Editor’s Note: The Tech received numerous letters from Bexley residents after last week’s announcement that Bexley would be closing for up to three years due to structural problems. Printed here is a representative subset of those letters.

Bexley is a living and breathing beast, constantly changing yet remaining the same. Bexley is a hundred years of visible history scrawled and splattered onto its insides. Bexley is irreverence and nonconformity. Bexley is a free space. Bexley is my closest friends in the world. Bexley is misfits. Bexley is a bunch of people with nothing in common, who realize that fact itself is what they have in common. Bexley is a place for everyone. Bexley is who I am. Bexley is home.

I cannot say that I chose to come to MIT because of Bexley specifically, but definitely for the general feel that MIT was different. Other colleges don’t have a housing system like ours, where you have so much opportunity to actually choose a home, not just get allocated a random bed to sleep in. I am so grateful to have had these past two years in Bexley, even if my next two will be elsewhere. Bexley has shaped the person I have become today in so many ways it is impossible to even put into words. Bexley is truly the love of my life, and I am absolutely heartbroken to have to leave it.

Even just the prospect of being split from this community makes me feel lost and alone. I don’t think people understand what we mean to one another. Even my family doesn’t really comprehend it. I don’t think they want to understand that the love I feel for you might rival that which I hold for them; that I take pride in your past traditions and culture just as much as I take pride in my own heritage. You were what really excited me about MIT. Everyone says that they come here to study because you don’t say no to MIT. To tell the truth, saying that if Bexley didn’t exist, I wouldn’t have come here would be an exaggeration, but there is no way I could have anticipated just how important you have become to me. I was more ecstatic about making my first “I Jerk Off” shirt, a symbol of the Bexley community, than I was about receiving my Brass Rat last week.

I am a member of the MIT community. I love MIT. But my connection to MIT does not even come close to my connection to the Bexley. MIT would not be the same without Bexley. To be frank, I don’t know if I could survive MIT without you. Each and every person in Bexley is his or her own unique individual. That’s not to say that the rest of the MIT population is not unique or important. But not every person, let alone every undergrad, plays a crucial role in my life the way that every single member of the Bexley community does. The thought that this community may be splintered makes my heart heavy; I feel as if I am trying to breathe with only one lung.

Please don’t take these people away from me.

By the end of CPW, I knew I wanted to live here. It was the sense of humor that attracted me — dark and bizarre, and the kind of humor you’ll only find funny if you don’t take yourself too seriously. This quality of Bexley — the capacity to not take itself too seriously — is a rare one at MIT, and it has kept me sane these past few years.

In Bexley, I have made some of the truest and closest friends I have. There is nowhere else on campus where I identify with the people I’ve met nearly as much as in Bexley. When I meet Bexley alumni, I see that they share qualities that I appreciate in the other people who live here — unpretentious creativity, wry humor, low tolerance for rules and bureaucracy, and delight in making a particularly colorful mess. These values are different from those held by MIT in general, which is why I am so grateful to this community for giving me space to stop acting and feel at home.

This is an ongoing culture, somehow preserved despite the steady four-year rotation of students. I’d guess underclassmen who share these qualities choose to live here because this is where they feel happy. Maybe the decades-long, spontaneously-recorded history stored in bright layers on the walls, with its cryptic messages of good times passed, provides some force for continuity.

These past few days I keep imagining if I’d arrived here to find a newly-renovated Bexley that didn’t allow paint or cats or loud, spontaneous bluegrass trios in the hallway at 2 a.m. I’m not sure I would have made it through. I’ve had days when I’m fed up with MIT, sick of the pressure, and I sit down in the lounge and people I love walk in and start talking to me, making me laugh, and after an hour or so I’ve recovered a sense of perspective. The walls are an important outlet, too — I’ve spent dozens of hours putting paint on these walls, big bright creatures, landscapes and neighborhoods that probably wouldn’t have made it through the approval process other paint-the-walls dorms require.

I’m terrified that after the renovation process is done, New Bexley will be deemed too shiny for the noise, color, and freedom it has housed for decades. I understand that the building needs repair. But I hope that its personality will be preserved, because there are always going to be kids here who, like me, really need this place.

People that know me know that I am forever missing my home in West Virginia. I never thought that I would find a community that I loved and felt as comfortable in as that one, but I managed to find one in Bexley.

