
Senior House at MIT Dies, and a Crisis Blooms at Colleges (2017) - aj7
https://www.wired.com/story/a-weird-mit-dorm-dies-and-a-crisis-blooms-at-colleges/
======
wegs
Insider here: The sort of shit which happened here -- with "confidential"
student data misused -- is rampant at MIT. Survey map to dorms isn't even the
tip of the iceberg. My guess is that at some point, we'll have a Watergate-
grade scandal, but I've been wrong about these things before (Equifax is
trading above where it was January 2017).

~~~
Thriptic
I've personally never heard of any other incident quite like this happening at
MIT, at least not in the last 7 years or so when I was on campus; could you
provide any other examples? The only other thing I can think of off the top of
my head is psych data being used to send people home on forced mental health
leave.

The handling of this incident made me very angry, principally because it's so
hard to get MIT students to seek mental health counseling because they are
very fearful of retaliation for doing so. The misuse of the mental health
survey totally validated their concerns and severely damaged the fragile trust
that various orgs student health orgs unaffiliated with this incident at MIT
had worked hard to build with students.

Also, this article does a poor job of explaining the recent history leading up
to the closing of Senior House, which better explains why the closing of the
house was viewed as a total attack on alternative culture. MIT didn't just
close senior house, they also knocked down Bexley, another alternative dorm, a
few years earlier under somewhat dubious circumstances (suddenly refusing to
repair the dorm post flooding iirc?) without proper student input, and I
believe there was controversy about a third alternative dorm as well. The
students' interpretation of this was that the MIT administration was
fundamentally targeting alternative culture and were not negotiating in good
faith during any of these closures.

~~~
wegs2
The incidents I know about haven't been publicly exposed. If I spoke about
them in specifics, the Institute would retaliate. One I can bring up -- since
I don't think it exposes me -- is email.

In essence, if you use an institutional email account (or keep personal data
on Athena or otherwise) you can presume administration will read it without
permission. If you get into conflict with the Institute, personal emails can
come up and be used against you.

MIT has a lot of good people, but "unaffiliated" is a difficult word to use
here. The problems come from the very top of the administration. Just because
a particular mental health organization is good and built up trust doesn't
mean they have the power to not get overruled by the Central Administration
later. Until and unless the Institute institutes some real checks and
balances, students absolutely should go outside for mental health.

~~~
Thriptic
I agree that students should seek mental health care off campus. In terms of
checks and balances, one nice feature of MIT is that power seems to be very
diffuse, to the point where it's actually annoying to try to get anything done
at an institute level.

For example, I was at one point affiliated with an org that was dealing with
sensitive student medical data and we had enough political power due to who we
were affiliated with such that I don't think anyone could have tried to force
us to disclose data.

~~~
wegs2
Power is somewhat diffuse. Ultimately, there are channels for real power. It's
a corporation with a small number of officers with signing authority.
Ultimately they, in a very real sense, own and control the Institute.

The Institute owns the computers your data lives on. The Institute owns and
has keys to the rooms where those servers live. The Institute believes it owns
the data too.

What force do you think is needed?

Power at that level is rarely exerted at levels visible to a student or
employee -- but it happens. I can't comment on your medical data, but most
places, there are discreet channels for what the Institute considered to be
more serious issues.

------
proofofconcept
>But groups like Senior House, which define themselves by being different,
also run the risk of becoming highly conformist, Packer says. The punk rock
movement is a particularly vivid example of this phenomenon. “They self-
describe as being different, but from the outside they all look the same,” he
says.

They don't want to look different from each other; they want to look different
from people like him. It's really not that complicated. Spinning that into
alarmism against the idea countercultures in general like this guy does is
just ridiculous, and there's absolutely no way he's doing so in good faith.

~~~
jl2718
Why would anybody define themselves as different from someone else? That’s
just giving that person control over yourself. Identifying yourself with your
own positive affirmation is difficult and scary and maybe the most important
thing you’ll ever do.

~~~
Redoubts
lol

------
ghaff
Pretty much everyone I know who has some first-hand experience with the
situation with Senior House agrees that 1.) MIT handled the situation quite
badly but 2.) There were issues and no outcome was going to leave everyone
involved satisfied.

As someone who has stayed peripherally involved with a couple of colleges over
the years, I'd also make a general observation. Do at least US colleges have
more rules and regulations than they used to? Absolutely. At the same time,
there also seems to be less self-regulation than often happened in the past
related to alcohol and other things. I'm certainly not suggesting that people
were saints in the past but there seemed to have been fewer of the sort of
incidents that involved hospitals and other serious consequences.

~~~
dantheman
I think in the past it was harder to hear about incidents happening and there
were less people overall. I doubt that there were less incidents per person.

~~~
ghaff
There's definitely some of that. A lot of things that would have just been
ignored or glossed over a few decades ago now tend to lead to (for both better
and worse) investigations and news stories. That said, I do think that, to at
least some degree, rules have tended to replace self-regulation.

