Save Senior House

What happened?

In the summer of 2016 the MIT administration announced its intervention into the Senior House community, citing low graduation rates and concerns about illegal drug use. The administration barred freshmen from living in Senior House during school year 2016–2017 and appointed a turnaround committee in response.

At the end of the 2016–2017 school year, the administration decided that, due to “serious and unsafe” behaviors occurring in Senior House, all current residents were to be summarily ejected and replaced by a freshman program called Pilot 2021. See Chancellor Barnhart's email to residents here.

Students and alumni campus-wide were appalled at the actions of the administration, and we held a sit-in in front of Chancellor Barnhart's office where many attendees spoke how Senior House and dorm culture in general were such important parts of their lives. Right after this, we held a solidarity BBQ in the Senior House courtyard. Instead of listening to our critisms, the administration responded by tearing out our BBQ pit and cutting down our tire swing in the Senior House courtyard, surprise-evicting our ex-GRTs (Graduate Resident Tutors) with only 48 hours notice, suddenly disallowing any residents still living in Senior House to check-in guests, and fencing up the courtyard and having police detail up at all times.

UPDATE: On July 7th, 2017, in response to the pushback by students and alumni of the administrative actions against Senior House (or what Barnhart called "misinformation, denials, and responses" that "violate MIT values"), Cynthia Barnhart informed ex-residents of Senior House that no undergraduates would be permitted to live in the building, E2, and it would now be a completely white-washed graduate resident dorm, because "[administrators] no longer believe that first-year and continuing students living in Senior House next year will be able to define for themselves their own community values and living experience". Read the whole email to ex-residents here.

The official response from Senior House can be read here, where we said that "we are committed to building a community that promotes healthy, responsible choices; supports all residents; and welcomes differences. This commitment includes welcoming every Pilot 2021 freshman and New House transfer." Given this response, it is unclear why Barnhart claimed to believe that we would not be able to define our own community values.

In a letter from DormCon and the UA, it was further revealed that the "misinformation, denials, and responses" Cynthia was talking about was specifically a webpage created by one Senior House alumnus, which called out Mike Short for his slanderous Op-Ed on Senior House in the Tech, and current MIT students talking to incoming freshmen on the Class of 2021 facebook page about Pilot 2021 and Senior House.

How this hurts our community and damages the mission of MIT:

• Mike Short's Op-Ed is slanderous and defamatory to the residents and alumni of Senior House. Many alumni in the comments who lived in Senior House at the same time have clarified what actually happened during the events that Short hyperbollically retells. Short also only lived in Senior House during the summer for 3 months, a time when many people in the building (such as him) are not regular residents.

• While The Google Ad about Mike Short was only made by one person and without the consent of the movement to support Senior House, it was not "defamatory" as Barnhart claimed, since the Ad, though rude, did not include any false information about Mike Short. Read it here.

• Current MIT students were not dissuading students from partaking in Pilot 2021 nor were they pushing Senior House culture onto people. These students simply wanted to inform the incoming freshman of what Pilot 2021 and Senior House were, so that they could make a more informed decision, seeing as the administration had kept them out of the loop for the most part.

• Turning Senior House into a graduate dorm simply because a handful of people were correcting the record on Mike Short or informing incoming freshmen on what's happening at their future community, MIT, is yet another example of collective punishment, this time the actions of the few impacting all of campus and setting dangerous administrative precedents.

• With MIT already going through an undergraduate housing crisis, this last-minute and emotional reaction to make Senior House a graduate residence removes an extra 140+ beds available for undergradates, which negatively impacts everyone on campus with even more overcrowding.

• There was no student input whatsoever in the decision to make Senior House a graduate resident dorm. Cynthia Barnhart also wholly ignored an open letter signed by nearly 1,400 MIT alumni dating back to 1958 that petitioned against the Pilot 2021 changes.

• Based on Cynthia's email to the ex-residents of Senior House, the Chancellor has made this decision in response to the criticisms of her previous actions against Senior House. Instead of admitting fault and working with students to come up with a better solution, Cynthia punished all of campus by destroying an amazing community and contributing to the overcrowding of campus because students practiced their right to free speech and were critical of the Chancellor's decisions.

• Cynthia claims that the sudents who were to live in Senior House this coming Fall (incoming freshman for Pilot 2021, displaced New House residents, and the Senior House residents accepted through the application program), would not "be able to define for themselves their own community values and living experience", which is not only insulting, but baseless.

• The extreme reaction to our peaceful protest shows the lack of trust from the administration. They want to paint us as criminals, when we are just MIT students who want to save our home and dorm culture across campus.

• The Senior House tire swing and BBQ pits are cultural symbols. The administration quietly ripping them out of our courtyard shows how little respect they have for our unique and beautiful culture.

• Students recognized their own responsibility to address these issues and made sincere proposals for change that were summarily dismissed by the administration.

• The statistics are misleading: Many students take longer to graduate because of personal issues that correlate with the abundance of students of minority status and from at risk socioeconomic backgrounds.

• The idea that Senior House has a drug problem came from data from an unethically deanonymized survey with a very low response rate --only 28% of campus even responded to the survey.

• Ripping residents from their community of support is not only dangerous, but wouldn't get rid of any problems; it would simply sweep it under the rug. This signals that MIT administrators care more about their public image than they do about the actual health and happiness of students.

• Senior House does not condone the use or distribution of drugs. The incident in house that prompted probation for the entire house, the cancellation of our annual alumni reunion (Steer Roast), and now depopulation, only involved 6 residents (only 4% of Senior House residents). It is unfair and unprecedented to destroy a whole community of residents and alumni because of the actions of a few residents in house. Collective punishment is unethical.

• Residents who have not been found guilty in a COD proceeding have no reason to be barred from entering their own community.

• Creating a new freshman dorm program without consulting DormCon or getting any student input at all is wrong, especially because students from across MIT consistently oppose the idea of freshman-only housing.

• Administrators claimed they would keep the “positive aspects of senior house culture,” but disallowing cats in Senior House, threatening to paint over murals, firing experienced GRTs (Graduate Resident Tutors) and replacing them with RPMs (“Resident Peer Mentors”), replacing residents with freshmen, forcing previous residents to fill out an insulting application for reentry into their own home, and the Pilot 2021 program go against not only senior house culture, but MIT dorm culture as a whole.

• In particular, firing Senior House GRTs and not allowing student input into the hiring process for new GRTs destroys the bonds that help create a community. Student input in this hiring process ensures that the GRTs fit with the particular academic and emotional needs of a dorm, and that they earn the trust and confidence students need in a mentor.

• Pilot2021 is offering meal kits at $9 per meal. This is marketed as "a more economical price." This is very out-of-touch with student budgets when you consider that this is the average cost per meal for an adult that is working a full time job.