Media Coverage

Citing Safety, MIT Disbands Its Oldest, Oddest Dorm (via WBUR)

Residents say Senior House’s culture of care and free expression attracted large LGBT and minority populations, as well as lots of students who might not normally thrive at MIT. But administrators have decided its freewheeling attitude came with unacceptable risks. Students are protesting the school’s decision to shut it down. (Max Larkin/WBUR)

MIT may succeed in killing Senior House, risking both reputation and student health (via Cambridge Day)

True to their promise, students from the Senior House dorm are continuing to protest changes being forced by Massachusetts Institute of Technology administrators. On Monday they prepared a sleep-in outside the president’s office, an escalation from the sit-in that took place Friday.

Students preparing to sleep-in outside @MIT President’s office to protest depopulation of Senior House. (via Mike Connolly)

The Tech: Week of June 19

The entire front page of this week’s The Tech is filled with stories about Senior House.

  1. What Pilot 2021 is: https://thetech.com/2017/06/18/pilot-2021
  2. Community responds to Pilot 2021: https://thetech.com/2017/06/18/community-responses-to-pilot-2021
  3. How Pilot 2021 came about: https://thetech.com/2017/06/18/senior-house-depopulation
  4. Mike Short’s piece: https://thetech.com/2017/06/18/mike-short-op-ed
  5. Student leaders respond to Pilot 2021 (UA/FSILG presidents): https://thetech.com/2017/06/18/student-leadership-letter-pilot-2021
  6. Why Pilot 2021 is everyone’s problem: https://thetech.com/2017/06/18/why-everyone-should-care-pilot-2021 
  7. McCormick housemaster’s piece https://thetech.com/2017/06/18/raul-radovitzky-letter-senior-house
  8. Senior Haus needs to change: https://thetech.com/2017/06/18/pilot-2021-senior-haus-letter

MIT acts to change dorm counterculture, but community isn’t going without a fight (via Cambridge Day)

The Senior House dorm known to generations of Massachusetts Institute of Technology students has art everywhere, cats roaming the halls and an eclectic assortment of students who may be low-income, first-generation, black, Asian or Latinx or LGBTQI. Its residents will tell you that – despite winning a Laya and Jerome B. Wiesner Student Art Award in 2013 for the omnipresent murals, dating back to the 1990s and including a recent work by famed artist Shantell Martin – what the 100-year-old dorm is actually most famous for is the way residents support each other. [READ MORE]

State Rep. Mike Connolly speaks Friday in support of a student sit-in against changes to the Senior House dorm at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (Photo: Mike Connolly)