk management. and so we want to make it an underclassmen rep role instead. to be a freshman or sophomore working on exec on various projects. officially changing this role so that the next elections we can bring in some underclassmen living in dorms to be represented.

alan: if people have questions about the amendment. this requires a ¾ population vote. this means i will call on dorm presidents. can we white vallot? pretty sure we can’t because population vote. i will go through and ask. i’m going to start the roll call.

  • baker: “all votes”
  • bc: approve
  • ec: (come back)
  • macg: approve
  • maseeh: approve
  • mccormick: approve
  • new house: approve
  • new vassar: approve
  • next: all votes
  • random: approve
  • simmons: approve

would any individual resident like to change their vote

mohan: sure

alan: great. congratulations.

caragay: housing chairs, can we do updates first? let’s go around for exec updates.

alan: updates are the things that just happened. elections are coming.

meghana: will send dining chairs a google form about how to interact.

ashley: we received complaints specifically about ec isolation meals. we contacted dining and the care team and they seemed to resolve those things. they said there seemed to be food theft in dorms but they can’t do much about that. new working group for stud vendors. they’re trying to get stuff in over the summer. there’s going to be bigger talks about what to get in there because there are talks on making the student center a wellness center.

zawad: so most of work for hte past week or two was for students that missed housing intent deadline. this year they have let 50-60 people in.

jordan: they were lenient within the first few days. that was 60 people. there have been another 30 people who have reached out to us or housing about that afterwards. we have not had much break through for those 30 people. we’re going to still push for it and say it’s not just a logistics issue but a crisis for these students becoming homeless.

caragay: if you know any students that really need housing or need to transfer dorms they can talk to s^3 who can advocate for them to hrs.

tina: was there an error with the housing intent form. i know a senior who opened the form but didn’t fill it out and got placed in a dorm. i got an email that i was on the waitlist when i just opened the form.

caragay: maybe there are spots in the system?

jordan: question for mateo? i know racs have had issues with placement in the past week

caragay: it might be worth talking about how there are some set of students (potentially around 30) who shouldn’t be in the system and could open up these spots.

zawad: i think they would maybe be willing to open the cancellation form earlier but it wouldn’t be closed until later june 15. that’s when people move out into fsilgs they have until june 15. we’ll ask for them to look into the 2022 numbers.

mohan: question. is there a reason hrs has the opt into staying in same housing and not opt out. what if you didn’t submit the form you defaulted to staying where you are.

jordan: housing might hate that. less people might cancel as a whole. we can bring that up though.

caragay: and there could be some incentive penalty for actually submitting your form on time

zawad: if housing won’t budge this may be raised to suzy. students are guaranteed 4 years of housing and it shouldn’t be difficult like this.

jordan: question how might that affect the back process if people suddenly cancel out.

zawad: we can think about that later. another thing we’ve been working to extend the timeline for racs. dormcon was pushing to get the dates earlier (long time ago) so people get room assignments before finals. and housing has been bad about getting these lists so maybe we need to push back the dates to later. they also are allowing 2 days of extensions so if your dorm needs it make sure to ask for 2 days. we’re also going to ask for weekends.

jordan: we also discussed. having bc open (11 dorms). what happens to those extra beds. numbers aren’t going to be certain until deadline of june 15th. so hopefully there will be more room for these people who forgot the intent form.

zawad: final thing for general awareness. housing has brought up the pet policy. and before ec closes down they want to talk about pet policy and will probably affect random and ec when it reopens. dormcon is advocating for pets.

mohan: 2 updates. cpw reimbursements are happening. up to 1000. 6 dorms have done so and 5 have not. so here’s a reminder. the other thing is air mattress fundings will happen this weekend.

caragay: just to confirm there’s no way to make a bunch of rfps without making a bunch of rfps [no]

sunmee: follow us on social media

cameron: i am working on a thing for rex on the dormcon website. i am coding myself. if dorm presidents want to preview that. i want a lot of people to play around and let me know of features they want

someone: what is it?