------
denzil_correa
> MIT’s dismantling of Senior House is part of a nationwide trend on college
> campuses, a shift that places a premium on safety, orderliness, and minimal
> bad publicity above all. Experts trace the roots of this shift to the 1980s.
> Since then, college tuition has skyrocketed and with it the competition for
> students who can afford it. Parents footing the bill are paying a lot more
> attention. The world has become more litigious and more corporate.

One of things - amongst many others - which the 1980s keep on giving.

~~~
ReallyAnonymous
I'm a Duke '91 graduate and had several sigma chi friends and witnessed this
game many times. Don't know if it still takes place now.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwmpLZHKF4Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwmpLZHKF4Y)

------
shuntress
Kill the past and learn from autopsy. MIT should understand that tradition
leads to loss of knowledge.

If a party dorm that draws pride from pit roasts and drunken mud wrestling is
worth having, it will be re-made.

~~~
Veen
Tradition is a form of knowledge, and one that is not so easily reconstituted
once it's been destroyed.

------
todd8
Something dramatic started to happen in the late 60's at US colleges. Student
demonstrations over the Vietnam War were raging across the country in 1968,
1969, and 1970. MIT, like other schools, found itself with a student body and
faculty largely unhappy with the status quo[1]. I was a first year student
there in 1969. It was the cusp of a philosophical sea change taking place on
campuses fueled by the Civil Rights and Black Power movement[2], the anti-
Vietnam War movement, the hippy/free-love movement[3], feminism[4], the birth
control pill, and a new wave of recreational hallucinogens. Marxism seemed
like a real alternative to capitalism and was actively promoted by student
groups (e.g. the SDS , Students for a Democratic Society).

I believe that somewhere around 1969, MIT adjusted it's admission parameters
to admit a more conservative, perhaps less disruptive, set of students. In my
experience, the students admitted before 1969 were more open to radical ideas
and the entrants it admitted in subsequent years, while I was there, seemed a
bit less likely to espouse or act in such ways. The older students were more
concerned with the Vietnam War and being drafted. They schemed to stay in
school, getting advanced degrees, and many of these with the more radical
views ended up as post-docs and eventually, the elder faculty at universities
today. The students that followed me were spared the existential threat of the
draft, it ended in 1971.

I lived off campus and my MIT girlfriend moved into Senior house in 1971 or
1972 so I spent a lot of time there. The year before, she lived in the woman's
dorm where most of the women on campus lived. At the time, few women attended
MIT and the woman's dorm, McCormick Hall, was a modern, traditional dorm for
women. It had a check-in desk for guests, and guests were expected to be
escorted throughout the dorm, just like almost all women's dorms at other
colleges. Senior House was completely different, and I was quite surprised to
see that they had co-ed bathrooms!

MIT is a great university, and I felt like this was a wondrous time at MIT:
big ideas were discussed and debated openly in a safe atmosphere where
differing views could be held. Sadly, it doesn't appear to me that university
life is like that anymore. In my view, MIT has an admirable mission, to
advance science and engineering for all humanity; how much should it manage
it's students and their lives to best pursue this goal?

I'm no sociologist, so its probably best to take my random recollections with
a grain of salt.

[1]
[http://scienceandrevolution.org/blog/2016/7/8/v7rxigo0aw4it8...](http://scienceandrevolution.org/blog/2016/7/8/v7rxigo0aw4it8niy6k4szbm4yiq2i)

[2] [https://www.thoughtco.com/civil-rights-movement-timeline-
fro...](https://www.thoughtco.com/civil-rights-movement-timeline-
from-1965-to-1969-45431)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterculture_of_the_1960s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterculture_of_the_1960s)

[4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-
wave_feminism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-wave_feminism)

~~~
allenz
> the students admitted before 1969 were more open to radical ideas

Perhaps this reflected a broader social trend, rather than a change in
admissions preferences? The 1970s marked a growing desire for stability and
conformity, as symbolized by the transition from Lyndon B. Johnson (Democrat)
to Richard Nixon (Republican).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_modern_American_co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_modern_American_conservatism#1970s)

------
selimthegrim
There was an incident at Caltech recently where a student was told to take
down an sign that read “Impeach” (in jest about the house/frat he lived in)
because “political speech is forbidden in the dorms”. He was allowed to keep
it eventually with posting an addendum saying “This is my own personal
opinion, not Caltech’s”

~~~
tzs
They may still be sensitive from the Nixon incident.

In 1973 some students from Dabney Hovse hung a large "Impeach Nixon" sign on
Millikan library (the tallest building on campus).

This upset the founder/President of a major oil company, who cancelled a
planned $1 million donation to Caltech.

It also upset the Dabney family, which Dabney Hovse was named for. They
disowned it. I'm not quite sure how you disown a house that is named after
you, but I'd guess it includes stopping any ongoing charitable giving to the
house or the school it is part of.

