[1936] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: [Mit-talk] New Card initiative
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steven M Kelch)
Mon Jul 3 14:11:10 2006
Date: Mon, 3 Jul 2006 14:08:54 -0400 (EDT)
From: Steven M Kelch <kelch@mit.edu>
To: Dheera Venkatraman <dheera@mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.62L.0607031349040.16993@ptolomaea.mit.edu>
Cc: ua-scatr@mit.edu, mit-talk@mit.edu, grace <gkenney@mit.edu>
Errors-To: mit-talk-bounces@mit.edu
Pardon all the million dollar buzzwords. I should have run that through
my "non pretentious" filter before I sent it.
skelch
On Mon, 3 Jul 2006, Steven M Kelch wrote:
> That's essentially the idea behind SCATR, but a little less formalized.
> The difficulty in creating a committee where *everything* has to come
> through is that there are a lot of decisions made every day, from minor
> ones to major ones. Where do you draw the line? Who decides when someone
> has gone over the line? There will be just as much controversy.
>
> By keeping SCATR a student oriented committee with lesser ties to the
> administration and strong ties to student representation, it can more
> effectively evaluate student opinion, persist in the long term, and avoid
> administrative political maneuvering.
>
> skelch
>
>
>
> On Mon, 3 Jul 2006, Dheera Venkatraman wrote:
>
>> a nice thing to have would be some sort of committee of students and
>> faculty members that such changes would be *required* to be proposed to.
>> basically, say, any infrastructure changes, major art installations, and
>> changes to the campus that are not time-sensitive repairs should need to
>> be signed off by them. kind of some sort of congress deal. like say if
>> MIT comes up to us next week saying they want to cut down the trees in
>> the EC courtyard and install another transparent horizons, and they
>> don't get the signatures needed, they shouldn't be allowed to do it. and
>> if they wanted to make a curriculum change but didn't get say over half
>> the students' approval, it shouldn't be allowed to happen.
>>
>> i don't know. very cursory idea here, not sure how to properly formulate
>> this, but basically, there needs to be some sort of check system on the
>> administration.
>>
>> -dheera
>>
>> --------------------------------
>> dheera venkatraman
>> http://dheera.net/
>> dheera@dheera.net
>>
>> On Mon, 3 Jul 2006, grace wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> ...and we're not going to get a chance to learn until it's already
>>> official. note that this was announced in the summer, when the UA or
>>> dormcon can't investigate and [if needed] protest. look - the admins
>>> aren't afraid of our horrible harsh criticism. they're afraid of
>>> having
>>> to waste time on meetings with students, lying about how much they
>>> value
>>> our opinions. the things that we bitch about being half-baked are
>>> generally actually near-finalized policies that got leaked. yeah,
>>> often
>>> times we have only partial information, but by the time we have full
>>> information, things'll have reached the point where the admins will
>>> inform
>>> us that such and such a policy has been in the works for years, and of
>>> course the single student committee member was an adequate
>>> representation
>>> of the student body's desires, and blah blah blah. it's not our
>>> criticism
>>> that they're afraid of, it's the fact that we might find out in time
>>> to
>>> stop things.
>>>
>>> and bullshit - it's not too late to delete the accounts from the card
>>> office servers. we're talking bits and bytes here, not stuff that's
>>> really irrevocable. now, will they reconsider, or at least listen to
>>> criticism? probably not, since without dormcon & the ua to raise a
>>> hue
>>> and cry, odds are we won't even be able to get them to talk to us
>>> until
>>> after it goes live. but nothing's actually irrevocable until it
>>> starts
>>> happening, and some stuff [policies and non-physical stuff like this]
>>> can
>>> be changed even afterwards.
>>>
>>> -grace
>>>
>>>
>>> gibbering like hunter thompson on a revolutionary drug, kelch@MIT.EDU
>>> said:
>>>
>>>> This has not yet proven to be a "stupid idea". None of us knows
>>>> enough about
>>>> it to pass judgment. Many of the problems we chalk up to the
>>>> administration
>>>> are actually students jumping to conclusions. We complain when they
>>>> don't
>>>> come to us with brand new, unrefined ideas for our input, but when
>>>> they do we
>>>> attack them for being half-baked. Is it any wonder we don't hear
>>>> about things
>>>> until they are so far in development?
>>>>
>>>> From what I have been told, the accounts are already created, they go
>>>> live in
>>>> less than a month. Whether or not students use the accounts is one
>>>> thing, but
>>>> to my knowledge the accounts already exist on the servers and so a
>>>> reversal
>>>> isn't possible or logical.
>>>>
>>>> skelch
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, 3 Jul 2006, David Glasser wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 7/3/06, Steven M Kelch <kelch@mit.edu> wrote:
>>>>>> I am going to push Rich Berlin for a press release of some sort
>>>>>> (which
>>>>>> they may already have prepared). Hopefully we can find out more in
>>>>>> the
>>>>>> next few days.
>>>>>
>>>>> Why is this useful? It seems to me that once MIT has put out a press
>>>>> release saying they're going to do something stupid, they have even
>>>>> more of an excuse to not reverse themselves.
>>>>>
>>>>> --dave
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> David Glasser | glasser@mit.edu | http://www.davidglasser.net/
>>>>>
>>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>
>>
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