I feel lucky to have found a second home so similar to my first one. I have a place to live where I am surrounded not just by my best friends but by poets, crossdressers, tropical boiz and a whole collection of other crazy, weird, inspiring people. I feel comfortable leaving my door open all day when I’m not home, so that the kitty Jenga can come and go as she pleases. I feel comfortable walking through the dorm in my pajamas to pick up packages and donuts from Besk. I feel comfortable getting hamtossed with my friends and romping around on Friday and Saturday nights, sometimes even Tuesday or Wednesday, but who cares. Bexley truly is my home. It is a place that is never quiet. It is full of life that only a family of 116 coed residents can bring. Everything about this place is full of that life — the endless murals on the walls, the blaring of buttrock on the nicer days Cambridge offers up, the groups of friends that gather in suites to eat and drink and get weird.

Knowing that I will not get to spend my senior year among the winding, painted suites that make up my home gives me that same sense of loss that caused me to cry the full ten hours from West Virginia to Boston on my first trip to college. I honestly don’t know what next year is going to be like without a home to come back to everyday, and I’m not looking forward to it. I will be forever missing my home in Bexley.

Viva Bexxxley.

“Education is not so much knowledge as it is learning how to think.” —David Foster Wallace

Never have I come across, on campus or in all the walks of my own life, a greater or richer collective of humanism than the family I have found at Bexley Hall. Some have called us rule-breakers, or misfits, and with them I do not disagree, and it’s a culture I would not trade for anything. You’ll be hard pressed to find such a group of people whose personalities, ideas, and ideologies are so diverse and yet so respected by all. In a world where most are happy to pick, say, who they are and who they stand with, Republican, Democrat, Christian, atheist, red, blue, cake, pie… and are so quick to conform ideas to create a strong voice, Bexley has been a haven where I can say that I don’t stand with any group, I stand with the humans, I stand with Bexley. As Wallace says, when we choose to think, choose to listen to others, to be truly thoughtful and respectful about their beliefs and ideas, there is no need to agree, no need to be a party or a collective, and nowhere is that more apparent and more appreciated than Bexley Hall.

So, our walls aren’t white, and they say things you might not agree with, but then, that’s the point. What Bexley has shown itself to be is not a dorm, but a true family, and a true bastion of humanity. It has made me a better person every day that I have spent here, and the day that culture of acceptance and respect is extinguished will be among the most lamentable.

Buttrock used to play every night. At 9 p.m., sharp, Nazareth’s “Hair of the Dog” would play on a loop 10 times or 15 times (who can remember this anymore?) unless someone had taken the initiative to vote for another song, and usually no one did. I lived on the courtyard freshman year, and so I was one of the lucky people, not counting the innocents on Mass Ave, blessed with this reliable musical interlude. Sometimes it was awful, I would fume silently to the dulcet tones of “now you’re messin’ with... a son of a bitch!” But mostly it was awesome. And now, I can’t believe that Buttrock (which has since diversified and moved rooms and conformed a little more to the weather and people’s habits) will cease to exist. Our noisy, shabby, often smelly, usually smoky home is now something to memorialize, since the walls weren’t permanent enough. I love this place, and I’m going to miss it terribly.

There has understandably been a great deal of anxiety on campus about how best to relocate the hundred or so displaced Bexley residents who will need to be housed in a different place come fall than everyone had been expecting. We would like to find a solution that is ‘fair,’ but of course there is no obvious fix that is fair to everyone. Relocating a number of students from a place they had settled themselves, into the midst of other people who had also already settled themselves, poses very real challenges.

Putting people together unexpectedly can be the source of great human strife; but it can also be the root of really great things. Part of my scholarly focus is in an area called ‘macro-historical dynamics’ — the study of large social processes that unfold over long periods of time and usually across large areas of space. Investigation into the rise and spread of communicable disease around the globe shows that they have emerged in pockets of human density and follow patterns of human movement. But density and exchange are also responsible for the acceleration of innovation and technical change. In a seminal article published in the QJE (1993) while he was in the Economics Dept. at MIT, Michael Kramer documents the strong association between population growth and the rapidity of technological advance. At the margins more crowded dorms will result in some inconveniences, certainly, but also new social opportunities, with benefits unknown.

