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MIT’s Senior House dormitory closes, and a crisis blooms at colleges

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Re: MIT’s Senior House dormitory closes, and a crisis blooms at colleges

#81

Post by otakucode »

candiodari wrote: post #48
otakucode wrote: post #13

As college morphs into High School+, and society extends their definition of 'childhood' to cover up to age 25, steps will be taken to destroy the autonomy and personality of these 'children.' Children are entitled no rights, no difference of opinion from them is respected, and any degree of control over them, no matter how extreme, is always seen as warranted.

"Extended" ? If I look back 20 years, there was certainly a component of university life that was ... a bit less than adult. Remembering some Latin texts from in high school, I get the distinct impression the same could be said of Grammar schools in ancient Rome. Having (quite a bit of) wine with colleagues and even with the teachers on occasion was pretty normal. Living together was a necessity in many places, even…

Originally society saw everyone as fundamentally the same with age not being a factor so much as experience and learning. Children were seen as tiny adults that simply hadn't been trained yet. Then as things advanced, children were seen as fundamentally different from adults, with children seen as barely trainable animals that had to be beaten into shape. Things persisted like that for awhile. Then the Industrial Revolution came, and the class of 'adolescent' was invented because factory owners did not want to pay inexperienced workers enough to raise a family on. Prior to that, adolescents became adults at 12 or 13, went to work as apprentices and could usually take care of whatever children they sired.

For reasons that I've not figured out despite decades of study, even though all of the socioeconomic pressures which inspired the changes that came with the Industrial Revolution have gone away, we preserve their practices. And appear to want to extend and expand them, further removing the young from society, etc. The thing that worries me is that there are critical periods of brain development. And brain development occurs exclusively as a result of experience. Remove experience, and brain development halts. And miss the critical period, and that development can never occur regardless of attempts to force it to occur.

Without knowing it, we may have passed a critical period. This is just a personal guess. But it seems 2 or 3 generations ago, parents who were really not entirely mature began raising their own children. As raising children is a very challenging task, demanding a great deal of maturity from a person (refusing to let your personal desire to have the child depend upon you and need you override your duty to turn the child into an adult as early as possible), this results in them over-sheltering their child, depriving the following generation of necessary experiences for brain development, and it continues.

Re: MIT’s Senior House dormitory closes, and a crisis blooms at colleges

#82

Post by JustAnotherPat »

tptacek wrote: post #53
austenallred wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The story is the administration was looking for a reason to shut it down.

Right. Why?

Counterculture is a threat to the current liberal elite status quo. After the defeat of Hillary Clinton, her corporate cronies are trying to consolidate power and develop an army of mindless millennial drones.

Re: MIT’s Senior House dormitory closes, and a crisis blooms at colleges

#83

Post by fhood »

sulam wrote: post #59
rsfern wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with you. It's your choice to engage financially with the university, and you should do so knowing that if you want to know how it's going, you need to talk to the student, not the university -- we have laws like FERPA for a reason.

He told the university to disclose grades to me. No laws are being broken. This is his choice, just like it's my choice to send them a crapton of money.

I agree. If you finance something, you are allowed to exercise some degree of control over it.

Re: MIT’s Senior House dormitory closes, and a crisis blooms at colleges

#84

Post by kakarot »

yusyusyus wrote: post #49
otakucode wrote: post #13

As college morphs into High School+, and society extends their definition of 'childhood' to cover up to age 25, steps will be taken to destroy the autonomy and personality of these 'children.' Children are entitled no rights, no difference of opinion from them is respected, and any degree of control over them, no matter how extreme, is always seen as warranted.

My sentiment has been that this high school-level authoritarianism seems to be in vogue on a larger cultural level than just educational settings. Largely, status quo maintenance is seen as a positive, so don't rock the boat, don't get out of line. In another era, I would have referred to this as "conservatism" but the silly political posturing makes this term less useful (since this authoritarianism has no political…

I think you're getting it backwards. Real life isn't taking notes from high school authoritarianism. High-school authoritarianism is modeled after real-life authoritarianism. It's teaching kids how to "behave" as members of society.

Don't do what we say? Go to "time-out". Slowly have your freedoms taken away from you until you're compliant.

See these officers? They are here to make sure you listen to every one of our ridiculous requirements.

Better tuck in that shirt and only wear a brown or black belt! Want to dye your hair? Individuality is distracting and will not be tolerated!

Re: MIT’s Senior House dormitory closes, and a crisis blooms at colleges

#85

Post by aianus »

rsfern wrote: post #57
sulam wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as someone paying what is effectively a second mortgage so my nephew can go to school, I expect the school to let me know how it's going. I'm not saying MIT is in the right here, but if you want parents or others completely disengaged, then you need to not engage them financially.

I disagree with you. It's your choice to engage financially with the university, and you should do so knowing that if you want to know how it's going, you need to talk to the student, not the university -- we have laws like FERPA for a reason.

It's not a choice. In Canada at least you are disqualified from financial aid (including loans) based on your parents' tax returns. The law expects you to pay for your kids' school if you earn a middle class income or more.