That "Impeach Nixon" sign was quite unusual for Caltech. Students just really
don't have time for such things, because the workload is large and intense.
The only known organized act of public protest there before that was in early
1968, when Caltech students went to NBC's studious in Burbank to protest the
cancellation of Star Trek.

~~~
jonjacky
When I was at Caltech, students organized a day-long shutdown in Spring 1970
to protest the Vietnam war, prompted by Nixon's invasion of Cambodia. This was
about the same time as the Kent State killings etc.

Possible outcome of the Star Trek protest: Leonard Nimoy came to campus in
Spring 1972 to campaign for George McGovern in the California primary.

------
gumby
I am continually (pleasantly) shocked how many interesting ex-MIT people I
meet turned out to have lived at SH (at random times 1970s-2000s).. Even
happened at a random party just last night.

------
nartz
Unfortunately, Senior House isn't alone in this. It actually started much
earlier, with a systematic dismantling of fraternities which were somehow
deemed problematic, many of which had been around for hundreds of years.

The inflection point was generally attributed to the changing of the
administration - which used to be more governed by professors and the like who
might empathize with students, but eventually grew to be much more
bureaucratic; at some point, certain individuals at the top decided to target
the living groups they disagreed with. Senior house, being a place where
outsiders gathered, and having a reputation of extremes, drugs, is just the
latest casualty in the cleansing war against the more tolerated traditions of
yore.

------
cbHXBY1D
This seems _very_ familiar to me as a former resident of Cloyne Court Hotel,
the largest and most radical of Berkeley Student Cooperative's houses. It was
shut down in 2014 after the settlement of a civil lawsuit about an overdose
that took place four years prior. Just like Senior House it was a "a proudly
anarchic community of creative misfits and self-described outcasts" and just
like Senior House it was shut down for sticking out.

[http://www.dailycal.org/2014/03/14/co-op-board-votes-
convert...](http://www.dailycal.org/2014/03/14/co-op-board-votes-convert-
cloyne-court-substance-free-academic-theme-house/)

------
danmg
I stayed there in the summer for a conference during graduate school. Even in
the week or so I was there, it felt like something between a hackerspace and
the headquarters of a zine than some drab campus housing. There were people
showing up to practice twirling flaming batons; there were sun workstations in
ever nook; there were random late night bullshit sessions.

------
jancsika
> Campus lore has it that Senior House residents used to burn kittens in the
> house furnace.

Ok, I'll bite...

Let's say I sent a message to some FSF/Gnu info mailing list that reads, "Hi.
Someone on HN has said that the AGPL is a viral license and can end up
infecting non-AGPL-licensed software running on the same machine. I've never
heard this before. Is this true?"

Past experience tells me that someone at FSF/Gnu sends me back an email either
full of relevant information, or with relevant and helpful links where I can
read valuable information.

And I _don 't_ hold FSF/Gnu to be some bastion of social grace.

Now, let's say I walked into Senior House after hearing this myth, and I say,
"Hi. Someone on campus is saying that Senior House used to burn kittens in the
furnace. Is this true?"

What would have been the likely response to me in this case? A social response
with relevant and useful information like Gnu/FSF, or an anti-social response?

~~~
marssaxman
A question that ridiculous and impertinent would deserve an answer equally
ridiculous and unhelpful. One particularly beneficial "social response" would
be to mess with the questioner as hard as possible.

~~~
haus2001
"... and, sadly, the 3 to 4 months for the kitten to grow was ultimately what
doomed Bonsai Kitten's chances of being the most successful startup out of
Senior House."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonsai_Kitten](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonsai_Kitten)

~~~
jancsika
Is Bonsai Kitten what the "campus lore" was about?

------
api
Behind a very thin veil of social liberalism, we are in fact living in a
profoundly conservative and conventional era. It's like this weird bohemian
puritanism, or the 50s with Tinder. The big difference is the religion. Back
then it was nationalism and Christian puritanism. Now it's the worship of GDP
and corporatism.

These things are cyclic.

In any case this is too bad. The first time I went to Boston my first stop
after the airport was to be dragged to Senior House. Seemed like something out
of a movie.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
Religion is simply a selection of social values that individuals hold to be
above evidence, critique, or question. We've replaced one religion with
another. As the article states: _"..the administration allege that those norms
were exactly the problem in Senior House—that the strong culture in the dorm,
far from being welcoming and supportive as the students contend, had become
toxic, a negatively reinforcing environment. The truth is probably somewhere
in the middle."_

It's funny actually. Anywhere you see the word 'toxic' replace it with
'against wholesome family values' and we've simply traversed to another side
the horse shoe. And this didn't start in the 80s. This all goes in an oddly
regular 20 year cycle. The liberal 20s, conservative 40s, liberal 60s,
conservative 80s, liberal 00s, and now we're headed into the 20s. And it's the
exact same pattern over and over, it starts out great but then as the dominant
position reaches critical mass they appproach insanity and we start a trend in
the other direction again reaching it's peak after about 10 years before it
too ends up headed into insanity and we reverse once again.

Well at least everybody can look forward to the 2030s!

~~~
lotsofpulp
Except Americans gain freedoms over time such as civil rights for minorities,
ability to choose abortion, gay marriage, environmental rights, etc. It’s not
just bouncing back and forth, there is progress being made, unfortunately some
keep trying to reverse it.

------
pcl
Mods: please add [2017] to the title