Many of us form strong identities to a particular place, or a particular community. But we also move between communities. Indeed, the process of coming to MIT in the first place is surely one such major move. Our experiences here are not diminished by virtue of the fact that we come from somewhere else. Indeed, in many respects they are enhanced by that fact. As a graduate student in the late 1980s, I had the privilege of studying under the great economic historian Carlo Cipolla. He spent every fall teaching at Berkeley and every spring in his native Italy. He favorite way to begin a course was to tell his students that, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” This was perhaps one of the most formative ideas for me on my path to becoming a serious historian. I still have the yellow legal pad in which I took lecture notes the first time I TA’ed for him, and sure enough when I went back and looked, there is that phrase in my hasty scrawl with double asterisks punctuating both ends of it. Carlo was a bridge for all of his students, from two continents of course in that roundtrip migration he made every year, but also a bridge across time. He was my conduit into the past.

Now I realize that geographically Bexley is in no way as far from other MIT living spaces as either Italy is from Northern California, or the present is from the Middle Ages. But for the students who are experiencing this migration, the distance in space and cultural setting is real enough. And the opportunities for bridging difference are likewise there. I write this not yet knowing which, or even how many, Bexley residents will move into dorms such as the one I am privileged to serve as a housemaster, Burton-Conner. But I do want to say to you, whoever you are, that you are most welcome in Burton-Conner. Hopefully you will find things to like about us, just the way we already are; and we will find the same about you. But I also hope that this unplanned happenstance helps us both to change in constructive ways, to become something that might not have been possible unless we had come together. I’m looking forward to the adventure into the future ­­­­— also a foreign country where let’s hope we really will do at least a few things differently.

Anne EC McCants is the Housemaster of Burton-Conner.

This coming fall, due to the closure of Bexley Hall, on-campus housing will be particularly tight. Dormitories have already been told that they will likely be subject to overcrowding, with doubles turned into triples and quads.

So long as we insist on accommodating all returning dormitory residents and freshmen in existing facilities, some significant belt-tightening is inevitable. But much of this problem is self-inflicted. For over a decade, MIT has required freshmen to live on campus. Doing so has put a significant strain on on-campus housing, leading to chronic overcrowding before Maseeh Hall was opened. Before resurrecting that arrangement, the administration ought to consider allowing freshmen to move to fraternities and sororities during the upcoming academic year.

The very phrasing of this proposal, though, belies its simplicity. Freshmen already move to fraternities, and do so very early in their tenure at MIT. Anecdotal evidence suggests that freshmen in forced triples tend to move to fraternities at higher rates than those in singles or doubles. They simply do so without formally informing MIT and without officially vacating their dormitory digs.

So what difference, then, does it make to allow freshmen to actually move out? It allows the housing situation on campus to slowly adjust, through the year, to reflect the smaller population of freshmen actually residing in dormitories. Instead of all three males in a forced triple unofficially deserting the dormitory for their fraternities while students in adjoining rooms continue to experience overcrowding, residents would be allowed to move into such empty rooms. The number of overcrowded rooms on campus would thus fall as freshmen moved into their fraternities.

On the surface, this is a win-win arrangement. Dormitory residents experience less overcrowding. Freshmen can choose to live where they want. And the physical dormitories experience less of the wear-and-tear associated with overcrowding.

But then what of the underlying purpose for the policy? It was implemented in the wake of a freshman’s death from excess alcohol intake at a fraternity party in 1997. It is clear that freshmen continue to attend fraternity parties, and that freshmen who want to drink continue to do so. We are on a college campus in America.

The justification for the freshmen-on-campus policy then comes down to the hope that being able to return to a dormitory bed at any time will encourage freshmen to lead a tamer lifestyle. It is well beyond the scope of this piece to investigate the policy’s success in this regard. But in a reality where the Administration must choose between cramming extra freshmen into already small rooms or allowing them the choice to formally move somewhere they may already be living, the decision should be simple. At least for next year, when dormitories seem doomed to significant overcrowding, the administration should prioritize giving students the peace of mind that comes with adequate physical space.

Saul Wilson is a member of the Class of 2014.