Re: MIT’s Senior House dormitory closes, and a crisis blooms at colleges

#86

Post by dublinben »

AlphaSite wrote: post #67
jdietrich wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>RMS? really? The dude wrote EMACS, GNU, GCC and the GPL license. He more or less single-handedly invented the concept of Free software. If RMS isn't a genius, then I don't know who is.

I’m fairly certain OSS predates him by a reasonable margin.

You'd be wrong. The Free Software movement predates the "Open Source" movement by 15 years or so.

Re: MIT’s Senior House dormitory closes, and a crisis blooms at colleges

#87

Post by ocschwar »

otakucode wrote: post #13

As college morphs into High School+, and society extends their definition of 'childhood' to cover up to age 25, steps will be taken to destroy the autonomy and personality of these 'children.' Children are entitled no rights, no difference of opinion from them is respected, and any degree of control over them, no matter how extreme, is always seen as warranted.

What boggles my mind is how this morphing continues 16 years after 9/11.

WHile college freshmen get babied like this, others the same goddamn age are going into combat. Large numbers of them.

Re: MIT’s Senior House dormitory closes, and a crisis blooms at colleges

#88

Post by ghaff »

tptacek wrote: post #68
jpmattia wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's the actual story here? Not sure of the context of your question exactly, but a quick summary for non-alums: MIT has had a dorm system for many decades where students choose where they are going to live. This tends to aggregate similar personalities/lifestyles into various dormitories. Senior House was a dorm with a reputation: It tended to attract a personality that might be described as "edgy", and was perc…

So if that's it, this is just a numbers story. MIT is an extremely selective school. They're loathe to reject 92% of their applicants only to send people they accept to a dorm that increases by double digits the likelihood that they'll fail. The dorm is a support system for the colleges; the colleges are not support systems for the dorms. When that problem persists for years on end, eventually it becomes the administ…

I have somewhat mixed feelings about this story. There does appear to be a misuse of survey information possibly gathered under false pretenses, The "corporatizion" angle is also bothersome. I'd note that the other "counterculture" dorm was closed down a number of years back when the building needed renovation and MIT determined the renovation didn't make sense. There's also been a broad crackdown on fraternities over the years.

That said, my sense from some continuing involvement with a couple different schools is that there's less self-regulation of activities in many living and other groups than there's been at various times in the past. (Binge drinking, etc.) It's hard for me to tell if Senior House just represents part of an ongoing crackdown or if it's a genuine response to worsening issues of academic performance and other activities. I suspect it's a bit of both.

Re: MIT’s Senior House dormitory closes, and a crisis blooms at colleges

#89

Post by jpmattia »

tptacek wrote: post #68
jpmattia wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's the actual story here? Not sure of the context of your question exactly, but a quick summary for non-alums: MIT has had a dorm system for many decades where students choose where they are going to live. This tends to aggregate similar personalities/lifestyles into various dormitories. Senior House was a dorm with a reputation: It tended to attract a personality that might be described as "edgy", and was perc…

So if that's it, this is just a numbers story. MIT is an extremely selective school. They're loathe to reject 92% of their applicants only to send people they accept to a dorm that increases by double digits the likelihood that they'll fail. The dorm is a support system for the colleges; the colleges are not support systems for the dorms. When that problem persists for years on end, eventually it becomes the administ…

> So if that's it, this is just a numbers story.

There are certainly those who view it that way.

> But not as much of a story to write about intrigue and malfeasance at MIT.

MIT is a big place with a lot of opinions about "what makes it MIT". The admins have one point of view. Sometimes that aligns with the current students and alums.

There was an element of cerebral creativity in Senior House that one might argue does not fit well in the corporate mold or play well to the numbers game Barnhart chose. It nevertheless strikes me as a societal loss to see it go away. To steal an analogy from the article: Tor will not make its Senior House creators rich, or bring in gobs of cash to the MIT endowment. So the numbers story tells us it's a pretty terrible return, and we should shut it down, but the real error is that my chosen monetary numbers don't tell the story.

Re: MIT’s Senior House dormitory closes, and a crisis blooms at colleges

#90

Post by bsenftner »

indigochill wrote: post #10
jdietrich wrote: post #2

I wonder if there'll ever be another Steve Jobs or RMS. I wonder if we've destroyed all the places where brilliant weirdos can thrive and closed off all the paths to success other than a handful of narrowly prescribed routes. I wonder how many of the greatest minds of our generation are flipping burgers or making coffee.

I was chatting with a guy on the plane the other day who was bemoaning the disappearance of old-school BBSes and rise of homogeneous social media sites. I think my answer to his concern and yours are the same: There are still places for clever weirdos. Particularly online. I know of at least two hacking communities, for instance, which only let in people who can hack the invite process. At that point, you can assume…

Love to find one in Los Angeles. Tried making one, a free hackers coworking space for years, but could never get it off the ground. It was there, Drop Labs, for years, free and empty. Evening events drew people, but beer always does that.
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