Blog

This year, I had the opportunity to participate in a pair of orientation events.

The first event was the "Dean's Brunch", a brunch with several dozen students, largely drawn from Dormcon, IFC, Panhel, LGC, UA, and similar organizations, and parents (and other family and friends) of incoming freshmen. The people I interacted with there were much less inquisitive than the people at the summer sendoff; I'm not sure if I got unlucky, they'd had their questions answered already, or what.

I'm a bit disappointed by one quirk of the setup. Along the walls of Johnson (the winter ice rink that's otherwise used for a bunch of large events) were a series a booths manned by various MIT staff/administrators --- booths included Housing, Student Activities Office, FSILG office, and similar organizations. One booth was labeled "Student Life at MIT". What did it have? Brochures titled "Alcohol Resources" and a couple of staff from the Community Development and Substance Abuse Center. I'm pretty disappointed by the implication that "student life" and "alcohol" are synonymous at MIT, both because I don't think it's true (certainly not for me) and because I think it gives a very poor impression to parents who have not yet had a chance to get much of a better impression.

For the second event, I served, as Living Group Council Speaker, on a panel on Housing, alongside the Dormcon President, IFC President, Panhel President, Director of Housing, Manager of Housing Assignments, and Director of Campus Dining, and Dean of Residential Life. A couple things stuck out at me.

The first was that this was my first panel (and probably my first time speaking to that many people), and I really wasn't very active at interjecting myself.

The second was that the audience (largely parents of incoming freshmen) tended to ask questions about "fraternities and sororities", having presumably forgotten about the independent living groups. I tended to answer anyway, if I had anything to add; "after all, people at MIT always forget about the LGC too."

The third, and much more interesting, was the differences in how we addressed dining. For me, when I get questions about dining, particularly from a parent of a student in a dining hall dorm, I tend to sneak in a "your students will be fine cooking --- their hallmates can teach them, the facilities are decent, and Shaw's is within walking distance." For Rich Berlin, the Director of Campus Dining, and the other panelists, responses seemed to be directed towards "buying precooked food on campus is totally doable". I never got to see a really explicit question --- for example, "Do students generally find that cooking for themselves is easy and/or doable?", so I don't know whether they would have directed that towards the dining halls ("frequently, but if they don't..."). However, many less explicit questions that I would have taken as an opportunity to talk about cooking for yourself they took as an opportunity to talk about the availability of dining halls. It made me a little sad, but such is life, I guess.