Since about the sixth grade, when I first attended ESP Splash (Sorry about that bit of deception, it was smaller and less strict then), I have been spending time intermittently with MIT students. I took just about everything that ESP had to offer: Splash and Spark and Junction and Delve and HSSP. I liked MIT, and I spent more time there. My first date in high school was an LSC showing of Transformers. I got a four year MITSFS membership when I was a freshman. I went to the Model United Nations you were kind enough to host superbly well. I have spent time with professors, students, and even a few applicants. I have been attending events and hanging out at MIT for over six years now.

Throughout it all people have been friendly, caring, and fantastically quirky. I have learned that if I ask an MIT student a question about almost anything, I will be surprisingly likely to at least get a reference to where I can find the answer. I have been shown the roofs, and the lovely view of Boston at night, because someone I didn’t know wanted to cheer me up. I have read the copies of The Tech that are available for free public consumption, and laughed at the comics and thought about the articles. I won’t be going to MIT, because I am going to read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, but I will always have a warm space in my heart for the people who have helped in so many small ways.

So, thank you. Thank you for being open to the public, and letting high school students come to your cool events. Thank you for being friendly and warm. Thank you for being brilliant and interesting. Thank you.

To the statements in The Tech regarding the decision that the Maseeh Hall Executive Council (MHEC) made to secede from DormCon: While it is true that MHEC made a quick vote during our previous meeting, it was a decision that was months into discussions. Our informing of the dorm and The Tech was unfortunately disjointed, and we hope to clear up the reasoning why we decided to leave DormCon.

1. Budget Concerns: As we have over 460 residents (with even more next year), at $5 per person per semester, we were pulling a larger negative compared to other dorms every year.

2. We have not been allowed to participate in Rex, and therefore received very little benefit from DormCon during the period of REX.

3. While DormCon has a fund (approximately $8,000) from which they can give grants for events, there is no formal way of applying for these, as the $8,000 is apportioned at the beginning of the year (Taken from the previous three years of DormCon Budgets: $5,000 for Steer Roast, $2,000 for Piano Drop, and $1000 for DTYD).

4. DormCon spent an excessive amount of money on their personal retreat this year ($4000), none of which benefited Maseeh as a whole.

5. We believe the oversized executive council does a poor job of representing their constituents, often giving more merit to the loudest opinion rather than the most sound.

Even though we are no longer a voting member of DormCon, we still remain a member dorm and will continue to be invested and committed to the improvement of the convention.

We believe in helping out our community and helping out the smaller dorms and groups throw events, but we believed that the forced redistribution of wealth from DormCon did not benefit the majority of our residents; and that’s why our decision was made.

To the esteemed housing office members, Dean Hastings, Dean Colombo, and Chancellor Grimson:

My name is Patrick Marx, a current MIT senior living in Boston. I’m writing to express my outrage at how the closing of Bexley house has been handled.

Independent of the necessity of its actual closing, I find it unacceptable to present a decision of this magnitude to the Bexley residents with the timing and lack of warning it had. You have forced hardworking, dedicated students into position of making a year long decision on housing in a matter of hours. Further, this decision that must now be made, is presented at the worst of possible times. The crunch weeks leading up to finals are among the most stressful and stretched for time of any in the year, and adding to that with such callousness is shameful in the least.

The first words on the housing website are as follows: “At the core of the MIT housing experience is a powerful sense of community.”

The Bexley community was by far one of the closest and family like communities in our entire university. This information should have been presented months if not a year in advance to give the residents a fair chance at preserving what, to them, really is their family. Instead they have been taken completely off guard, with no chance at even achieving what could be described as a “decent” housing situation. They are forced to choose between moving into a dorm with people they don’t know, or betting they will be able to find independent housing far late in the game.

This is not how we should treat our students. This isn’t even how we should treat our enemies. If you as an office would like to claim a community, then you should follow through and make things right for those students. Any response is appreciated, and thank you for your time.

Devastated … absolutely devastated. I am one of the GRTs at Bexley and this news has severely affected our community — we are still in shock. As a graduate student coming to Bexley, to be a GRT has been the best part of my experience at MIT. Prior to Bexley, I was growing increasingly unhappy at MIT and I had no community that I fit with until I landed here. This is the same way many of the undergraduate students at Bexley feel. Its not just me though — I have a partner who has found this place to be an amazing community that has embraced her and made her days better, too.

My partner and I are about to have a child, and we were so excited to have Bexley be part of our family. The students and us have been looking forward to having a new member of Bexley. Believe it or not, we were looking forward to our child taking its first steps down the graffitied hallways, the vulgar and beautiful alike. We love it all.

