LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
A thank you to the MIT community
Since about the sixth grade, when I first attended ESP Splash (Sorry about that bit of deception, it was smaller and less strict then), I have been spending time intermittently with MIT students. I took just about everything that ESP had to offer: Splash and Spark and Junction and Delve and HSSP. I liked MIT, and I spent more time there. My first date in high school was an LSC showing of Transformers. I got a four year MITSFS membership when I was a freshman. I went to the Model United Nations you were kind enough to host superbly well. I have spent time with professors, students, and even a few applicants. I have been attending events and hanging out at MIT for over six years now.
Throughout it all people have been friendly, caring, and fantastically quirky. I have learned that if I ask an MIT student a question about almost anything, I will be surprisingly likely to at least get a reference to where I can find the answer. I have been shown the roofs, and the lovely view of Boston at night, because someone I didn’t know wanted to cheer me up. I have read the copies of The Tech that are available for free public consumption, and laughed at the comics and thought about the articles. I won’t be going to MIT, because I am going to read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, but I will always have a warm space in my heart for the people who have helped in so many small ways.
So, thank you. Thank you for being open to the public, and letting high school students come to your cool events. Thank you for being friendly and warm. Thank you for being brilliant and interesting. Thank you.
Thankfully,Keller Scholl
On seceding from DormCon
To the statements in The Tech regarding the decision that the Maseeh Hall Executive Council (MHEC) made to secede from DormCon: While it is true that MHEC made a quick vote during our previous meeting, it was a decision that was months into discussions. Our informing of the dorm and The Tech was unfortunately disjointed, and we hope to clear up the reasoning why we decided to leave DormCon.
1. Budget Concerns: As we have over 460 residents (with even more next year), at $5 per person per semester, we were pulling a larger negative compared to other dorms every year.
2. We have not been allowed to participate in Rex, and therefore received very little benefit from DormCon during the period of REX.
3. While DormCon has a fund (approximately $8,000) from which they can give grants for events, there is no formal way of applying for these, as the $8,000 is apportioned at the beginning of the year (Taken from the previous three years of DormCon Budgets: $5,000 for Steer Roast, $2,000 for Piano Drop, and $1000 for DTYD).
4. DormCon spent an excessive amount of money on their personal retreat this year ($4000), none of which benefited Maseeh as a whole.
5. We believe the oversized executive council does a poor job of representing their constituents, often giving more merit to the loudest opinion rather than the most sound.
Even though we are no longer a voting member of DormCon, we still remain a member dorm and will continue to be invested and committed to the improvement of the convention.
We believe in helping out our community and helping out the smaller dorms and groups throw events, but we believed that the forced redistribution of wealth from DormCon did not benefit the majority of our residents; and that’s why our decision was made.
MHEC
Clay Goggil ’14(President), Keanu Delgado ’15 (Vice President), Bruno Faviero ’15 (Parliamentarian), Joseph Abadi ’15 (Treasurer), Logan Mercer ’15 (Secretary), Maggie O’Grady ’16 (Freshman Rep), Austin Fathman ’15 (Voting Member At Large)
Unfair and untimely
To the esteemed housing office members, Dean Hastings, Dean Colombo, and Chancellor Grimson:
My name is Patrick Marx, a current MIT senior living in Boston. I’m writing to express my outrage at how the closing of Bexley house has been handled.
Independent of the necessity of its actual closing, I find it unacceptable to present a decision of this magnitude to the Bexley residents with the timing and lack of warning it had. You have forced hardworking, dedicated students into position of making a year long decision on housing in a matter of hours. Further, this decision that must now be made, is presented at the worst of possible times. The crunch weeks leading up to finals are among the most stressful and stretched for time of any in the year, and adding to that with such callousness is shameful in the least.
The first words on the housing website are as follows: “At the core of the MIT housing experience is a powerful sense of community.”
The Bexley community was by far one of the closest and family like communities in our entire university. This information should have been presented months if not a year in advance to give the residents a fair chance at preserving what, to them, really is their family. Instead they have been taken completely off guard, with no chance at even achieving what could be described as a “decent” housing situation. They are forced to choose between moving into a dorm with people they don’t know, or betting they will be able to find independent housing far late in the game.
This is not how we should treat our students. This isn’t even how we should treat our enemies. If you as an office would like to claim a community, then you should follow through and make things right for those students. Any response is appreciated, and thank you for your time.
Patrick Marx ’13
Bexley, we love you!
Devastated … absolutely devastated. I am one of the GRTs at Bexley and this news has severely affected our community — we are still in shock. As a graduate student coming to Bexley, to be a GRT has been the best part of my experience at MIT. Prior to Bexley, I was growing increasingly unhappy at MIT and I had no community that I fit with until I landed here. This is the same way many of the undergraduate students at Bexley feel. Its not just me though — I have a partner who has found this place to be an amazing community that has embraced her and made her days better, too.
My partner and I are about to have a child, and we were so excited to have Bexley be part of our family. The students and us have been looking forward to having a new member of Bexley. Believe it or not, we were looking forward to our child taking its first steps down the graffitied hallways, the vulgar and beautiful alike. We love it all.
The thought of not being with the students at Bexley next year is truly saddening, the loss of our community is painful, and the feelings that the students are experiencing are worse. My only solace is in the creative determination of our culture, and its desire to continue. My hope is that the MIT community which I have come to identify with so strongly will do what it always does: be amazing and find solutions that no other group of people could find.
Bexely, we love you!
Micah Rye Eckhardt SM ’10, Phuong Nguyen, and Baby (Name still to be determined, probably not Evergreen or Baby Ninja, but who knows.)