cameron: app to browse events

fatima: cpw happened! if you guys haven’t done post mortems yet please do. i will schedule one with dorm cpw chairs soon. and rex planning starts soon

mitali: my position changed!

mateo: i3 deadline is tomorrow. it’s a bit of a soft deadline. a window of 24ish hours [everyone: don’t tell them that!!!] guide to residences. if you would like to see any changes for your dorm please let me know so zach can update page. for racs lots of rosters have had problem. two dorms had swapped rosters. there are people missing from rosters. there are 22s on the rosters. i’m not sure what to do. i’ll talk to housing chairs. because of those issues. housing is open to giving extensions on case-by-case basis. tell your racs to contact lusi if they need.

caragay: if your rac contacts them and they say no then let us know. because they messed stuff up.

jordan: i will add. your rac has been working with lusi. this is not lusi’s job. we are still trying to hire a person to do this job. lusi is doing 3 people’s jobs. she’s doing her best.

caragay: p/vp. elections are coming. you should read our updates we wrote some words. anti-bias training is tomorrow so please come. we told them what you all said and they adapted the training to your requests. the facilitators are very good at doing trainings but first time working with this sort of group. so it might not be the training that you guys think will be most important for you. so afterwards we will get very honest feedback from you all. hopefully becomes one of the things we do at dormcon retreat when presidents come in. any q’s?

caragay: other big thing. if you’re ever working with an administrator and they said they talk to dormcon and won’t talk to you then definitely come talk to us. sometimes they definitely do not talk to us. so there’s some miscommunication somewhere. and sometimes they do say that. our goal is making your lives better so if the thing we were talking about is not what you want, definitely let us know. especially with new exec keep those communication lines open. [it’s so quiet in here. i feel like it’s an actual room]

mohan: i just realized i sent the info to dorms-rex and not dorms-cpw so i will resend and hopefully you all will get it.

caragay: presidents updates.

alan: next house is mostly preparing for housing lottery. whole ordeal. one thing to note for housing chairs. the supplemental housing request form is not open and we have people who have supplemental housing requests and they email racs directly. would be somewhat helpful to get that stuff earlier. also a general question. how involved is your exec with desk.

  • ec: sometimes desk will ask exec to set up package delivery. ec is set up poorly. but normally don’t get involved in operational
  • emma (maseeh): many times residents complain to us about desk. there’s been recently lots of issues with desk accountability. so there’s an awkward line of management with area director and all.
  • random: current desk captain is vp so that’s helpful. they provide lots of services to students like stamps and selling drinks for a fee

alan: we’ve also been having a desk accountability issue.
madi: we have no association with desk. last year we had a very scary desk captain. if we buy something for baker they keep track
mcc: not really related to house gov. there hasn’t really been any problems
macg: our desk works very similarly. if we need to talk to anyone at desk we talk directly to housing manager
nv: sometimes they store equipment to be rented out. other than that we don’t interact
new: i do know a lot of desk workers don’t like the software that is used [filemaker]

jordan: fun construction happening outside. apparently having construction on saturday morning to have test pile driving. i’ve asked him very kindly to not do that, he seems it’s very likely that will not work.

jordan: oh yeah they decided that we could get 2 days of ice cream sandwiches in compensation

cameron: we are filling our dorm with people. we got our roster. we are going to run floor exploration process on bottom floor of building 2. we’re gonna run an algorithm.

tina: new vassar not much updates.

margaret: 3 updates. our elevators are breaking down and getting fixed and breaking down. also our washers. 2 dryers are not working. they have been fixed and broken. i think washlava is something every dorm has been struggling with. except i guess random. we’re having a party tmrw in the brown living room.

jordan: who’s invited?

margaret: you should tag along with a mccormick resident.

