Meeting Notes 2022-10-27

meeting start

Zawad: We have a guest who has to leave in 10 min so they’re going to do they’re spiel

Anushree (UA sustain cochair): Every dorm had a sustainability point of contact with the UA before COVID, we’d like to restart with this with some flexibility to work with existing dorm govt structures. If you already have a sustainability position that’s great, if you don’t and are interested then we can work on creating that position, and if that doesn’t fit into your dorm govt structure then we can talk about including it in a minimal way.

Some initiatives:

• donation boxes on move out for trash2treasure
• preserving clothing for longer with laundry tips
• reducing food insecurity and access to fresh food

UA sustain would be happy to work with sustainability contacts on larger initiatives as well

eg. Bulk bins food wholesale initiative in Random

Wanted to bring things to people’s attention with elections coming up

Questions?

Zawad: Do you have mailing lists for all dorm presidents? You can email dorms-prez

Exec Updates

Facilities Feedback

Zawad: Basically, we tried to talk to Suzy and David about how dorms with a ton of facilities problems shouldn’t be Tier 1. Their stance is that they can’t afford to do that and that the rate you're paying isn’t just the dorm facilities, but also the other services the dorm provides and renovations. Seems like they probably won’t budge.

What we want to bring back to them is what are effective mitigation measures (nice things) to bring back to the dorm when things break.

eg. new policy of every renovated dorm gets free laundry

Alan: When you renovate a building, you don’t know everything that’s wrong with it for a little bit and they’re means of compensation is free laundry for a year

Random Prez: Summer storage, they said they can redesign the space as you want, but we still don’t have summer storage :(

Baker Prez: When the construction was really loud they gave us breakfast sandwiches

Simmons Prez: Same with us, cookie monster sandwiches

BC Prez: They gave us air fryers and toaster ovens when the ovens aren’t working, which don’t actually replace ovens despite being nice. What would have helped is a little more communication on what ovens did work

McCormick Prez: They said they were giving us 3 free breakfasts last year and only gave us 1. Re: laundry thing that was a problem a meeting ago, they gave us free laundry and after several exchanges they took all the dryers away and installed BC (not Washlava) style dryers and we have that now until the end of IAP

Kevin: The laundry thing wasn’t described to me as a concession that they do, but a side effect of Washlava problems

Zawad: I think tier 2 housing is probably not achievable

BC Prez: We met with David Friedrich to ask about what is still going to be done, but the excuses I’ve gotten over the past few weeks have been “it’s on backorder” etc. and random stuff keeps happening. There just hasn’t been any communication with the students.

McCormick Prez: Seconded. When the elevators broke down, the communication was also very bad and things were very opaque

BC Prez: They’re wary about giving us time estimates and being held to them, but we understand it’s not their fault and I would rather not they just hide from criticism

Alan: Communication itself would go a long way

BC Prez: and if they do communicate then we can explore possible solutions/compensation

Alan: The toaster ovens feel more useful to me than a meal in that it’s more permanent

BC Prez: It doesn’t have to be a 1:1 replacement. BC is having biweekly meetings with HRS and I can keep you posted

Dorms having inclusive communities and avoiding bias incidents

Zawad: There were a few bias incidents last semester eg. New House Posters, NV piazza. In response to that, last semester we tried to have a bias training for presidents. Was not great because the people giving the trainings were not actually giving the specific training people wanted. In response DSL tried to proactively make sure people weren’t doing these things eg. values meetings with GRAs. What are president’s thoughts on building inclusive communities? What has worked?

BC Prez: While doing our floor placement process, we were wondering how do we put roommates together with different gender identities etc. We approached DSL on putting together a training. The outline looks good and we were able to give feedback on proposed content of the training. I think the idea for this particular thing on Nov 16 is to hear from residents what kind of things they want to learn more and discuss more about. After this training, they would now know exactly what topics we want to work on. This is very tailored to BC so I don’t know how applicable it is. This is mostly dorm gov focused (eg. RACs, social chairs)

Q: Can you clarify what rooming gender concerns you had?

A: eg. if someone’s assigned sex is male then what implications does that have for placing them in rooms? We were having to make binary decisions that I didn’t feel comfortable with.

