RLAD Controversies Roiling MIT Campus

mitforlife · August 2, 2012, 5:15pm

The Tech has some basic coverage:

Recent coverage:
[5</a> RLADs hired, will assume roles Aug. 6 - The Tech](<a href=“http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N30/rlad.html]5”>http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N30/rlad.html)
[Student</a> input heard in one RLAD debate - The Tech](<a href=“http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N30/normandin.html]Student”>http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N30/normandin.html)

Several weeks ago:
[Five</a> dorms to have RLADs in coming fall - The Tech](<a href=“http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N29/RLAD.html]Five”>http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N29/RLAD.html)

When the news was first leaked:
[RLAD</a> proposal stirs policy debate - The Tech](<a href=“http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N27/rlad.html]RLAD”>http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N27/rlad.html)
[GUEST</a> COLUMN: RLAD process and proposal have serious flaws - The Tech](<a href=“http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N27/grts.html]GUEST”>http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N27/grts.html)
[GUEST</a> COLUMN: RLADs will support ? not replace ? current house teams - The Tech](<a href=“http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N27/grimson.html]GUEST”>http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N27/grimson.html)

As a current student, as much as I love the students, faculty, and education at MIT, until things improve here I would advise prefrosh that they might be better off at a school where the administration has a bare minimum of respect for the students it purports to serve.

collegealum314 · August 2, 2012, 5:27pm

I’m confused as to why an average student would care about this. So these RLADs are Residentail Life Directors? What does that mean exactly?

mitforlife · August 2, 2012, 5:59pm

RLADs are administrators who are currently being installed to live in MIT’s dorms. The decision-making and implementation surrounding the RLAD position happened completely in secret over the summer, until the information was leaked by someone who was clearly disturbed by what was going on.

We (students) care about this for many reasons. The articles should help you explore the issue if you care. If you’re lost, I think the GRT article (“RLAD process and proposal have serious flaws”) is a good place to start.

On the most basic level, we care because we will live with the RLADs. Currently dorm-level leadership positions (“Houseteams”) are comprised of Faculty Housemasters and Graduate Resident Tutors - i.e., faculty and graduate students at MIT. Places like Harvard, Princeton, etc. do this, too, apparently because having academic leadership is a good way to create a vibrant intellectual atmosphere. Also, because Housemasters, GRTs, and undergraduates have similar educational backgrounds, students find it relatively easy to connect with them. By contrast, RLADs are not academics (or even counseling professionals or something else useful), but have training in Higher Education Administration.

Also - typically the RLAD in-dorm leadership position only exists at lower-ranked schools, not at our competitor schools. We worry that the long term plan is to get rid of housemasters and GRTs entirely, which would move us towards a system that is like lower-tier schools.

Students are upset, too, because lots of valuable support services (Nightline, S^3, 24 hour MIT Medical, key support people) were cut in recent years, in order to save money. People were upset about those changes at the time, but were told it was necessary to save money. Yet the RLAD position, which is not fundamentally a support position, is being introduced, and apartments are being built in the dorms. It’s all very expensive, and we wish the money were being used in more effective ways, which would actually help support students.

The other reason this is controversial is because students already feel very disenfranchised, and this process has been extremely ugly. The ideal of MIT is that students are considered to be full members of the community, whose opinions are worthy of respect, even if we all end up disagreeing. In recent years, the Division of Student Life has made many decisions that directly affect students, and kept them secret until the last minute. When the changes were announced, they were forced through over huge student outcry, and the administration refused to take any input or modify their plans in any way, creating lasting trust issues and introducing programs which are not good for students.

Established bodies and processes like student government and standing committees with student representation exist to make sure that students have the ability to give input and shape major decisions that affect their lives at MIT. But right now, they are routinely bypassed or ignored. Also, there has been a lot of direct lying. People have started jokingly suggesting you wear a wire when you go talk to certain administrators.

