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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

#91

Post by vfclists »

djsumdog wrote: post #27
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.

That argument makes sense as they mailed the kids parents; when universities are all about recognizing the students as adults.

Isn't America the place where in some states it is a criminal offence for 21 year olds who serve in the military to consume alcohol?

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

#92

Post by anon853941 »

Senior House alum here...

You are load balancing 5 servers. One has a latency issue that causes response time to be 2x the others. What do you do? You wait, it goes to 4x. Now what?

You take it offline, spin up a new instance and investigate.

MIT put them on notice (a year earlier), there was no attempt to improve and the bluff was called.

I wish this wasn't happening, but sometimes you have to actually DO something.

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

#93

Post by jameskegel »

mhalle wrote: post #46
Thriptic wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how I feel about Senior House overall, but the misuse of the survey data enraged me. We have such a hard time getting people at MIT to seek help for mental health issues and stupid bullshit like this is exactly why. People should not he punished for trying to seek help, health data should never be shared with people who are not health care professionals, and it's astoundingly unethical to use people's he…

Completely agree, and it puts this aspect of the case into an interesting legal realm. There is certainly a question of misuse of protected health information, which can be treated quite harshly by the US government, especially when involving potentially vulnerable populations. I don't know if this question has been investigated.

> I don't know if this question has been investigated.

One should hope that this will be thoroughly investigated, lest we set precedent on an issue that leads to so many worrisome open doors for abuse in the future. These are not medical professionals bound by an oath and consequences; this feels like where I draw the line.

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

#94

Post by rothbardrand »

mhalle wrote: post #26

As a Senior House alum and former instructor at MIT, what bothers me the most is how MIT is teaching horrible standards of ethical behavior through their actions. Improper use of metadata to track down individuals in a confidential survey about mental health and substance abuse would end a scientist's career. MIT did it. Collective punishment of a group for the actions of a few is an educational and social antipatter…

What happened to the MIT Administration? Ever since Aaron Swartz death, it seems the administration of the school has been corrupted by some influence.

My guess is that, like so many universities in this country, the administration is not answerable to students or even alumni.

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

#95

Post by arthurmerlin »

tptacek wrote: post #44

What's the actual story here? "Four students tried to buy cocaine" isn't the story. That happens all the time, at every college, in every other MIT dorm, and in most city high schools.

The rumor that I heard was that the student leadership of Senior House was dealing cocaine to students, and was using their clout to do so (for example, by advertising to mailing lists of Senior House residents). Which might have been fine normally, but this was during this turnaround process, which made MIT administration think that people were not taking this seriously. At one point MIT thought it would be fine to allow only those students who were taking the turnaround seriously, and sort of recreate the image of Senior House. Then Senior House alumni started internet harassment campaigns against specific people in the MIT administration, so MIT decided to just shut the dorm down.

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

#96

Post by walshemj »

danharaj wrote: post #69
bbctol wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is clearly a reaction to political correctness, which is why they got rid of housing for the ~ privileged ~ straight white men and--oh, what? This was traditional housing for exactly the sort of queer people, minorities, and lower-income students who get blamed for hating "speakers who commit wrongthink"? While protests that don't do much are referred to as "burning campus," the people actually hurt by real…

You have no idea what you're talking about. I have good friends who are senior house alums. Ive been following the timeline of this action for years. This was managerial capitalism squeezing out non-conformity in order to maximize statistics and minimize liability for problem students. How dare you blame this on any student? No where did this article mention identity politics but you decided to bring it up anyway. Pe…

its the same in the UK there is a scandal where high schools are kicking out sixth form students and refusing to enter them for A levels to flatter the schools place in the league tables - this is actually illegal.

its like you where kicked out of your US high school and not allowed to graduate

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

#97

Post by walshemj »

forgottenpass wrote: post #45

Barnhart told the student newspaper The Tech that “we received highly credible reports of unsafe and illegal behavior in Senior House.” Yep. Sounds like every dormitory at any university. All they had to do was look. This whole thing reads like the playbook of how to use the mechanisms of bureaucracy to build a palatable pretense for unpopular actions.

ah the old "Elf and safety ruse" beloved of beurocrats every where

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

#98

Post by JustAnotherPat »

tyingq wrote: post #3
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.

Both are iconic, but as far as I can tell, neither lived in a particularly eclectic dorm. RMS was at Currier house at Harvard, but rented an apartment at MIT. I don't know whether Jobs stayed in a dorm in his brief college stint. There is a list of some notable Senior House alumni on Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Massachusetts_Instit...

Steve Jobs lived in a commune with some millionaires who went to prison for selling LSD. Certainly not a path most MIT students (or current Reed students) would be encouraged to take today.

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

#99

Post by meddlepal »

rothbardrand wrote: post #94
mhalle wrote: post #26

As a Senior House alum and former instructor at MIT, what bothers me the most is how MIT is teaching horrible standards of ethical behavior through their actions. Improper use of metadata to track down individuals in a confidential survey about mental health and substance abuse would end a scientist's career. MIT did it. Collective punishment of a group for the actions of a few is an educational and social antipatter…

What happened to the MIT Administration? Ever since Aaron Swartz death, it seems the administration of the school has been corrupted by some influence. My guess is that, like so many universities in this country, the administration is not answerable to students or even alumni.

Undergrad students are a nuisance for a school like MIT nowadays. These are giant research corporations masquerading as academic institutions.

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

#100

Post by throwawayjava »

JustAnotherPat wrote: post #82
tptacek wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, because Senior House was full of Trump voters /s
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