Zangi: Last year, they rewrote the first year housing surveys and that was the first time they had even got to gender identity and preferred name

BAker PRez: I’m not sure if the value thing worked because we just had two incidents. One incident someone forged MIT official correspondence on dorm signage. The other one was something very misogynistic on the white boards

Q:Do you know if GRAs and HoH are doing anything about these things?

A: I don’t know because the people who are causing the problems probably either don’t attend these events or don’t care

Simmons Prez: I don’t even know if our GRAs did the values things. I think generally we’ve had more issues with people having less respect with each other. One incident was someone putting up a pro-vegan poster and basically getting shitted on and the poster getting vandalized. Basically I think it’s a wider issue.

Zawad: This is something that Suzy, DSL and the broader community really cares about. We’ll follow up with Judy and Suzy about how the values thing didn’t really work out and talke about possible more effective things

PREZ UPDATES

Simmons

• Our AD quit with two weeks notice
• We interviewed some people for new house manager, maybe we’ll get one of those in compensation

Random

• Elected i3 chairs

New House

• There’s a student group (Mince) that without asking started using the New House Country Kitchen as their center of operation so the shelfs are full of their things and they occupy two pretty big fridges. It’s not a problem yet, but it was somewhat offputing that they never asked. I was wondering what you guys would do. Given the amount of stuff they have it would be unreasonable to put it into one individual kitchen space…
• Sarah: They also have a box of stuff in the BC tv lounge
• Hannah: Is there a way to reserve space in New House?
• Bookbinder: It would be worth reaching out to them and checking in on what their plan is and pointing out that in the future they should talk to New House Gov first and they might have to move it in the future

McCormick

• See facilities agenda item

Baker

• Q: Is it possible to get apple picking funded by DSL once again?
• A: Odds seem low
• Kevin: I think the problem was that it was too much work for the ADs
• Bookbinder: I think we’re in the worst middle ground where it’s decentralized in a weird way and it’s more work for everyone
• Alan: starting a little earlier and centralizing bus orders would be simpler. I don’t think the funding is coming back
• Michelle: One thing I heard from ADs was that in the past Dormcon told them how many buses to order
• Zawad: We should come back to this in the spring and maybe get someone on dormcon exec to work on organizing it

EC

• Interim AD is taking a week off and we have a temporary interim AD
• EC is allocated a certain # of clothing optional events per semester. There was going to be one and the event approval process didn’t get started in time so it’s not happening :(
• Electing bad ideas chair next house meeting
• Has been talking a lot about party safety processes and having an info session on timely warnings
• Were supposed to have 3 social host trainings and 2 of 3 were cancelled bc they didn’t have >20 people
• This morning EC renovation committee met and part of meeting was on naming rights
  • One alum was like “you should let people donate <100k and name bathrooms”
  • One of the corp members was like “ can people donate to and get naming rights to murals”
  • But mural policy post renovation is that they are not permanent fixtures
  • But they liked the idea of having permanent murals with naming rights

BC

• Hiring a house manager for BC
  • Jordan and Sarah will fight each other for the best AD
• Did walkthrough with List visual arts center person to get wall for blank walls
  • Lost of art conservation requirements
• Already covered top-optionality stuff
• Refreshed dorm on postering policies
  • Apparently you can be sent to the Committee on Discipline for mispostering????
• Meeting with David
  • No one is happy with the current art situation, can we please do something?
  • David wants the policy to be implemented better
  • Dennis Collins and Sarah now text each other
  • $13000 for the canvases necessary to cover all the floors
    • So far, only 1 canvas per floor
      • Not meeting demand for canvases
  • Zawad: Since it’s part of the renovation, this should be paid for.
  • Sarah: David wants a “cost-sharing strategy”

New Vassar

• In middle of section rep elections
  • Had one applicant from every section
• Decorated for halloween
• Hot water shut down for ½ a day
  • Had to do with warehouse construction next door
  • Did not tell NV beforehand, may not have been planned
  • Also did not tell them afterwards

Next House

• Boiler was broken for an indeterminate amount of time and now there is heating
• Editing housing bylaws
  • mostly inane