[1658] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: [Mit-talk] merit, diversity, hahvahd, mit, etc.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Wally)
Mon Oct 24 18:01:02 2005
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2005 18:00:27 -0400 (EDT)
From: Wally <wally@sub-zero.mit.edu>
To: Jessica H Lowell <jessiehl@mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <20051024160732.5g3jf2usmcg0s0sw@webmail.mit.edu>
cc: mit-talk@mit.edu
Errors-To: mit-talk-bounces@mit.edu
> "The branding of MIT" is a perfectly valid discussion topic, however, I
> feel that your interpretation of the current state of affairs is
> somewhat off from reality. And I'm sick of hearing that my generation
> are millenials who aren't h4rdk0r3 g33ks like your generation was B4ck
> 1n 7h3 D4y.
Executive summary of the following: toughen the hell up. MIT is changing.
In ways for the better and in ways for the worse. As are the students. And
before the words 'people don't understand my generation at all' escape
your lips or keyboard, consider how many people have said exactly the same
thing over time. MIT does a remarkable job admitting more or less the
right students, but the pool of applicants is changing, as are students'
reasons for applying, and the culture of MIT has changed nonnegligibly in
the last few years. In the opinion of a bunch of people: not for the
better, overall. Lot of dying traditions, but new ones to replace them,
and that never goes over well with old fogeys like Jimmy. And Gladwell's
article is one of the best things he's written (my opinion of him isn't
terribly high), so if you haven't had a look at it, go do so now!!
OK.
I only skimmed Jimmy's post. Sorry if I'm misunderstanding the point of
this exchange. This isn't really about Sloan at all, because I don't give
a damn about Sloan, and think that people who study only business are
wasting their time in college. [Side note: listen to Jeff. He is wise.]
I came to MIT in 1997 and it's obviously changed since then, though
probably not as much as I've changed - which makes it hard for me to gauge
whether the students coming in to MIT are more or less this or that than
my class (which was Scott Krueger's class, for reference).
I lived at tep, and the teps of today are just as interesting as the
outgoing seniors my year. That's refreshing and reassuring. But that's
also very much a self-selecting and odd culture even within the odd wider
culture of MIT. I take a dimmer view of the fate of MIT undergraduate
culture in general - but perhaps I'm ascribing a wrong degree of
specificity to those shifts, and changes at MIT just reflect wider shifts.
(Along with what I take to be very bad decisions by MIT admins of course,
for instance moving freshmen on campus, indulging the whims of celebrity
architects, and paying off Mr and Mrs Kruger.)
For a couple of years as a grad student I TAed undergrad classes at MIT
and Tufts. There was a massive difference between the students at the two
schools, as you'd imagine. (Full disclosure: in many ways I preferred
teaching Tufts students; though the MIT students were more *impressive*,
they were also working considerably less hard.) There was also, it seemed,
a difference between the MIT undergrads I taught and those I came in with.
For one thing: much, much, much less likely to be utterly socially
maladroit, it seemed. Most likely explanation, to my mind: a shift in
wider culture by which geekdom has moved closer to the inoffensive center,
socially. Those who would've been programming alone in a basement are more
likely to be able to find others with whom to share their
interests/pathologies. That's good in a lot of ways, but it also serves to
counteract the devil-may-care anti-fashion that has historically
characterized MIT's 'look and feel'.
Another observation/guess: MIT undergrads are also more likely, today, to
dress and accessorize just like everyone else. This might be tied,
Jessica, to today's 'non sequitur == statement' aesthetic among young
people who were in elementary school when (for instance) the
Clinton/Lewinsky politics-as-game-show debacle was happening - as the
poltiical/fashion standard deviation grows, the deviants become
standardized, no? And that's what today's MIT kids know. Or: when no one
dresses quite the same as anyone else, there's the curious effect that
everyone starts to look alike - cf. above re: mainstreaming geeks (and
everyone else). Fashion is immensely stupid, Dick Hebdidge and the 'dress
to be yourself!' self-help pabulum notwithstanding, and it's hard not to
see the shrinking of the distance between the East and West Campus
cultures as a loss of signature style.
