<p>This one just came out today: <a href=“http://web.mit.edu/committees/edcommons/documents/TF_SumRecs.pdf[/url]”>http://web.mit.edu/committees/edcommons/documents/TF_SumRecs.pdf</a></p>
<p>Do you like the new GIR’s requirement? Will the Class of 2010 be affected by the new change?</p>
<p>Ugh, make the HASS First Year Experience go away. Please no. Please, please no.</p>
<p>Other than that, it actually doesn’t seem half bad. I’m so, so glad that someone finally destroyed those ridiculous HASS requirements.</p>
<p>I’ve only very briefly scanned the report, and aside from the “HASS Experience,” dare I say, I actually kind of like it.</p>
<p>Weird. =P</p>
<p>I don’t understand why people in charge think it’s a good idea to force freshmen into hokey things like the First Year Experience classes. I know I would have been extremely unhappy to have been forced into a freshmen-only HASS my freshman year.</p>
<p>Things that are not good ideas:
<p>…wait, does this make me cruft? :)</p>
<p>Congratulations, Mollie, you’ve now officially metamorphasized into the next stage of MIT life! =P</p>
<p>(I completely agree, so no worries, I’m sure I’ll turn into cruft the moment I’m technically eligible.)</p>
<p>Also, now that I’ve read the summary more carefuly…is it just me, or are there some super-BSed “diversity” points in there? Like, committees to monitor how “comfortable” minority students are with cirriculum changes. What does that even MEAN? And all of the newly created subjects must directly address diversity? I’m sorry, how is that going to work its way into a project-based engingeering class?</p>
<p>Ugh. This is why I hate these kinds of reports. Like, ok, diversity is good. But I feel like every official report ever must spend at least 1/4 of its pages on diversity issues or risk being castrated by society, so we end up with all this unsubstantial BS that doesn’t even really mean anything.</p>
<p>Am I the only person really confuzzled?
@_@
I thought I understood the GIR’s.</p>
<p>I still want to know that, will my class of 2010 be affected by the new change?</p>
<p>I doubt the class of 2010 will be affected. This isn’t a final decision, it’s just the final report of the committee – the final word on the subject likely won’t be out for a while. The last time they changed the HASS requirement (to require CI classes instead of the previous “Phase 1/Phase 2” requirement), students who were already at MIT had to complete the requirements in place when they got there.</p>
<p>no no, nor will class of 11 even, I’m sure.</p>
<p>by the way, this is dumb. don’t get me wrong, I love change, but change from hard-to-understand-and-explain to even-harder-to-understand-and-explain? not cool.</p>
<p>At one of the parent meetings today we were told that these new ideas haven’t even been voted on yet.</p>
<p>Right, the report (which is really just a list of recommendations to President Hockfield) was only released on Friday. There are plenty of levels of bureaucracy to go through still before anything actually happens. Also, I doubt everything will be implemented exactly the way it is presented there.</p>
<p>Some aspects of the report that I LIKE:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Rolling the CI-H and the HASS distribution into one requirement. CI-H was becoming superfluous.</p></li>
<li><p>Simplifying the HASS distribution categories to Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, from the often arbitrary Categories 1-5.</p></li>
<li><p>We probably should have some sort of computation/engineering GIR. And project-based classes can be cool.</p></li>
<li><p>In general, I like their “minority report” version of the science core, that they didn’t actually endorse but talked about for a while, that would require everyone to take 18.01-02, 8.01, and something from all of five categories of math, physics, chemical sciences, life sciences, and project-based computation/engineering. I like it much better than the version that they did endorse (see below).</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Some aspects of the report that I DON’T LIKE:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>The stupid Freshman Experience HASS class. I hate this idea so much.</p></li>
<li><p>A smaller number of available subjects with which students can fulfill HASS distribution requirements. “Oh noes, they might have too many choices!” Plus, you’d have to take all the distribution subjects during the first two years, and your concentration subjects the second two. I think this is silly and prescriptive.</p></li>
<li><p>The version of the new science core that they endorse would require 18.01-02, 8.01, and something from five of the six categories of math, physics, chemical sciences, life sciences, computation/engineering, and freshman project-based experience. First of all, it makes me sick to my stomach to think of some of the course 6/8/18 wankers who think they’re too good for bio and will now be able to get out of it. Second, and relatedly, I think that all MIT students should be exposed to college-level versions of all of the primary colors of science. Third, 8.01 is the only science class worth requiring for everyone? Go go course 8 superiorty complex. Fourth, what’s up with this freshman project-based experience garbage? Outside of the freshman advising seminars and the senior thesis subjects, I don’t understand why we should restrict subjects by class. That’s so un-MIT.</p></li>
<li><p>I’m both disturbed and irritated by the emphasis on “coherency of the first-year program” and this growing trend of treating freshmen as special naive little babies instead of normal MIT students (see Freshmen On Campus policy for another example of this trend).</p></li>
<li><p>They just had to get in another dig at Orientation and the residence selection process. My alum friends fought hard to preserve that! Leave it alone!</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Grr, yeah, aside from all of the problems I had with the GIR suggestions themselves (which I will describe in greater detail when I’m not this hosed), the thing that irked me the most about the actual report was the completely superfulous comment about how “Orientation used to focus too much on ReX, but we’ve been cutting that back so good for us. But hey maybe let’s cut it back some more, while we’re on the topic.”</p>
<p>It’s weird, because sometimes it does seem clear that these committees really have MIT’s best interests at heart, but at other times they seem to be so completely clueless to even the most basic aspects of MIT culture. I just don’t get it.</p>
<p>
[quote]
In such a case, it is natural to believe that our residential system and burgeoning student association scene should be major foci for increasing informal interactions among students, ranging from the casual to the more structured. Although there are many signs of hope at MIT, there is a puzzling tendency to adopt rigid positions when the residential system is asked to participate fully in increasing meaningful interactions among students. We certainly recognize the importance of balancing values like choice with the maintenance of safe, unique social/cultural spaces that are the hallmarks of our residential system. Still, if we truly believe that diversity is a top issue at MIT for the life success of our students, that increasing comfort with a
diverse set of people requires attention to formal and informal interactions, and that MIT’s residential system is our richest locus of such informal interactions, then we must insist that the residential system play a major, active role as we devote more attention to matters of educational diversity.