Also, here is a member of the MIT Corporation (which owns MIT) talking about how broken MIT has gotten, and how it is worse than he has ever seen. [Fixing</a> MIT?s failures in governance - The Tech](<a href=“http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N22/singh.html]Fixing”>http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N22/singh.html). He wrote that before RLADs, and it makes him seem very prescient.

mitforlife · August 2, 2012, 6:53pm

I guess I should add (I shouldn’t assume people know this) - MIT dorms tend to be very tightly nit, especially the smaller ones. The presence of this new member of the community is not something that will go unnoticed, whether the RLAD themselves fit in well or not, so that’s why we care.

Until the RLAD scandal, MIT students had a large say, or had the entire say, (depending on the dorm) over who lives with them as their support people. GRTs and Housemasters have historically been selected using in-dorm selection processes, with large numbers of students participating in the selection. The RLADs, by contrast, are being selected by the administration. A small number of students were allowed on the selection committee, but the process was not at the dorm level, and the students did not have any real influence over the final decision. The final decisions, and the assignment of RLADs to the dorms where they will live, were made by an administrator.

sbjdorlo · August 2, 2012, 8:35pm

Why is this happening? Why is the administration at such odds with students? This isn’t the first time I’ve read this. MollieB has posted about MIT’s admin pushing for more traditional dorms and students losing ground.

As a parent of an incoming freshman, I don’t like to hear this. MIT would not have been my choice for my son but he wanted to attend. I’m very, very thankful that, if he’s frugal and works part time during his time at MIT, he will have no debt when he graduates, due to the generosity of MIT and some great outside scholarships.

But I’ve also said to him, if he doesn’t like it there, he should feel no obligation to stay.

I love the dorm choices. As a Christian parent, I love that each dorm has a different feel and that my son can interact with bunches of different folks but also find a like minded small group of fellow Christians who can support each other when they need to.

I don’t profess to understand exactly what effect RLAD’s will have, but it doesn’t sound good.

mitforlife · August 2, 2012, 9:31pm

There is a common sentiment that this problem with DSL is a direct result of the Hockfield era and her style of governance percolating down to her inferiors, which is thankfully now ending. People say Rafael Reif, the new MIT president (effective July 2) has been brought in to ‘fix’ the MIT community post-Hockfield. Dean of Student Life Chris Colombo, behind many of these problems, was a personal Hockfield pick, and may be the most widely reviled administrator in MIT’s history. He was also reviled at Columbia, where he was prior to MIT.

He has created a Division of Student Life with high turnover, populated largely by “Student Affairs Professionals” who have no interest in or connection with MIT in particular, but rather are more concerned with creating a few programs that they can put on their resume in order to hop to a better job at another school. Some of these programs are relatively harmless wastes of tuition money; others are more potentially problematic, like the RLADs.

MIT is not a prestigious school to work at for Student Affairs Professionals, and tends to attract Student Affairs Professionals who have not been educated at peer institutions, nor have they ever even worked at one. I’m not trying to be elitist, but the result tends to be that a) they just don’t understand us and b) they are trying to solve the problems of a lower tier non-flagship state school, rather than the problems you find at MIT in particular.

As such, there is a sense that the administration needs to be in charge of everything students do, or else the only thing students will do during their free time is drink and party. That may be true at other schools, but it simply isn’t true here. For example, part of the RLAD position is supervising and administering dorm-wide student government bodies. I suppose at other schools, without an administrator there to make things happen, these student leadership responsibilities might not happen. But at MIT these things happen because students make them happen, and if an administrator steps in to take that role, then students will learn less about life, how to take on true responsibility, how to get things done.

I hope your son will love MIT for the reasons I do - for its students and faculty, who are some of the smartest and most creative in the world, and push you towards excellence in every way. MIT teaches you that if you want to build something, you can build it, and here’s how to do it. You learn that you shape your world, which is pretty powerful. But, that breaks down right now when it comes to actually shaping MIT, and it is easy to get discouraged and decide to stop trying. I think a lot of students suffer from this kind of disillusionment.

As a parent, what you can do is educate yourself about this and other issues. Done right that takes a while, because these issues are complex and nuanced. At first blush, it is hard to understand exactly why students are so up in arms about RLADs. The administration will tell you that it’s just a support position, to further support students, and how could that possibly be a bad thing?

