“ESP is imploding”: Crises, overhauls, and cancellations plague Educational Studies Program into the fall semester
The uncertain fate of the club, which has existed for nearly 70 years, and the various changes that have headlined its start to the fall semester highlight some of the many consequences that the Institute’s self-proclaimed “firehose” has had on a changing campus culture.
Publisher’s Note: The information presented in this article is a synthesis of several interviews held with current and former members of ESP alongside extensive internal and external documentation reviewed by The Tech. These accounts, and references to consequential incidents and executive-level decisions made that underscored the group’s current state of affairs, were corroborated by documented information—such as meeting reports and internally-circulated records, emails, and private text messages among members—obtained by The Tech.
Details of individual interviews held or identifying information of the sources consulted in the making of this article were withheld to protect privacy and to avert retaliation for their involvement. Specifics regarding the internal conflicts that occurred within the organization, which were verified by The Tech via individual testimony, were also withheld for privacy concerns.
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“Your enthusiasm for learning is what drives us to keep things running year by year,” a public early May email signed by the group’s then-club chairs read. A few lines later, the update that the email’s subject promised could not be more clear: the student group’s flagship summer program, the High School Studies Program (HSSP), was axed from the 2024 agenda.
The cutting of the program from the club’s 2024 syllabus was a shock, but underscored a growing trend in undergraduate life at the Institute: numerous long-standing student-run productions and events—well beyond the walls of ESP’s fourth-floor office in the Student Center—have fallen out of favor, fallen into disarray, or otherwise fallen short of decades of promise and precedent.
HSSP’s shuttering, although unknown to anyone at the time, would be only the first in a series of sweeping changes that would test the group’s resolve and commitment to each other and their mission.
The MIT Educational Studies Program (ESP), formed in 1957, is a student-run teaching and learning program that organizes sets of academic and non-academic educational events for area middle and high schoolers throughout the year. It is headed by a little over a dozen undergrads, who are referred to in their programs as the “ESP admins.”
The group administers four chief programs: Splash, a weekend-long high school event in November; Spark, a similar event held in March for middle schoolers; Cascade, a six-week Saturday event that takes place in the fall; and HSSP, a semiannual event that has headlined the group’s enterprise since the club’s inception. It also puts together smaller events on occasion. Each individual program is conducted by an elected directorate within the group, with the other student leaders providing support and auxiliary operations work.
“I’m considering leaving ESP next semester”: A brewing storm
HSSP runs biannually, once in the spring and again over the summer. Until the summer event’s unexpected cancellation, HSSP (or, rarely, a scaled-down substitute) had been continuously run for nearly two decades, as per an internal club database. (Members assert that the precedent goes much further back than available data suggests.) Typically, it would have begun in mid-July and ended in mid-August.
The group experienced numerous organizational complications in recent years following the COVID-19 pandemic, where sudden pandemic-era lockdowns left the club scrambling; Summer HSSP 2020 and Splash 2020 and 2021 were run as virtual programs, Spring HSSP 2021 was replaced with a slimmed virtual event known as e-Spark, and Cascade 2022 was entirely canceled.
The club has since struggled to regain its footing. But there was, up until this summer, one constant: Summer HSSP was, in whatever form, always given blessing to run without interruption.
An early sign of what was to come came in the midst of ESP’s spring elections. Ahead of their scheduled election, candidates for club leadership were asked to self-nominate for their positions of interest. In the days that followed, as the spreadsheet was gradually populated, not one member eligible for officership signed up to direct Summer HSSP. (The most recent iteration of Spring HSSP, which ended just two weeks prior to the scheduled election date, was a reportedly tense affair.)
Out of obligation, a last-ditch effort was made by two longtime club members, both of whom had directed previous iterations of the program, to put their names into consideration for directorship and evade the possibility of HSSP’s withdrawal just months before it was supposed to take place.
Regardless, just the day before the caucus, the elections were canceled. The usual transfer in leadership was halted and swapped out with an emergency meeting to discuss “broader structural problems” within the group, as described by an internal email.
Cutting HSSP, the decision that was ultimately made by popular consensus during that meeting, was a tough pill to swallow. As one member put it: “Summer HSSP is something that keeps ESP going.” But it was hard to justify the effort all for the sake of keeping with precedent.