<a href=“from%20pg%205-18%20and%20pg%205-19%20of%20the%20full%20report”>/quote</a></p>
<p>Stuff like this makes me want to put my fist through the computer screen. I totally agree with you, Laura – it’s like they have absolutely no clue what it means to an MIT student to be part of a particular living group.</p>
<p>I think it weaves in with the “let’s put the baby freshmen in a nice fuzzy blankie” idea – they don’t understand that it benefits an MIT freshman incredibly to be able to interact with upperclassmen on a regular basis in a living group or in a HASS. I feel more loyalty to my living group than to my class year, and I’m sure that’s a sentiment that some people would love to eradicate.</p>
<p>where do we complain?</p>
<p>I support randomized housing to promote diversity, actually; but I don’t support forcing kids to take dumb hass classes (foundational classes from a list) I’d rather start with more advanced hass coursework.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.cripplingdepression.com/comic.php?id=293[/url]”>http://www.cripplingdepression.com/comic.php?id=293</a></p>
<p>I really liked the description of how MIT students select housing – and now I learn that it might change?! Tell me it ain’t so – or at least tell me (trying vainly to be optimistic) that it’s unlikely to affect incoming 2007 freshmen.</p>
<p>It’s not going to affect incoming 2007 freshmen. The authors of that report have no authority to make that kind of recommendation, anyway, and even if they did, that report is only a report, and not a final policy.</p>
<p>Changing the housing system is something that’s been bantered about for many years, but each time it’s been bantered, there’s been a great deal of student opposition, and the administration has backed down somewhat. Still, the danger that it will be implemented is seen as always being around the corner, so students and student groups have to stay vigilant if they want that particular unique piece of MIT’s culture to stay the same.</p>
<p>To me, randomzing housing makes about as much sense as randomizing admissions. People who come to MIT are not a homogeneous group, and I think it’s nonsensical to treat them as if they are. There are many people at MIT (myself included) who feel they would have been extremely unhappy had they not chosen the living group they did.</p>
<p>magd: Jessie is referring to a set of reccomendations from a few years ago in which some task force/committee or another recommended (what most MIT students find to be) a truly ridiculous housing assignment system contrary to pretty much everything MIT students hold dear. =) So a group of those students wrote a counter-proposal which was eventually implemented instead of the original one. (Mostly- the point is that the current system is based on the student design and not the committee design.) And thus Rush/Dorm Rush/ReX/whatever you want to call it was saved.</p>
<p>Temporarily, at least. Lots of people feel that the administration is gradually trying to chip away at ReX and cut it back farther and farther…so it’s basically an ongoing battle between the students and the administration. The newest incoming class is probably safe, though. =P</p>
<p>EDIT: er, I may be confusing Jessie’s post and her latest blog entry. (<a href=“http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/pulse/mits_mission_who_we_are/past_present_and_future.shtml[/url]”>http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/pulse/mits_mission_who_we_are/past_present_and_future.shtml</a>) In any case, there was a committee (several years ago) whose purpose was to redesign the housing system, and the above story ensued. Like Mollie said, this (current) committee really has no authority over housing (they were asked to report on education), but they threw in a few lines about it anyway, which I thought was inappropriate and annoying. Grrr.</p>
<p>Have I confused you more? =)</p>
<p>Molliebatmit & LauraN: Many thanks for your words of reassurance. And thanks for explaining the machinations of the administration – sadly predictable as they are.<br>
I’m in agreement with Mollie about the importance of retaining ReX. Anyhow, I realize my concern is a bit premature… but anticipation is part of the fun. All I have to do is finish one more question on the app. and press the “submit” button – oh, and pray to the MIT gods for a hefty envelope (or clever e-mail “admit” message) on 12/15.
MollieB: Hope Harvard is treating you well.</p>