Housing deliberations should involve student body, not just accept student input
Conversations in Dormcon and the UA have revealed that although the plans to turn the Metropolitan Storage Warehouse into a dorm by fall 2018 have fallen through, MIT is still planning to build an undergraduate dorm by fall 2019. In addition, as posts on MIT Confessions have hinted, the Chancellor’s Student Housing Advisory Committee (SHAC), made up of five to ten students, is planning some kind of experiment in alternative community structure for this dorm. SHAC has mountains of data about the ways in which different ideas succeed or fail at promoting diversity, community, and academic development, and although they’ve been secretive for the past half-year, we’ve been promised that they’re soon going to conduct more surveys, focus groups, and discussions to get student input.