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CREATING LIFE FROM A SPONGE: THE PRE-HISTORY OF SIMMONS HALL 5. FOUNDING THE COMMUNITY So after that brief aside, we come back to the core work of the Founders Group. And while our mission was never entirely clear, our goal was certain-- we had to create life from a sponge. We had to get people to see Simmons Hall as a new living environment, a new community. And that would prove to be tough. There was certainly some interest in the project around campus, but there was also a lot of negativity-- because of the design, the cost overruns, and, still, the idea that it embodied the freshmen-on-campus decision. Even though we were continually frustrated by these problems as well, we still had to display a positive attitude, because that was all we could do. So while we were communicating with the design team on the architectural character of Simmons Hall, were were also talking about the eventual character of the Simmons Hall community. We focused on those aspects of the dorm that would have to be established before people started moving in. We also focused on those things that would help to support our vision with regards to interaction and education.  Dining was one of those issues. The dining hall was a central element to the building program from the beginning, and we decided that it should be a central part of the community. With that in mind, we had to think critically about how to shape a dining service that would serve our goals. We were also being pushed by the MIT administration, and its newly formed Office of Campus Dining, to consider a dining plan that would be financially sustainable-- in other words, not a simple pay-as-you-eat plan that was the norm for MIT dining services at the time. Our conversations produced some key ideas. First, we wanted to create a dining service that would really encourage people to use the dining hall, not one that was just there if people wanted it. But while we wanted to provide encouragement, we didn't want to make residents feel like they were forced to eat there-- we wanted residents to retain a sense of choice and of ownership over their dining hall, and a simple mandatory board plan wasn't going to cut it. We also wanted to create an open dining environment, so that people who didn't want to buy food at the dining hall could still join others, perhaps bringing food they cooked themselves. According to the campus dining office, this blew our chances of having an all-you-can-eat plan, which was something we were interested in. We learned that working towards our goals would involve making tradeoffs. Another thing we talked about were the elusive visiting scholars apartments, which were probably the biggest question mark we had to deal with since they were something MIT had never tried before. As far as we were concerned, the apartments were there-- they were included in the building program-- and we had no idea who would live in them, for how long, and why. Would they be for visiting faculty? MIT junior faculty? Might they be for staff as well as faculty? Other distinguished members of the community? We never came up with clear answers to these questions, but we did agree on a broad principle that these on-campus apartments would not be privileges that MIT would bestow on individuals for whatever reason. In order to live in one of these apartments, people would be expected to make real contributions to the Simmons Hall community, specifically in ways that supported the "informal education" of all the building's residents, including those people themselves. Another issue that required discussion was the governance of the house. To me, this was the most important issue because it brought together all the others. When our work was done, what kind of leadership would take over, and how would the house continue to develop its activities and its character over time? Many ideas were presented for different ways to model the house government. One, which was encouraged by some in the administration, was to have a board of faculty fellows that would make decisions for the dorm's educational program. Serving as the chair of our subcommittee on house governance, I felt that the most "educational" way to model the house government was to give all house residents an opportunity to participate. Thus, the "town hall" idea was adopted as the model of government the Founders Group supported. I'm happy to know that this style of government continues to be in operation, and I understand you are now working from an official constitution-- congratulations. So I guess I've arrived at the question that I keep asking myself every time I think back on my Founders Group experience-- after all this talk, did we actually do anything? Well, technically, I suppose the answer is no. But I like to think the answer is yes. I'll explain. Remember the challenges that I mentioned at the beginning of this presentation. One the one hand, we were trying to shape a new community, with an emphasis on the educational aspects of dorm life. On the other hand, we wanted to allow students the opporutnity to shape their own community, because letting a community work together and make its own decisions was vital to the educational experience. But then how would we shape the community, but still allow it to shape itself? We did it by focusing not on making decisions, but on starting conversations. We generated ideas that we would then pass down to the community itself, allowing them to make the final decisions themselves. We didn't create a dining plan, but we passed on the idea of a dining plan that encouraged people to use the dining hall but didn't force students into an inflexible, mandatory plan. We didn't start the government, but we established the idea of a style of government where all members of the community would have an opportunity to participate in decisionmaking. You could say that our appproach was all talk, no action. You might also say that we were off the hook in terms of having to do real work, since the people really shaping the dorm would be the people who came after us. But we kept working, primarily on two tasks that I think were critical in ensuring a transition into a community that could talk ownership over the project. First, we played a lot of defense. I already mentioned the hype surrounding Simmons Hall, how it was supposed to be the new wave of residential life at MIT, how it was supposed to be about integrating education into the residence system, bring together students and faculty and all that. Well, we had our idea about what that meant, but others had differing views. And there were people out there, mostly in the adminstration, some in the faculty, who couldn't wait to shape Simmons Hall according to their own ideas. Some had ideas of incorporating their own academic programs into the community. Some had thoughts about how the visiting scholar apartments should be distributed. Some had ideas about how the dining plan should be structured. Most thought that since Simmons Hall was new, it would be easier to craft a new program because there wouldn't be existing residents to oppose it. Our task was to make sure that this wasn't the case-- we needed to make it clear that the eventual residents of the building-- the students and the house team-- would be the ones making the decisions about what programs and activities to adopt as part of the community. That required vigilance, and I think we did a fairly good job of supplying it. The other thing we had to do was recruit. This was critical, not only because we needed to ensure that our conversations and ideas would be carried into the community as it was formed, but because in order to develop the kind of dorm culture we wanted, we needed to have students from all four class years living in the dorm, ideally in equal proportions. We wouldn't just be aiming to recruit freshmen from the incoming class in 2002, we would also be looking for students from other class years to move in. This was tough, because most students either develop strong social ties within their living group, or are just too lazy to consider moving. It was also widely assumed across MIT that Simmons Hall would be an all-freshman dorm, a notion we needed to combat at every opportunity. Some students even wanted it that way-- they thought that Simmons Hall would work best as a holding area for freshmen who intended to move into FSILGs. Presumably, that would mean that other dorms wouldn't be affected by the change. copyright Jeffrey C. Roberts, 2004 |