I agreeto Idea Less Administrative Interference in House Life

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I disagreeto Idea Less Administrative Interference in House Life

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Less Administrative Interference in House Life

1. RLADs serve no purpose Housemasters can't do. This is extra administration that makes bureaucracy inefficient, ineffective, and expensive. This only creates a new set of people who are given more powers and higher responsibilities while being further away and less relevant to the student body it is in charge of. How can we expect these RLADs to successfully be responsible for student life when they're so far up in the dorm pyramid? How can we expect these people to resolve student problems when they're not the ones talking and interacting with the students? And even if they are, the introduction of this new class of administration only further diminishes the roles GRTs and housemasters play, which means each group would be less closely tied to students than before. We don't need quantity, we need quality of staff, and that can only happen when staff are connected, understanding, and knowledgeable about the students, which won't happen if you continue to dilute the roles with the introduction of redundant staff.

2. Speaking of staff that are connected with and understanding of the students, students should be able to choose their own GRTs and housemasters. They should be able to have GRTs and housemasters who are relevant and understanding of each dorms' cultures and facets. Some GRTs are there only because of the cheaper housing; they aren't part of the dorms' cultures and they certainly don't contribute and nurture it. Back in the day, students were in charge of choosing their own GRTs in order to obtain the most relevant help they needed. Being assigned GRT through an application process will not guarantee the GRT's success in helping and communicating with the students. Students should have more input on the GRT and housemaster selection process to ensure a thriving, helpful, connecting, and respecting community of students and staff. Otherwise, they receive GRTs who are unfamiliar with the culture of the dorms and therefore the GRTs not only do not provide adequate help to the students, there could also be (and have been) hostility between the GRTs and the students who do not relate with each other. Once again, we should be seeking to increase the quality of staff, not the quantity.

TL;DR, RLADs/RLAs are redundant and dilute the responsibilities of existing staff, and we need more student input on the staff selection process in order to ensure staff respect and understand the unique cultures of each dorm, as well as provide relevant help that caters to the needs of the students.

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Submitted by Community Member 11 months ago

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  1. The idea was posted
    11 months ago

Comments (13)

  1. Moderator

    Thanks for your idea!

    On #2, how would you feel about some degree of anonymous evaluation for your GRTs, much like we have for subject evaluations? My expectation is that GRT engagement varies across campus, and as much as students feel they might be disconnected from the GRTs, GRTs may not know exactly what students are expecting from them. For many GRTs, I suspect, this is the first time they're in this type of role.

    On selection of GRTs, I was very impressed with the process we had at EC in Spring 2011. My hall was able to review GRT applications and, through mutual selection, we now have a GRT who understands our community very well. Again, I know that experiences vary across campus, so this may definitely be an area for us to investigate.

    11 months ago
    1. Anonymous evaluation for GRTs seems a little harsh to introduce immediately, especially given that RLAs, Housemasters, and other members of the community would not be subject to personal evaluation, and GRTs deal with a lot of difficult, sensitive issues that students will not necessarily know both sides of.

      That said, what if house teams as a whole unit were evaluated like you suggest, and feedback submitted to both the house and house team? If students had particular concerns about a member of a house team, they could include it in the evaluation. This also might be more fair since it sometimes seems like GRTs aren't good because they lack good direction/supervision from their housemaster.

      All that said, any process like this should *not* be implemented by DSL, which seems to be actively lobbying to increase its influence over residential life in a way that is unnecessary and unjustified, and sometimes actively harmful. Perhaps dormcon?

      11 months ago
  2. Did you know that towards the end of the semester Mental Health is backlogged a week or more? That means if you don't proclaim to be suicidal or near it, you first bring yourself to make an appointment and then wait a week. If MIT wants to put any kind of money into preventing suicide, it might start by increasing the capacity of mental health towards the end of the year.

    11 months ago
    1. Community Member Idea Submitter

      ^ Another thing is that MIT Medical should stop handing out Section 12's to protect the Institute's interests, instead of the students' health. Not only is it bad, its legality is also questionable. But that's a whole different issue; I think we need to focus on the housing issue first before tackling any other administrative actions that are highly concerning.

      11 months ago
    2. Moderator

      Mental Health was contacted about this comment, and this was their response:

      Walk-in service at MIT Mental Health & Counseling is for all urgent concerns, and there is no wait. (Note that people who use the walk-in service usually are there for academic or stress related reasons, not suicide.) Similarly, there is no wait for urgent concerns on weekends.