The thought of not being with the students at Bexley next year is truly saddening, the loss of our community is painful, and the feelings that the students are experiencing are worse. My only solace is in the creative determination of our culture, and its desire to continue. My hope is that the MIT community which I have come to identify with so strongly will do what it always does: be amazing and find solutions that no other group of people could find.

Bexely, we love you!

You are lucky to have been spared from the time living in Bexley.

There are many things I dislike about Bexley. For one, the radiators are always completely off when it’s snowing and cold, and full-blast when it’s warm out, so the temperature of my room is rarely comfortable. It’s unfortunate that the knobs on the radiators are merely for show. It’s also unfortunate that each year when the radiators go on, they spew noxious fumes that are “not toxic, just water.” Another dear set of faulty appliances is our washing machines which regularly end their cycle with my clothes sitting in a large pool of gray water. I would perhaps opt to hand-wash my clothing, but my bathtub is somehow incapable of trapping in water, so washing machine it is. This sopping pile of clothes of course takes about nine dry cycles in our dryers, but the machines will only let you run up to seven cycles at a time. While waiting for my clothes to dry, the housewife in me may desire to bake cookies, but I’ve yet to find a cookie sheet for sale that fits in my Fischer-Price oven.

Don’t get me wrong — some of Bexley’s faults are very convenient. I sometimes feel awkward walking past three to four people every morning while I walk-of-shame through their suites in yesterday’s clothes. BUT there’s usually a burnt-out light in at least one of the hallways, so I have the pleasure of being partially obscured in darkness. To be honest though, most of Bexley knows how I look right out of bed regardless because La Verde’s only sets off our fire alarms between the hours of 2 a.m. and 7 a.m., most often just after I’ve fallen asleep.

I could probably go on for a while — the bexment floor is more often sticky than not; there is absolutely no such thing as quiet hours; despite what has been advertised, the walls are absolutely not soundproof; no matter how much I clean the floor of my room, it will always look dirty. You get the idea.

So, you are lucky to not live in Bexley. You are lucky to be spared the grief of being ripped away from the people who make you happiest at MIT, and the disorientation of having a brick, four-story, apparently-structurally-unsound rug pulled out from under you. Earlier this year, in the depths of ill-mental health from MIT-stress, I ended up spending the night in a psychiatric ward, and thereafter started treatment at MIT Mental Health. Depression is really tough, but cereally, Bexley’s community played a major role in my recovery. Even just walking through people’s suites to cross the building, and being genuinely greeted by everyone I pass makes me feel more supported.

The people here are eccentric and loud and crazy and awesome, and it’s hard to imagine that I have to finish my time at MIT without them. I feel like I’m being forced to graduate a year early, saying goodbye to all the people and things that I’m parting ways with — except that I still have to drink from the firehose next year, without anyone else to prop me up. I’m sorry; I don’t really know how to write sentimental shit. But I’m crying, and I’m glad you don’t have to share my pain.

Nicole M. Power is a member of the Class of 2014 and a resident of Bexley.

An article in last Tuesday’s issue regarding Maseeh seceding from DormCon incorrectly identified MHEC. It is “Maseeh Hall Executive Council.”

Disclaimer: Although I am a former member of DormCon, I do not speak for the organization and I have not consulted it before writing this piece.

MIT’s Dormitory Council is the only organization devoted solely to the interests of dorm residents on campus, and Maseeh’s departure means an additional 462 undergraduates no longer have a voice in this organization. Some argue that DormCon simply redistributes money to dorms and its own retreats. But in fact, the organization promotes campus-wide appreciation of every dorm, ensuring every DormCon-funded event welcomes every participating dorms’ residents, and standing up for undergraduates in dorm affairs. Although I’m biased, I believe that DormCon is one of the best voices for students and one of the most functional, efficient groups on campus. Leaving the group deserves more than a few minutes of discussion.

First of all, DormCon does a great job of coordinating CPW, Orientation, and other campus-wide activities. The organization makes sure that dorms get an even distribution of the limited number of REX events and limited number of dorm-centric early returns for dorm orientation events, and has done a great job. For example, not long ago, the administration attempted to reduce the length of REX, and DormCon led the fight to preserve orientation as a campus-wide welcome to new students. DormCon also helps fund traditions and new ideas during the semester, such as Piano Drop and Bad Ideas. Furthermore, the DormCon tax ensures that dorms all devote money to campus-wide events, and encourages cross-campus mixing and a reputation of friendliness.

