Rituals provided a way of working through conflicts and contradictions

[drwex]

In the past year-and-a-half, MIT Administration has at last had its way and shut down Senior House, long one of the biggest thorns in their side.

My relationship to SH was always that of welcome outsider. Many (most) of the UROPs at our lab came from there, and we spent time at parties and events there, as well as participating in various individual art projects and experiments run out of there. Somewhere there is a lovely black-and-white study of me and my then-young child taken in formal portrait style by a SH artist for a series she did for a political issues class. The text on our picture reads "I am a father and I smoke pot" - back then a somewhat risky and controversial statement. She didn't ask me or any of the other participants whether we actually smoked; the important part was our willingness to participate in a project aimed at countering propagandist stigma. Standing for that portrait I held in mind images of friends who had risked much more by coming out or declaring themselves AIDS-positive as a way to counteract other negative stereotypes.

This sort of stereotyping came to mind as I read some of the official words from MIT administration announcing first a "turnaround" and then a closing of the dorm. The Haus was home to a vast number of immigrant students, often the first generation of their families to go to college. Many more came to the US leaving all their family abroad - SH was their family in the states. It was deeply queer; one survey estimated that up to 40% of the dorm was willing to identify as gay, bi, lesbian, trans or similar non-mainstream identity. It was also one of the cheapest places to live on campus and so became home to many students who didn't have economic advantages their classmates enjoyed. It was proudly self-governing and anarchic and a constant friction for an MIT that wanted to project a certain image and have campus conform to that image. "conform" was a curse at Senior House, and I'm sure the MIT administration is more than glad to be rid of it.

All these thoughts came back to mind this week as I read Henry Jenkins' three-part blog post on 14 years as Senior House masters, with his wife. Jenkins is uniquely positioned not only as a long-term insider, but as a world authority on cultural studies, fan and minority cultures in particular. I've never known anyone more suited to such a role and I'm glad he's taken the time to write out his view on things. Start here:

http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2018/4/30/memories-of-senior-house-life-as-a-mit-housemasters-part-one

Comments

[selenite0]

I have some fond memories of SH as well. I lived in East Campus jr and sr year and dated a woman in SH.

[tpau]

when i was looking at MIT and deciding if i should go there or not, i visited senior house, and that was what decided for me that i wanted nothing to do with the place.... it was super not a me-place and at 17 i equated the entire institute with it...

[drwex]

Then it's a good thing you didn't go. For myself, being surrounded by brilliant, queer, multi-ethnic, counter-cultural people was like finding out I'd been exiled from a home I never knew.

I still never would have made it at MIT as an undergrad because Math, but SH was the best place (for me) to be after the Lab.

[tpau]

i was very anti drugs back then. still am really but it was jsut not a good environment for me

[gale_storm]

'...because Math'

Simply said and one of those things I grok.

[mizarchivist]

<3