Earlier quoted context omitted.
The story is the administration was looking for a reason to shut it down.
Right. Why?
The culture was not perpetuating success or safety for the students within the dorm.
MIT’s Senior House dormitory closes, and a crisis blooms at colleges
181–190 of 222 posts
Re: MIT’s Senior House dormitory closes, and a crisis blooms at colleges
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not how it works, assuming your nephew is an adult. You, as an adult, are making a decision to give another adult a lot of money. That gift creates zero obligations on any third party, and should not even create any obligations by your nephew unless you explicitly arranged for this in advance. From what I hear, a lot of parents have your attitude. They call up the school asking about grades and performance wit…
I'm giving the money to the school, not to him to give to the school. The mechanics of this are perhaps irrelevant, except that the school offers this option for me to get his grades sent to me by them, similar to how I give the money to them. My "attitude" is that I told him I would pay for his school if I got to see his grades. Pretty simple. I'd be happy not to pay and not see his grades -- I'm not his parent, and…
Your attitude about this is reasonable, but you're extrapolating to a position that is harder to defend.
Your agreement with your nephew is defensible and enforceable. You fund his education, he provides you with his grades. That makes sense.
But that agreement is between you and your nephew, not you and your nephew's school. So much is that the case that at some state schools (I know it's at least true at Illinois, where we just sent our son), they won't allow students to sign FERPA consent forms for release of grades on days when parents are likely to be present.
Re: MIT’s Senior House dormitory closes, and a crisis blooms at colleges
#183Earlier 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.
> 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. Why? If you're paying your spouses' medical bills, do you expect to be included on personal, private conversations between the spouse and his or her doctor? (Spoiler: you need the spouse's consent for that!) No one is forcing parents (or you) to pay for someone else's co…
I guess he invaded his own privacy, by agreeing that he would arrange for his grades to be sent to me by the school.
Also, while your straw man was amusing, it's also mostly wrong. The rules regarding PHI disclosure from covered entities to spouses is fairly complex -- not to mention non-spouses. You might be interested in this link:
https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/faq/488/does-hip...
Re: MIT’s Senior House dormitory closes, and a crisis blooms at colleges
#184I 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.
If you think it's likely that we have great minds flipping burgers now, it stands to reason there were minds greater than Jobs, Gates, etc (RMS? really?) flipping burgers then, too. I've seen this sentiment expressed before and it always struck me as the intellectual equivalent of "kids these days!" without much merit. Some people will waste their talent. Some people won't.
You're comparing Gates with his poor quality virusware to RMS who has written incomparably important parts of the Unix operating system and made it free for all. Then you decide to act like RMS is the one that doesn't belong in the list. LOL
The core code of Unix will live on long past the current incarnation of Windows.
Gates is a ruthless business man and thats the only reason his name is larger in your mind. His most striking quote was about how you give Windows licenses for free to Africa so they get addicted and have to keep buying it even though they can't afford it and Unix is free due to familiarity. Meanwhile RMS labored quietly to build a better world.
Re: MIT’s Senior House dormitory closes, and a crisis blooms at colleges
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This is unfortunately too close to the truth. While there are still many who enjoy teaching and guiding undergraduates, a Professors life is consumed by first, the pursuit of tenure and then the pursuit of more and more research funding for projects (not to mention doing the actual research). In that context, issues with undergraduate administration seem like an unsavory part of their jobs: often, offering very little in returns.
Re: MIT’s Senior House dormitory closes, and a crisis blooms at colleges
#186Once could argue that it is a good thing that old rebel spaces are closed as those places have a tendency go stale and turn into a cargo cult shadow of itself the more it's legacy is celebrated. The world don't need more safe-spaces where a bunch of well of kids can pretend they are changing the world, without having to deal with the fact that the movement's they pay homage to have been pacified and subverted since a…
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Re: MIT’s Senior House dormitory closes, and a crisis blooms at colleges
#187Senior 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.
When I first heard about it, I noticed that McCormick had the highest GPA and SH the lowest. So I helpfully suggested moving all the SH residents to McCormick and are there any other campus problems you would like me to solve this morning? Only a few were amused. PS. Former EC guy here. PPS. Sorry for the inside baseball.
Yeah lets move everyone to McCormick where all the suicides happen. Oh wait...
Re: MIT’s Senior House dormitory closes, and a crisis blooms at colleges
#188As 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.
People really do need to get some perspective on real problems. The safe spaces and coloring books for students after Trump got elected was pathetic. 18 year olds stormed Normandy, now they are crying over the democratic process. I say this as a college student myself. People will always find a reason to be miserable, so now that almost every major issue has been taken care of we have increasingly small things being…
Jesus, just get an AK and fly through Turkey to fight ISIS or stop complaining.
Re: MIT’s Senior House dormitory closes, and a crisis blooms at colleges
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 graduated from MIT 10 years ago and went to one of the last "cool" Steer Roasts my freshman year where the halls were inundated with drunk and drugged strangers invited randomly from the street even. Of course then later you find out some one or people got hurt but it's an afterthought to many who complain the school is infringing on their rights. This "issue" around the culture at Senior house is a lot more pervas…
> the halls were inundated with drunk and drugged strangers invited randomly from the street
That's a big cultural shift. There used to be a term in local dialect for non-MIT people in the dorms: urchins. (even defined in HowToGAMIT a bazillion years ago, iirc.)
I wonder if that change was brought about gentrification of the area? (The bio building on Ames used to be a factory, eg.)
Re: MIT’s Senior House dormitory closes, and a crisis blooms at colleges
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you think it's likely that we have great minds flipping burgers now, it stands to reason there were minds greater than Jobs, Gates, etc (RMS? really?) flipping burgers then, too. I've seen this sentiment expressed before and it always struck me as the intellectual equivalent of "kids these days!" without much merit. Some people will waste their talent. Some people won't.
You're comparing Gates with his poor quality virusware to RMS who has written incomparably important parts of the Unix operating system and made it free for all. Then you decide to act like RMS is the one that doesn't belong in the list. LOL The core code of Unix will live on long past the current incarnation of Windows. Gates is a ruthless business man and thats the only reason his name is larger in your mind. His m…
Can't help but laugh at anyone who would downvote this. Sorry I insulted someone on the Forbes wealthiest list. I know how that offends your capitalist sensibilities.
Meanwhile due to Gates we're stuck with "worse is better": https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html