DormCon is also critical to student self-adjudication. Judicial committees are a key element of students’ self-government, and DormCon’s JudComm is one place residents can go to settle their disputes without involving the administration. While not all problems are suitable for peer judicial mediation, not all problems are perfectly suited for administration settlement, and having a designated JudComm gives us another place we can go within the dorm. This framework gives dorms and students power and is a dangerous thing to abandon without replacement.

During the RLAD introduction, DormCon advocated student involvement, thereby ensuring that students would be able to participate in the process by which RLADs were chosen. DormCon also helped students contribute to the dining debate, encouraging more choices for meal plans and higher quality of food across all dorms.

Although the most recent budget had controversies, DormCon is still an excellent organization and has a history of student advocacy and engagement. Leaving DormCon removes a venue for students’ voices, and I do not believe that leaving the organization is the way to fix its problems.

On April 23, France legalized gay marriage. The measure passed 331-224 in the Socialist Party majority Assembly. However, the bill came at the price of the signers’ safety. The day before the vote, Claude Bartolone, the head of France’s National Assembly, received an envelope sealed with gunpowder and a death-threat letter, signed by the right-wing group of France, Interaction des forces de l’ordre.

The letter read, “Allowing marriage for all would be the same as destroying all marriage … Our methods are more radical and direct than demonstrations. You wanted war, you’ve got it … If you were to carry on regardless, your political family will have to suffer physically.”

It is clear that conservative factions in France are willing to resort to violence in order to impede the struggle for gay rights. In light over the public debate, homophobic attacks in France have become more prevalent.

These events in France serve as a warning for America. Like France, our nation has a startling number of members in right-wing groups, such as the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) and One Million Moms. These groups set up anti-gay demonstrations and fundraise to disseminate pamphlets and the word of God. However, they do not practice violence to make their point, which is a crucial and necessary distinction. Whether an activist identifies as a social liberal or a conservative, their method of protest should never be violence. But in France, Frigide Barjot, leader of the Manif Pour Tous (Demo For All), assured that President Hollande “wants blood, and he will get it.” Such militant rhetoric would have no place in America.

Recently, our Supreme Court has handled two high-profile cases regarding gay marriage: Hollingsworth vs. Perry, the case on Proposition 8, the California ballot initiative that defined marriage as being between a man and a woman, and United States vs. Windsor, the case on the Defense of Marriage Act, which denied same-sex couples the federal recognition and benefits afforded to heterosexual couples.

In both cases, arguments against gay marriage faltered. The results of the hearings will come in a month or so, but one can already speculate that Chief Justice Roberts would provide the final vote to strike down both Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act, not on the grounds of whether the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments should protect gays’ rights to marry, but on the grounds of federalism.

When that time comes, these opponents of gay marriage must act as civil Americans and not as the current radical French reactionaries. Protests that are peaceful are the messages most well-received by international communities. On the other hand, violent demonstrations would mar our nation’s image. As victories for gay rights advocates have proved to spark homophobia abroad, I hope that our reaction here at home will set an example for the rest of the world.

MITx is touted as a revolutionary opportunity for thousands of students across the globe. But MIT is also committed to using MITx to transform the nature of education on its own campus. In order to do so, MIT — and all other institutions embracing digital learning — must answer the question of how best to structure their online learning platform. If online resources are to have the effect that advocates promise, it is essential that the online learning platform that is tailored to the needs and learning styles of the student body.

In order to better understand the needs of its students, MIT should utilize its students to generate and test ideas for online learning platforms. Almost every student already uses online content at some point in his or her education, whether for a UROP, problem set, or class project, and this idea will allow us to see all the difference ways in which students use digital content and how they can be merged together into a cohesive platform. Furthermore, there are numerous ways in which these experiments could be incorporated into traditional classes.

Project based classes, for example, are one area where students can experiment with the development of an online learning platform. This semester, I am taking 3.042 and have been working with my group on a project about the materials science and acoustics of bells. For our project, my group learned how to sand cast bells, to measure their mechanical properties and characterize their microstructure, and how to measure their acoustic properties. One of the main ways in which we learned all this was through different resources we found on the Internet.