madi: we had to move piano drop to not drop date. now next tuesday. people are not as excited because it’s been 2 years. struggling to find volunteers. very heavy to lift the piano. i am bribing you with donuts. early in the morning. hrs wants to charge us 10 grand for a treadmill. and they said discount and we could pay 3 grand. i sent email back because i think we’re getting scammed. we have a very big mouse problem. lots of complaints. friends have had exterminators come and patch up the holes.

caragay: could talk to HOH maybe?

michelle: one thing we find helpful in interacting with house manager is cc’ing HOH.

alan: we have biweekly meeting with house manager. somehow has become more productive than any other meeting we have with anyone else.

ec: we text ours and it gets fixed within hours. email just doesn’t work.

new house: someone from tang emailed about west campus graduate residence construction has been obstructing people’s route to trader joe’s. i heard they’re having construction chats in other dorms. any other dorms have thoughts on maybe getting alternative shuttle routes

michelle:

christina: they said there are monthly meetings in westgate with housing. also getting undergraduate dorms. getting more shuttle options. or starting a shuttle that goes to central?

christina: many of our residents are hoping to get pods for summer storage. but can’t park along amherst because it’s permit parking.

ashley: so they gave spots in westgate. works for next and new, not as much for macgregor.

jordan: another thing from housing chairs. one thing we discussed a while back was making more centralized system

emma: we made our piazza private to classmates but showing to instructors. and people haven’t been holding back on complaining. our gras have been more involved with maseeh study breaks. maseeh boat cruise is happening may 1. we bought 250 tickets and sold out in days and have 80 on the waitlist. trying to contact boat. all of maseeh gov is soph or younger so none of us know what the boat cruise is like. wish us luck!

caragay: suzy mentioned your boat cruise in our last meeting in a positive way lol. macgregor?

macgregor: getting complaints about parking and construction. do they give you westgate permit or do they keep amherst alley permit and give you westgate?

ec: one person i know that has a car uses sloan underground parking. can forward you stuff about permit and parking at mit.

macg: formal soon.

michelle: in process of amending constitution to make it easier to amend. current procedure is you need to call house meeting and you need to vote for ratification vote and has to be in people’s mailboxes and has to go over 3 days. dorm meeting with ad and all members of dorm about moveout process. because long time since normal moveout. a bunch of communal items got yeeted after covid so making sure that doesn’t happen again. some people who expressed concern. felt uncomfortable about having heads of house on social mailing list. they mailed out and then heads of house reply and they’re like ahhh. and some misgivings about feeling uncomfortable about them being on the list. so we put on agenda about whether to take them off the social mailing list. and they asked us to take it off. and now we’re gonna have a discussion about that soon. also single gender floors we call them gamer floors now. now some people are stuck on these floors because we need to place people.

ec: we are going to be renovated next year. because we have 11 dorms open right now. they are cutting everyone’s frosh allocations. this is problem for us because we’re going to get renovated for 2 years and we need as big a frosh class as possible. so if you could support us in getting from 80 frosh to 100 frosh. this would mean you have 2 less frosh. we will send email saying we have support from dormcon and other dorms. our renovations process is ongoing. reaching out to alumni and making sure they are updated on that. they have been very good about listening to student feedback. summer housing is happening. we haven’t done this in 2 years. the summer ras have been picked.

alexandria: they have been picked? they are being interviewed. they are picked on monday.

ec: cpw happened. ec also had a bit of a covid outbreak. a good chunk of ec got covid at the same time. our main stress was getting enough rapid tests to everyone. pcrs take a while to get back. covid meal numbers getting updated? don’t know when that happens. amending constitution to have second rac. our amendment process is significantly easier than random’s. first look of what murals will look like. their mural pilot looks fairly nice. big pieces of plywood on rails basically. floor to ceiling. they can be switched around. we have been having some noise complaints about the green building. but we’re gonna try and get ice cream sandwiches. we have east side festival coming up. old east campus tradition. next friday saturday sunday. main day is saturday. come by.

caragay: anything else? thank you guys for staying. normally we don’t do this.