Once you feel truly comfortable with what you know, then, call up the relevant administrators and tell them what you think. They listen to parents much, much more than they listen to students.

molliebatmit · August 2, 2012, 9:51pm

In general, many of the changes in housing policy (which are really the major changes that have been occurring at MIT over the past decade) are attempts by the administration to solve actual problems, though there is disagreement between students and the administration over whether those changes are on-point, productive, useful, etc.

(I forget what I said last time, so please forgive me if I’m repeating myself–) My freshman year was the first year of a major change at MIT, that freshmen were required to live in a dorm on campus. Prior to my year, freshmen were assigned a totally random (I think? collegealum?) temporary room for orientation, then they were able to rush any fraternity/sorority/independent living group/dorm and select their final housing assignment. In 1997, freshman Scott Kreuger died at his fraternity (alcohol, as they say, was a factor), prompting the administration to make these huge changes to the system. Of course, it’s valid to consider that freshmen can still join fraternities, even though they cannot officially live there, and of course in practice many freshman guys sleep at their fraternities more than their official dorm rooms. So if the goal was to stop freshmen from drinking themselves to death, it seems that, for example, a more coherent alcohol policy might have been a more on-point response.

In this case, the official impetus for the RLAD positions being created was the death of three students last year. But, again, it remains to be seen whether this action will do anything to ameliorate the problem at hand.

mitforlife · August 2, 2012, 10:13pm

It also remains to be seen whether RLADs will make the problem worse. I think there are clear arguments for why they might actually undermine critical existing support structures in certain houses.

Also, one of the three deaths happened in the sole dorm with a proto-RLAD, Next House, where they have a House Director. The House Director position was created in Dean Colombo’s dorm (he is a Housemaster) a few years ago, I think in part to try out the idea. She has a background that is identical to the backgrounds of the new RLADs (except she had more experience than them), and she was not able to prevent the death that happened in her dorm this year, which was also possibly the most preventable death that happened. Not that any one person or position could prevent student death, in my opinion, but it’s the administration that is justifying these changes with that argument.

rr5001 · August 3, 2012, 5:05pm

When their enemies were at the gates, the Romans would suspend democracy and appoint one man to protect the city. It wasn’t considered an honor, it was considered a public service.
-Harvey Dent

This sounds like the possible beginnings of something bigger.

collegealum314 · August 4, 2012, 2:33am

MollieB’s explanation of the residential system in the 90’s is correct.

There are plenty of people who would have said that in 1997, when we had a different president of the university. It’s nothing new. In fact, there were people walking around with buttons saying “Chuck” Vest–as in get rid of him.

I don’t know where I would come down on the RLAD vs. housemaster issue; I never met my housemaster in four years of living in a (large) dorm, so it would have made no difference to me to have a RLAD instead. In general, it is very clear that decisions involving student life are made haphazardly, often when some tragedy makes headlines. No one with decision power seems to think through these decisions rigorously.

UMTYMP_student · August 4, 2012, 10:30pm

I question whether the issue of RLADs is really so important that students should choose other colleges over MIT because of it. Conflicts with the administration aren’t unique to MIT either.

collegealum314 · August 5, 2012, 12:47am

Actually, I’d bet your typical college student doesn’t think about their school administration at all.

At Harvard and some of the ivies, there is some conflict, but it’s usually something political rather than the logistics of housing. The things I remember were conflict when the president made that comment about women in science and the controversy when someone called security on an African American alumni group that was playing football in Harvard yard. It’s not the sort of thing which happens at MIT.

People like to say MIT’s original residential system was designed with the idea to give students freedom and choice to coalesce into their own unique communities. In actuality, it was because MIT was originally a commuter school (in the 1800’s) and frats alleviated the housing problem. Then the system evolved to supporting the frats, and the dorms were sort of lumped into the rush system. It seems like MIT’s leadership lurches back and forth trying to make quick fixes whenever some tragedy happens. That is not to say that the students necessarily know what’s best either.

With regards to RLAD, it’s unlikely that small dorms would have the same problems as large dorms and therefore the solution should not be universal. That seems obvious, but I bet no one in the administration thought about that.