The power of precedent, and its place in ESP, would be revisited in the coming months as the group would come to terms with its existential struggle against an Institute that was slowly leaving it and its mission behind.
“I’m going to propose an idea at the extreme”: A tumultuous spring and a last-ditch adaptation to a changing Institute culture
The rest of the April 16 emergency assembly was stark. Change, for better or for worse, was necessary.
Salient themes within discussion pointed to a broader characteristic in the Institute’s extracurricular environment that many regard as intense and grueling. The members talked at length on labor shortage and burnout, and debated unprecedented proposals aimed at accommodating the needs of an organization dwindling in membership and commitment.
Matters raised that day finally set in motion a series of organization-spanning renovations. Change was coming. Yet issues still loomed.
A new administrative team was eventually appointed. But the member list’s codified administrative hierarchy would be scrapped not long after its inception—the first step in a calculated move to pull back to ESP’s original vision and preserve the club’s sustainability.
“I felt like I didn’t have a lot of structural support”: A summer of concern and unease
The summer months—now without the associated pressures that came with running HSSP—became an experiment of sorts. Officerships were cut from the group’s power structure, a major change that was controversial when it was first proposed.
Instead, the proposal called for decentralized groups of committees that would supplant officerial duties. Though each subgroup is to still be headed by a “committee chair,” the stated goal of the initiative was to allow new recruits and more rank-and-file members to take greater responsibility for the organization. Committee chairs would also take part in the duties of the club chairs—ESP’s version of presidency—in response to the long-noted unsustainability of such a taxing role.
But these committees, as noted by some members, were understaffed. With fewer than a dozen active members during the summer, the organization was in a quandary.
Still, the group needed to prepare for Splash and Cascade, two of its fall semester programs. Spurred by a lack of support and the instability of an absentee planning committee, one of Cascade’s two elected co-directors ultimately stepped down from the role. The task of running the program fell under control of the remaining director.
Then one of ESP’s two club chairs also resigned.
“I personally don’t feel comfortable continuing ESP without major change”: A tense club retreat
ESP’s fall retreat took place a few days into the semester. The resignation of the former chair was difficult to grapple with as the challenges of the fall semester were rapidly becoming a reality, but the group had to figure out a way to manage.
Three primary discussions took center stage during the retreat.
In one meeting, members considered the possibility of shuttering Cascade 2024: the departure of one of its directors, tasks accumulating upon its planning committee, and generally low turnout were noted factors.. There was a concern that even if Cascade were to be run, there was a possibility of it breaking down midway through, a threat to ESP’s existence.
Ultimately, Cascade remained in the schedule, with key changes. The exact details of the cutbacks will be clear when the program begins in two weeks.
The second meeting centered around mitigating the aftermath following the remaining club chair’s declared intent to also step down. Although the decision was well-known to other club leaders by the time of retreat, the dialogue centered on reshaping the role into something more manageable moving forward.
A conversation on structural burden and burnout headlined the final discussion, in which members discussed the club’s state of affairs. It was intended to offer support within the organization and to tender a plan to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past year.
Also brought up was the current plan for Splash 2024 and Spark 2025: ESP would be cancelling Spark and punting Splash to the spring.
“It’s pretty clear that we can’t do this right now”: A tight budget
A decade ago, before the existence of the current version of Spark, Splash was a bigger affair that encompassed both middle and high school students. But the event was approaching unsustainably high attendee numbers—that singular event’s attendance would approach 3,000.
The student admins of that time decided to split the grade ranges between middle school and high school; to that end, they turned to a back-pocket prototype known as Spark.
Test-run in 2008 as a supplement to Spring HSSP to kick off its first day, the first Spark acted as a miniature Splash-like program for both middle and high schoolers. From 2009 through 2013, it became its own single-weekend spring program that served as a spring-semester mirror to Splash.
But in the leadup to the fall of 2013, in anticipation of continued record-high Splash attendance, ESP reorganized the two programs to curb attendee numbers. That year, Splash ran as a high school-only event with Spark as its middle school-only counterpart. The setup remained this way for ten years.
2023’s Spark, for the first time ever, ran at monetary loss.
