Can anyone provide some insight on the MIT Senior House incident from last year? I just applied to MIT, and should what happened to the building worry me?
I think that you should be aware that MIT is an academically very demanding and high stress environment. You should only go there if this is what you want. Otherwise personally I wouldn’t worry about it.
If you are not the type of person who would have chosen to live in Senior House, or find it to be a political cause you are passionate about, it probably has no relevance to your day to day life, if you manage to get admitted to MIT and matriculate.
What do you mean by should you worry? I think there is a lot of misinformation circulating because MIT hasn’t revealed much, possibly because of privacy issues. Senior House will stay a grad dorm. It shouldn’t affect undergraduates in any way.
The undergraduate community there and support network, open environment, etc was the value that students argue of Senior House. All current residents were removed. The building itself is not the problem. There’s plenty of debate here, but many people at MIT see this as a huge hit to the student culture. As mentioned, if you weren’t interested in living there, this likely won’t affect you in any way. But there are people that chose MIT the year this happened specifically because of Senior House. There’s a Reddit thread you can google for with lots of student and alumni discussion.
I’m well aware of the details. All the dorms are welcoming and supportive. Two are particularly open to the gay population. It’s my opinion that administration made the right move shutting down Senior House. The drug problem was a huge liability. You think a school should turn a blind eye to that? If someone died of an overdose, these same alums/students causing the commotion would be the most vocal about blaming MIT for not providing a safe environment. I’m done with this debate. People interested in going to college so they can freely use drugs should not apply to MIT.
Again, there’s plenty of debate on whether shutting it down was a good call or not, and I’m not intending to take sides on it here. All I’m saying is that one thing can be objectively said: Senior House is not the same as it was previously. That does affect undergrads who were affected previously by it, for better or worse. Your first comment implies the opposite. By your views on the issue, the effect should be positive.
I think the MIT Administration does a good job keeping students safe. I trust MIT, and believe the OP should feel its a safe environment to learn. Drug awareness is up, and MIT’s Bexley Hall as an undergraduate house was shuttered too, and that had a druggy culture from way back in the 60s and early 70s, when LSD was actually legal to use. See this famous LSD safety debate between the late MIT Professor Jerome “Jerry” Letvin, well known bioelectrical engineering professor, and MD, and a former Harvard professor. Its a great discussion about the brain, by a world famous MIT expert, with an MIT crowd of students.
MIT is about debate and discussion on all issues. I feel this debate typifies MIT to this day. MIT students and professors dig for the truth and debate tough issues. Its very clear who won this debate, televised nationally, the MIT professor, who presents scientific evidence of LSD’s harm to the brain.
For anyone who did not know about MIT Bexley Hall’s counter culture, this may help fill in the blanks.
An era is gone with Senior Haus and Bexley Hall both closed, Bexley Hall was torn down, due to structural
problems and a park is now in its place, across from the main entrance to MIT.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6m8se96yyM
The current and next generation will make their own house cultures, in MIT housing. Its OK.
There is plenty of variety in housing at MIT.
I feel like your posts entirely misses the point - it’s not that anyone is arguing against drug use is bad. The opposing side would argue that MIT did not do this to make students safer, but closed Senior House for show/covering their own butt and that the housing had no causation of the use or sale of drugs but rather was a positive environment for struggling students for various cultural and social reasons. The implication is that these students will now be worse off, lacking the support network that they had in the housing previously. Of course the validity of that view is a fair argument, but to pretend this is about people arguing “drugs are good” is a complete mischaracterization that the administration took that completely stunted any actual discussion of what the students in the housing cared about.
The worry, in this case, is that the MIT administration is not for this anymore based on their actions.
Some quotes from alumni and current students:
I completely disagree with the implications of poster above. Here is why I disagree
- I believe Senior Haus was closed for valid reasons
- I trust Rafael Reif and his administration to make good decisions because I know Rafael, and believe he is both a good human being and a good leader for MIT
- Senior Hausdoes not represent for me, "my MIT" and is not most people's MIT. Senior Haus was a few hundred under grad students, living together, in an institution with about 10,000 students total, and many faculty and administrators. We all count at MIT.
I had a few friends at Senior Haus and they seem to be not too upset about its closing,
as they did not focus on the housing as the key feature of an MIT education.
Most people I know if asked about MIT, and what they remember or loved about it,
would explain about their research work , talk about social life in Boston, and describe
their friends, or their other activities, like sports, music, Tai Chi, or whatever they were into,
and maybe some would discuss their house, but its not the top item for many of us. Some would
mention their religious group, there are many strong ones at MIT and MIT students identify with
those groups as well.
To say that Senior Haus reflected MIT is simply wrong, it was one small living group, that apparently
had some issues that caused Rafael Reif and his administrators to put it on probation and shut it down.
The idea that MIT could become “Stanford” a trendy west school with Division 1 athletics and a total focus
on spin offs and marketing is so ridiculous I don’t even know what to say. Did the poster actually go to MIT???
MIT in every way possible is different from Stanford. I always laugh when students think they are similar,
they are not similar. Stanford prides itself on athletics, and has the top sports in the nation. Students are there
because they can run fast. Students are at MIT for other reasons, almost always.
The housing system for one is very different. I like the four year housing system in particular for freshman
as I felt I got very good guidance from upper classmen. This housing system is unique to MIT, Caltech
and Rice University. Every other school out there offers freshman dorms.
I was first generation girl in 1978, and somehow I managed to fit at Baker House. I also
tried to live off campus as a second semester senior. It was a good experience for me. I think the idea of
isolating gay students is also ridiculous and wrong. What for? The idea that first generation students
had to live in Senior House is also ridiculous, most of us were in Baker and did fine. MIT has a lot of First Gen
kids, and they live in all the various housing. Isolating them is both wrong and stupid. If that was happening
then I think that alone would be a reason to shutter Senior House. My own understanding, is Senior House
culture includes alumni, which again I believe is wrong.
Current MIT students should form their own house culture, its not for some old hippies like me
or anyone else from the 1970s to tell current students how to live. But MIT has an obligation
to report illegal activities, if discovered, and that has repercussions.
That’s quite an ending for a long post talking about what MIT should be, directly against what more recent and current students are saying…
That’s exactly what the debate is around - some claim the narrative is misleading and the repercussions do not match the events.
I read somewhere that a major reason that Senior House was closed was that its freshman return rate and six year graduation rate were out-of-whack with the rest of the campus, which dragged down these percentages for MIT overall and, consequently, lowered the USNWR ranking.
The decision wasn’t made because of ranking.