Imagine if as a part of a requirement for the class, at the end our project our group compiled all of our work into a centralized website where someone could find all the information and tools necessary to complete our project. The website could contain videos, presentations, demos, papers, lab modules, and any other work we did on the project. The challenge would be determining how best to organize this information so it serves the needs of the person interested in learning about our work. In other words, our challenge would be to create a platform for digital learning. Imagine the ideas that would emerge if students in project-based classes all across the institute developed their own platforms.

Not only will this result in a wide range of learning platforms, but encouraging students to think about how best to teach the concepts they learn for a project will cement the ideas they have learned and improve their communication skills. Furthermore, by seeing how helpful the different platforms are for students, the best practices can be identified and incorporated into the MITx platform. Experimenting with student created learning platforms will also allow MIT to better understand the ways in which its students use digital content.

For MITx to have its desired impact, it is essential that it be tuned to needs of the student population. The best way to determine both what these needs are and how best to meet them is to engage students with the chance to shape the development of MITx by experimenting with different ways to use online learning in their own educations.

Since the plan’s inception, students and administration have clashed over issues such as price, flexibility, and the role of student input in making the final decision. Students wondered about the impact of the dining plan on MIT culture, while administrators said the plan would put MIT dining on par with plans of peer universities and reduce dining’s $600,000 annual deficit.

Now, a year and a half later, we revisit the issue. How satisfied are students with dining? And given that dining is here to stay, how can students and administration best work together to design a suitable system?

Although Residential Life and Dining (RL&D) is not planning to comprehensively evaluate dining until 2014, in the meantime, we urge the House Dining Committee (HDC) and members of the administration to actively seek student input on issues that can be — or should be — promptly addressed. To this end, we encourage the administration to open multiple channels for regular student involvement; for example, an online idea bank or forums held at individual dorms. In the short-term, changes that could quickly improve the dining experience can go a long way.

To the undergrads: Remember that you are the primary consumer of the dining plan. Demand a bigger voice and a larger seat at the table. If you are dissatisfied with dining, explain your specific concerns so that when you’re heard, HDC and RL&D will know what the actual issue is. Fill out the comment cards, but consider reaching out directly to the relevant people: your dorm’s dining chairs, your housemasters, and other members of HDC.

We encourage all parties involved to try to understand the reasoning behind each other’s decisions and perspectives. Beyond just making your opinion heard, future success of the dining plan depends on a thoughtful collaboration between all parties in which everyone understands each other’s limitations, motivations, and goals.

An editorial in Tuesday’s issue also mistakenly indicated the amount of time Sean Collier had worked as an MIT Police Officer. He had been on the force for 15 months.

In this difficult time, the good of our community emerged. People leapt forward to support those affected by the marathon bombing. MIT living groups in the vicinity immediately offered assistance to those at the scene, and soon, Boston overflowed with well wishes, fundraising campaigns, and other recovery efforts.

Closer to home, we were shaken by the death of MIT Police Officer Sean Collier, who made the ultimate sacrifice in the line of duty after only 15 months on the force. We lost not only a protector, but also a friend who was deeply involved in the MIT community. He was loved by all, and will be remembered for his bravery and service. Our hearts go out to his friends, family, and all who knew him.

As the investigation continues, we urge the community to reach out to their friends and neighbors, especially those who may be wondering — am I now a target because of my race or the way I look? The actions and guilt of individuals are independent and distinct from the behavior of an entire group. We must discourage the unfair and hurtful generalizations that people have drawn throughout history based on the singular actions of an individual. Our strength is in embracing our community and not in turning against the innocent.

Finally, we call upon the administration to focus on campus safety. Since the gunman hoax in February, MIT has already shown significant improvements in notifying the community of potential threats in a timely manner. Now, MIT owes an assurance of continued safety to its on-campus community, families, and first responders. We expect MIT to develop a concrete plan detailing how the Institute might respond to potential threats. In rapidly developing situations, how would MIT keep the community both safe and informed? And after the past week, how will campus security protocols change?

The events of this past week have shown MIT to be resilient and caring. As we move forward and resume our lives, let us continue to help those affected by the past week heal, honor our fallen Officer Sean Collier, and remember that we are stronger as a community.