Thu 31 Jan 2008
Is Dean Merrill stocking up on the tear gas?
Tonight (THURSDAY), we’re staying in Paresky after hours. The administration thinks that we, the students, don’t care about having our student center open 24/7 for our use. If you want to be able to sit in Paresky late into the night during the semester, come show your support at tonight’s sit-in.
Stop by tonight for a little while or a long while. DVD or board game in hand. Pretend spring semester hasn’t started yet or get a jump start on this semester’s reading! Or just socialize with whoever else you happen to find in Paresky throughout the night.
Support the cause! We deserve our student center!
Who says kids today aren’t idealistic?
Best strategy for the Administration is to totally ignore this and not try to lock up tonight, or for the next few nights. Then, once the students have moved on, just start locking the doors again.
Once the Administration does that, best strategy for the students is to ensure that at least of their number is in Paresky at the lock-up time (2:00 AM) and refuses to leave. After a few weeks of that, the Administration might give up. See the Record for background reading.
UPDATE: Are you a Record reporter? Make sure to read Jonathan Landsman’s comment below.
However, 24 hour access to the new student center was a feature of it, a promise made about it by administrators at all levels—I heard this personally from Morty, Dean Roseman, a number of times.
Did Morty and Roseman “promise” that the student center would be open 24/7? It’s an empirical question. Go ask them. And, if the try to weasel out with a non-response, call Landsman and confirm. Promises should be kept.
January 31st, 2008 at 7:11 pm
My thoughts:
1) Explore compromise options. If the architecture permits, there is no reason to heat the whole building if you can sustain a one open room for work. Sadly, I am willing to bet the systems don’t permit.
2) Goodrich is still closed. That was definitely very popular for late night studying. The unavailability there should definitely be factored into decisions now. With Goodrich and Paresky closed, the only decent space I can think off outside of a dorm to work is the science complex, aside from small places like the minority houses, etc.
3) The nice thing about this case, at least, is no one suspects the administration of being disingenuous in its statements of motivation. Sustainability is a real issue, certainly I assume for Merrill as the former leader of CES, and also for the college, and this is a clear cut case where it is reasonable to weigh. However, 24 hour access to the new student center was a feature of it, a promise made about it by administrators at all levels—I heard this personally from Morty, Dean Roseman, a number of times. Doesn’t mean you can’t honestly change your mind when you’ve got new data, though.
4) Long term lesson: students were on the policy committee that made this decision, and one of the students on it, Samantha Peterson ’08, is publicly against the decision. This is a case where CC and students in general should learn what they haven’t yet, that those student-faculty committees are critical to keep tabs on. Official CC rules require a rep from each committee to make a public address in CC once a month, and these rules ceased to be observed in 2004-5. They should be used, since most committees do not do their own work to make their agendas public. CC should follow up with the student reps if it is dissatisfied with the decision of the cmte they served on.
January 31st, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Bring back fraternities!
January 31st, 2008 at 11:03 pm
What I find most interesting about this - and maybe it’s been addressed on the forums discussing the matter, but maybe not - is that to my knowledge, while Paresky’s doors lock after 2 am, the electricity and heating stay on. I haven’t verified this myself, but a friend of mine was in the building until 4 am recently and she told me that everything was up and running.
Shutting down Paresky when few people use it makes sense to me for environmental (and also economical) reasons. However, if everything is staying on, why can’t students be inside?
February 2nd, 2008 at 1:09 am
I think the administration did commit to keeping the building open 24/7. However, if–as they claim, few to no students are taking advantage of this, can you really blame them for closing it given the sustainability concerns?