Name: David Maze '00 Email: dmaze@mit.edu Title: The Year of Neglect Residence: Epsilon Theta Offices Held: Community Service Chair, LGC Moderator, LSC Night Director I suspect that I'm as disappointed as any of the rest of us that, beginning in the fall of 2001, MIT freshmen will no longer have the opportunity to live in a fraternity, sorority, or independent living group. What bothers me more, however, is the series of events that have brought us here, the general attitude the MIT administration has taken towards the FSILG system as a whole. In the two years I've been here, I've seen the administration actively fail to take action against those houses that have less than perfect track records. In the past year, I've seen proposals for change met with calls for student input -- and those calls, calls which asked for the involvement of the people most affected by proposed changes, were almost entirely ignored. If we can't help make the decisions that affect our houses, our lives, then what role does the MIT student body have in the operation of this campus? Just for a moment, let's think about ways in which the decision to house freshmen on campus might be correct. MIT is under tremendous pressure from the outside world to be a safe place; while a random state school might have a drinking problem, a world-class institution such as this is supposed to be free from such problems. In its own way, the death of Scott Kreuger last October should have been a wake-up call to the administration. These places across the river aren't just little bundles of friendly happiness, with smiling happy cheerful students with 5.0 grade-point averages. If one house can drink one of its freshmen to death, might not other houses do the same? In the following months, as you may recall, MIT came under increased scrutiny for a potential alcohol problem. The Boston _Globe_ published a story when the state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission confiscated a keg of beer being delivered to Zeta Psi. A couple of other houses came under media scrutiny after students returned to their dorm rooms drunk. And most recently, a roof deck party at Beta Theta Pi led to the injury of a Boston University campus policeman. MIT's response to these individual incidents has been minimal at best. No action has been taken against the Betas, for fear that disciplinary action might be taken as an admission of some wrongdoing on MIT's part. Other houses have gotten by with little more than a slap on the wrist and a warning, "don't do that again or we'll be serious next time." But MIT has never been serious without a front-page article in the _Globe_ to prompt it. Just so long as your house doesn't do anything blatantly horrible, just so long as your house avoids killing off more freshmen, why should you change? After all, the worst you'll get is a fine from the IFC, and if you're lucky a slight delay in the start of your Rush. But as pressure from the outside world has increased over the past year, MIT has been prodded towards sudden realizations that it needs to do something. A _Newsweek_ article on Kreuger's death provided one such prod; vague threats from the Boston Licensing Board may have provided another. In mid-June, the administration decided that something needed to be done -- and so, with many students out of town for the summer, the administration gave FSILGs two months to find an acceptable resident advisor. On the surface, this seemed like it could be a good idea. The GRT program in dorms has had reasonably good results over the years. But it wasn't clear what MIT wanted advisors to do. They weren't going to be policemen in FSILGs. They couldn't be just another person living in the house. There wasn't a clear plan on how they would make off-campus living safer for students. I think the clearest statement of why houses had to have resident advisors was given by Dean Rosalind Williams at an IFC meeting on July 2nd: "Having a resident advisor in your house shows that you have the intent of presenting a house that is percieved as safe by the outside world." Will RA's make FSILGs safer places to live? Look at what Roz says once more: our houses don't need to be safe, we just need people to percieve them as safe. And we don't even necessarily need to succeed at that, we only have to show that we intend to make people think that we're doing the right thing. A crisis was followed by a full year with a lack of any serious response from MIT. With pressure from the outside world to take real action, MIT actually did do something which could be considered in some sense "right": if the outside world wouldn't criticize dorm safety and the administration couldn't take real action to improve FSILG safety, then moving all freshmen to campus is a real, quantifiable step that concerned outsiders can look at and hopefully accept as a viable response to MIT's problems. Where does this leave us, the students? Still without a voice, for one thing. One or two students on a panel making a non-binding recommendation is not "student involvement" in any reasonable fashion. Decisions made behind closed doors and unleashed when students are unable to adequately respond -- giving houses two months with only half of their members to find resident advisors, or announcing just before Rush begins that, in three years, FSILGs will not have freshmen members -- these decisions do not show respect for the MIT student body, or even an understanding that we are anything more than pawns to be manipulated in a public-relations battle. At this point, the damage has been done. The outside world knows that freshmen will be housed on campus. For those not familiar with our unique housing system, this is seen as the best possible response. Going back on it would cripple any hope MIT has for plausibility with local government and news media. As students, we need to remember that our lives will continue as normal for two more years. The IFC's full set of recommendations for Orientation, including most notably an extension of the residence selection period, should be implemented. When the fall of 2001 arrives, however, we need to be prepared for it. We need to work with the administration to try to create a system in which our present diversity of housing options can still survive. Right now MIT has all-male houses, all-female houses, and coed houses; it has houses with active social programs and houses that have only a few quiet gatherings a term; it has houses of scholars, of athletes, of do-it-yourselfers who take pride in the work they do on their own homes. To the administration, then, I ask that you recognize the value of the FSILG system. More importantly, remember that students are real people, and that nearly all of us are legal adults. Having not been admitted to MIT by mistake, we do in fact have working thought processes and can reason and argue and try to make decisions. If you think some change needs to be made that affects our houses, ask us what we think of the proposals, and if we reject them outright, ask us what should be done to correct the problems you see. Don't make assumptions or sweeping generalizations about the way off-campus housing works; if you need information about fraternities, sororities, or independent living groups, ask people that live in them. Don't just guess at what our best interests are; talk to people whose lives will be directly affected by your proposals. Finally, don't turn housing decisions into a series of decrees, trying to achieve the Institute's goals at the cost of student welfare; instead, work with the students to try to create a system safe enough for the outside world, a system as diverse as our current one, a system where the people who know best about off-campus living -- the students -- can be satisfied with the path they have helped the administration create.