Typically, all of ESP’s programs with the exception of Cascade generate revenue for the organization. Registration fees from the various programs are the main source of revenue for the organization. (Cascade serves underserved students in the area and is thus offered free of charge.)
A typical Splash or Spark may generate revenue on the order of ten thousand dollars. For HSSPs, which usually have lower attendance, the number is on the order of a few thousand.
Spark 2023 represented a significant unexpected decline in attendance, and, correspondingly, a significant unexpected hit to the group’s finances. The past spring’s program expanded to include 9th and 10th graders as a temporary fix. It seemed to have worked, alleviating the group’s concerns of continued financial viability for the time being.
But finances are in a precarious state. ESP’s bank account currently holds around $45k but the group is hoping to remain floating at $30k by January—a goal that might be unreachable should the group stick to status quo, some say.
This fall’s Splash had been anticipated to make up, both financially and organizationally, for the shuttering of HSSP—but as the date drew close, Splash’s directorate anticipated that it might not reach its outlined expectations.
Splash would be postponed to the spring with an expanded range from grades 7 to 12, and Spark 2025 would be cancelled: itself a reversion to the status quo of a decade ago.
Splash’s directors noted in public emails that the intended course of action was undertaken to better fulfill ESP’s mission by re-coalescing its resources. A separate announcement circulated within the ESP community further clarified this, adding that Spark as a program may be retired indefinitely. What was left unsaid were the tightening finances and the member burnout that put the team in the position in the first place.
“I don’t want to tell frosh that we don’t know what we’re doing”: A shaky start to a new semester
Six months following the mid-April meeting, and roughly a month following what would have been Summer HSSP, the club teetered.
ESP began this semester with around 14 active members—carried over from the membership who chose to return from last spring, and half the size of the organization a year prior. The club was structured for a much larger administrative team, something on the order of 30–45 student leaders by ballpark estimates made by longtime members. Current and former members say that it’s unsustainable.
A priority item for the group, now, is on onboarding and recruitment of new members; first-years and other new faces who, as is hoped, may bring a fresh culture to an old club.
Time will tell if ESP will find its footing and the next generation of its members will carry the organization forward.
“This is a big thing that has caused trauma for people”: A tsunami of burnout, conflict, and a problematic “family culture”
A grounding force that has kept ESP together was its vision of family. ESP presents as one of the most altruistic and community-centered student groups at the Institute. With teaching and learning while having fun as its ethos, the culture of kinship is front-and-center for ESP—at times outpacing its more academic pursuits.
Some club members were stopping by ESP’s weekly meetings in its fourth-floor office solely for the free food and company. This seemed to become a growing norm. Bonding was able to relieve the organization of some of its stress, but student admins on the other side of the workload divide say it has only exacerbated the problems.
This strong “family culture,” it seems, has also contributed—at least partially—to blurred boundaries between personal and professional, as described by member sources and as per discussions held during internal ESP meetings.
Various student leaders who spoke with The Tech described multiple overlapping layers of interpersonal conflict: drama, misconduct, and harassment.
Some club members declined to speak on such matters in fear of generating further friction. Those who agreed to speak described how these conflicts had been detrimental to the existing structural problems the club was already grappling with.
These incidents, allegedly several, occurred during the previous year. Many of them were reported to club leadership as they began to disrupt club activities; but both current and former leaders say that many were left unaddressed.
These layers of conflict, alongside the numerous other struggles the group was already struggling with, culminated in the events of the past six months. It has brought the group to where it is today.
“We can figure it out”: A path forward
This story is not unique to the Educational Studies Program, nor is it a story that exists in isolation.
Rippling effects from the pandemic may account for some of ESP’s struggles. But it is not the full story. The Institute and its way of life have changed: interviews with student leaders who keep together some of MIT’s oldest organizations have exposed the cracks within what has been seen as a larger Institute culture.
The story of ESP is only one of many.
Members say the organization has since committed itself to seeking help from campus resources and is in active communication with support-centered offices around the Institute. They are hopeful that the group will rebound from its recent lows. ESP’s efforts at reform, members say, for the time being, have incurred change for the better. What these changes represent to them is hope.
And they are hopeful, despite a rocky past year, that they are poised to take on the challenges that await.