      Students who call MIT Mental Health & Counseling for an appointment are scheduled within that day for a phone consultation to better understand the student’s concern, and then an in-person appointment is schedule appropriately. At most, there is up to a week’s wait for a scheduled appointments when clinically appropriate, but the important thing to note is that there is a system in place to identify over the phone or in-person if someone needs help immediately.

      In addition, MIT Medical staff do change their schedule when things get busy at the end of the semester. For most of the year, they schedule time in their weeks for writing notes and other administrative functions. At peak times, staff book appointments during every one of their hours to accommodate increases in requests.

      11 months ago
  3. I agree that adding another layer is certainly detrimental. Throughout this year, it has bothered me that the administration appears to have done multiple things without much consideration for the students. I'm not accusing them of malfeasance, but rather just being out-of-touch with the students.

    As a student I give a large amount of trust to my GRTs, primarily because they do live with us. They see us everyday, they listen to us rant about what's on our minds. They are in touch with what is going on. To a lesser extent, I trust my housemasters for a similar reason. I live in BC, and Roe + Bronwyn moved into BC because they *wanted* to understand the students better, and they knew that could only be done by living with us -- just being a professor or an administrator is not nearly enough.

    And similarly, that is why I put very little faith even in RLA's to represent the students. In BC we do have an RLA, but I have met her twice. I know she has interacted with some people, but I do not feel like she has interacted with the dorm or the student body as a whole. It is not enough to simply show up to a few CPW events to truly understand what we care about.

    When an administration is out-of-touch with the students, they make decisions that are detrimental to the community that we have built at MIT. You get housemaster selection processes like the recent one in BC, where student and GRT involvement was only an afterthought (and after some complained quite loudly). You get decisions like this recent one that seeks "student involvement" only to rubberstamp the process--to say that we were involved, when truly we had no input; it's for little more than appearances.

    I do not feel that the current administration truly understands who we are. They have these nice notions about what "students" are like, and maybe they talk with admins from other schools to find out what those "students" are like, but they do not know us. I feel there is little other way for administrators to understand us, than for them to actually live with us. We already have GRTs and Housemasters. That is enough.

    11 months ago
    1. The housemasters have a lot of control over how involved an RLA can be in a community. If your RLA seems uninvolved, it's not necessarily because they haven't tried.

      10 months ago
  4. On point 2, many dorms still choose their GRTs and Housemasters... though obviously the Housemaster choice process seems to be eroding. Which dorms no longer allow students to choose GRTs?

    11 months ago
    1. Community Member Idea Submitter

      I don't think it's that dorms no longer have any say in their GRTs, but similarly that process is eroding, and a far cry from the completely administration-independent process decades ago.

      11 months ago
    2. Some info on how GRTs are currently selected, from a reliable source:

      In most dorms, students interview GRTs and then housemasters interview the top choices. The housemasters give their top rankings to the reslife office, so housemasters can overrule the students' choice if they want. Reslife places GRTs based only on the housemasters' rankings and the candidates' rankings. So administrators have practically no say in GRT selection (except in the case where the housemaster is an administrator).

      There is only one dorm in which the housemasters will always go with the students' choice as a matter of principle. In some cases it is possible for a housemaster to overrule the students' choice without the students knowing-- it may appear that the students' top candidate ended up at another dorm for some other reason.

      There are three dorms in which the housemasters narrow down the list of candidates before the students interview them.

      Housemasters are usually recommended by a committee that includes students and other housemasters. The final decision is actually made by the president, not the dean.

      10 months ago
  5. While it's true that RLAs/RLADs don't have any duties that *can't* be taken over by housemasters, remember that housemasters are also faculty and already have a lot of other responsibilities. Maybe they want the extra help for things that are more administrative.

    11 months ago
    1. I think that's the heart of the issue: For the housemasters, it shouldn't feel like responsibility. They should want to be doing it. They should do it because they like helping students. And when they need additional help, that help should come from mental health, the campus police, or whatever specialized position is necessary. Adding a new generic position will just make that person feel that they can make decisions that should probably be made by these agencies. Adding a new purely administrative position will 1) Not fulfill the goal of providing more support to the students and 2) Take more decision making power away from the students.

      11 months ago
    2. Community Member Idea Submitter

      They were able to do everything in the past. There's no reason why they shouldn't continue to be able to now. They shouldn't even be mega involved anyway - there are GRTs for that.

      11 months ago