Then again: most of the people jacking off about the subject are East
Campus/SH/etc. types, so maybe you're also seeing resentment over the fact
that their old dorms aren't WICKED COOL anymore.
But consider this: except for old leftovers, no current MIT undergrad was
around for the hands-off drinking policy pre-Krueger, or (I think) a
campus without the monstrosity that is Simmons, or freshman Rush and its
lunatic fraternalism and vivacity, or - this is the big symbolic one -
Building 20. The steady erosion of student autonomy since I arrived seemed
like a Big Goddamn Deal to the Class of 2001 (I remember midnight Bexley
basement meetings for a group called MITChoice, dedicated to fighting the
Freshmen On Campus decision), and maybe it doesn't seem like a big deal
now that we've graduated, but what IS sad is that current students have
internalized the *effects* of these changes without experiencing either
causes or processes. It's easy for people like me and Jimmy to bitch about
the relative boringness of today's undergrads because they Just! Won't!
Stand! Up! but perhaps it's hard for us to remember that there's no reason
for you guys to get involved in arguments that were settled when you were
in middle school.
Marilee Jones's 'Millennials' article was spat on by students when it came
out - blah blah evidence that they see us as sheep, blah blah MIT's moving
in the wrong direction, &c. But since then I've read it a couple more
times. It's not a horrible article at all; indeed as I recall it reads now
as a gentle but serious criticism of grade school, parents, and a college
admissions industry that privileges test scores and resume line items over
committed intellectual engagement and the giving of the self to
idiosyncratic passion (which is my ideal vision of MIT, in buzzwords).
[The article in all its plain-text glory is right here, by the way:
http://www.lsmsaaa.org/for_students/generation.admission.2001.txt]
I think she's grossly oversimplified a number of things for the sake of
argument, but Dean Jones is a smart woman, and her lede - that MIT needs
to work AGAINST so many of these social trends to keep its identity strong
- seems to have been buried in her article and subsequently overlooked by
knee-jerk on-campus critics. She also displays some buried Boomer
resentments and enthusiasms, but that's to be expected. And in a single
sentence she demonstrates a depressing misunderstanding of what makes
people like MIT:
> I believe that if we remind our students on a regular basis that we fix
> this world, we do what others think is impossible, we "apply science for
> the benefit of humankind" as MIT was founded to do, and they are part of
> that effort, IHTFP will dissolve within five years.
Well, no. As I recall that acronym has several meanings, all inextricably
linked. Her point stands, though: the individuality of MIT students has
always been bound up, to a degre, in their incompatibility with the wider
culture. They have to do what they do - because what else is there? Right?
But as MIT-type traits come to be valued more widely, more college and
career options become available, and the choice to go to MIT becomes, for
some students, less about NEED. Metaphor time: betcha five bucks that
students these days are less likely to have maintained computers at their
high school for the fuck-it-all thrill of it, and more likely, MUCH
moreso, to have done sysadmin work for money, than at any time heretofore.
Sounds good, in a sense, but do you see the sadness there too? Like
writing for your local homeowners' association instead of writing your
novel. Not all the differences involve money.
I say all this shit by way of explanation: when people complain about
Those Darn Students These Days, they're citing very real shifts in
culture, and showing their ignorance of the fine details of that culture,
and providing historical perspective, and ignoring just as much
perspective. Just like everyone else, I guess, all the time, everywhere.
None of which changes that Sloanies just aren't doing the Old MIT Thing,
which involves a certain happy divorce from business realities. If you
don't care about money, it's easier to see why business school is such a
noxious thing for people to place at the center of their lives. Then
again, few people can escape caring about money.
You couldn't help being a 'Millennial' - but you're doing something else
now. So don't take offense at name-calling.
Hey when you graduate and settle for a boring office job, you can write
long emails like this one (in length if not style, of course: your
choice). So you have that look forward to in this world of knaves.
Cheers,
Wally
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