UMTYMP_student · August 5, 2012, 1:11am

My impression is that MIT is rather unique in the number of conflicts between students and the administration over housing but most other colleges see disputes between students and the administration over other issues [tuition at many public universities, etc.].

As to the quick fixes the administration tries after tragedies, that is somewhat understandable given the large number of wrongful death lawsuits MIT has been hit with in the past 15 years.

As this article [Student</a> input heard in one RLAD debate - The Tech](<a href=“http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N30/normandin.html]Student”>http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N30/normandin.html) makes clear student input hasn’t been totally ignored either.

collegealum314 · August 15, 2012, 1:28pm

This thread seems to be hanging around the first page, so I will make a comment.

The large number of wrongful death lawsuits is, I believe, an indication that the administration doesn’t deal with problems proactively and/or there are large flaws in the system which the administration didn’t feel were worth fixing. This is partly because any changes may anger alumni, and also because their primary concerns are raising money for research.

The fraternity death in 1997 was preceded by some pretty egregious incidents in the early 1990s. At this point I don’t remember the details, but it was bad enough to prompt a review of the system. They didn’t make any changes in the early 1990s, even though some of the frat people predicted someone was going to die before any changes were made.

I don’t really believe the mental health system at MIT is sufficient either, considering the stress inherent in the school. In general, I don’t feel like the MIT administration “gets it”–or is connected to undergraduate life enough to get a feel for it. The new president sounds like he may be different, but regardless, it’s hard to make changes because people will always defend the status quo.

Are these reasons not to go to MIT? Not necessarily. However, I think it is easier to appreciate the assets of MIT if you are prepared for some of the bad parts. If I had expected the MIT housing to be this much of a mess before I entered, it would have been less distressing and it would have been easier to focus on the bad points. Also, the CYA mentality of the leadership would have been less distressing if I didn’t have such an idealistic notion of what a top 5 university should be like.

UMTYMP_student · August 16, 2012, 1:11am

I was under the impression that the administration or at least parts of it wanted to make all freshmen live on campus before the 1997 fraternity death but ran into extremely strong opposition from students and alumni and then were forced to drop the plan.

Can you elaborate on why MIT housing is such a mess? My impression is that the administration dislikes the current state of MIT housing but cannot change it because of student/alumni opposition. Is that accurate?

collegealum314 · August 16, 2012, 5:03pm

I am sure that many of the faculty in the administration and outside of it didn’t think much of the frat system. Two of my advisors said so without my prompting them. However, despite these misgivings, I am quite sure there was no “plan” put forward to put freshmen on campus before 1997 because everyone would have already known that it would be rejected by students and alumni. I don’t know whether there was any internal discussion in the early 1990s when they made that report. Until recently, they were unwilling to spend money on dorms, so that was a factor.

You are right. Students and alumni were opposed to the Freshmen on Campus plan, even after the 1997 death. It’s complicated, though. A large chunk of the student body is indoctrinated into a system, and then, big surprise, they are opposed to changing it.

UMTYMP_student · August 16, 2012, 6:17pm

It appears that housing all first-year students in dorms was proposed in 1989 [FHC</a> says all freshmen should live in dormities - The Tech](<a href=“http://tech.mit.edu/V109/N50/house1.50n.html]FHC”>http://tech.mit.edu/V109/N50/house1.50n.html) but the proposal didn’t go anywhere because of student opposition [Chushingura</a> and Catastrophe | Inside Higher Ed](<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2011/06/02/excerpt_from_book_on_how_universities_work]Chushingura”>http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2011/06/02/excerpt_from_book_on_how_universities_work).

collegealum314 · August 17, 2012, 10:57pm

Wow. I’m not sure how I feel about that. They seem to have been able to eloquently diagnose what the problems were, but then they did nothing. Ultimately, the buck stops with the administration, regardless of anticipated student/alumni resistance. Other college administrations have actually removed their frat systems (Williams is an example) in the face of a lot of resistance. If you can’t move Rush to sophomore year for fear of student complaints, that is a sign of weak leadership.

RLAD Controversies Roiling MIT Campus

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