Housing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Both undergraduate and graduate dorms have a resident Head of House, usually a member of the MIT faculty, living in a special apartment suite within the building.
[3] Since 2002, MIT has required all first-year undergrads to reside in dormitories, partly to control irresponsible abuse of alcohol in some fraternities, which had resulted in the death of a freshman.
[6] Upon arrival, first-year students are temporarily assigned to on-campus dormitory housing, based on a preliminary application and a lottery.
[11] The report viewed shared cooking and dining facilities as essential parts of MIT student life and education.
Dining halls would be structured for ease of access by other members of the MIT community, including students, faculty, and staff not residing in the host dorm, to facilitate wider social interactions and events.
[11] The guidelines say that a number of rooms and facilities should be shared dorm-wide, such as spaces for music rehearsal, games, media viewing, studying, exercising, meeting, and other individual or group activities.
Makerspaces are increasingly emphasized to support MIT's founding Mens et Manus ("Mind and Hand") ethos and participation in the arts and athletics.
A large enclosed exterior space or courtyard should be provided, gated for security while permitting wider community access for special occasions, and protected from solar glare and excessive wind.
[10] The MIT administration has emphasized incorporation of shared dining facilities into several larger undergraduate dormitories, as places where daily informal social interactions can occur.
[12][13][14] As of 2023[update], the MIT meal plans offer a mix of choices, required for residents of some dorms, and optional for all other undergraduates and all grad students.
[16] Baker House,[17] located at 362 Memorial Drive, is a co-ed dormitory at MIT designed by the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto in 1947–1948 and built in 1949.
Its distinctive design has an undulating shape which allows most rooms a view of the Charles River, and the dining hall features a "moon garden" roof.
Baker House was renovated for its fiftieth anniversary in 1999, modernizing the plumbing, telecommunications, and electrical systems and removing some of the interior changes made over the years that were not in Aalto's original design.
[20] Notable Baker House alumni include Kenneth Olsen (Electrical Engineering, 1950), co-founder of Digital Equipment Corporation; Amar Bose (Electrical Engineering, 1951), founder of the Bose Corporation and inventor of numerous audio technologies; Alan Guth (Physics, 1968), astrophysicist and professor of physics at MIT; Timothy Carney (1966), former US Ambassador to Sudan and Haiti; Gerald Sussman (Mathematics, 1968), professor of computer science at MIT; Geoffrey A. Landis (Physics and Electrical Engineering, 1980), NASA scientist and science fiction writer; Ronald T. Raines (Chemistry and Biology, 1980), professor of chemistry at MIT; Cady Coleman (Chemistry, 1983), NASA Astronaut; Wes Bush (1983), former chairman and CEO, Northrop Grumman; Warren Madden (1985), Weather Channel meteorologist; Jonathan Gruber (Economics, 1987), healthcare economist and political advisor; Charles Korsmo (Physics, 2000), actor in movies such as Hook and Can't Hardly Wait; Ed Miller (Physics and Electrical Engineering, 2000), noted poker authority; and Katy Croff Bell (Ocean Engineering, 2000), National Geographic ocean explorer.
Burton-Conner is a combination of two major sections of the former "Riverside" hotel and apartment building, which MIT acquired and reopened as a dormitory in 1950.
[25] The dorm was re-opened during the wind-down of the COVID-19 pandemic in September 2022, amid criticism that the building was "without landmarks" due to restrictions on students painting traditional wall murals.
[31] The social life of East Campus residents includes ambitious build projects (such as a 130-foot (40 m) roller coaster[32]) during REX Rush Week, Bad Ideas Weekend during January,[33] and various feasts and celebrations, generally located in the courtyard between the two parallels.
Notable alumni of East Campus include Ahmed Chalabi (Mathematics, 1965) of the Iraqi National Congress; George Smoot (Mathematics and Physics, 1966), co-recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics; Jacob K. White (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1980), MIT professor and IEEE Fellow; Michael Fincke (Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1989, and Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, 1989), NASA astronaut; Thomas Massie (Electrical Engineering, 1993), US Representative for Kentucky, Arash Ferdowsi (no degree, 2008) co-founder of Dropbox, and Sam Bankman-Fried (Physics, 2014), founder of the cryptocurrency trading firm Alameda Research and the FTX cryptocurrency exchange.
[34](registration required) During the closure, East Campus residents will be housed in other dormitories, hotel rooms, and the building formerly occupied by an on-campus fraternity which has been disbanded.
A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) study examined the causes of this phenomenon in detail, but did not propose any specific measures to ameliorate it.
[41][42] The exterior of the emptied building was immediately repaired to stop water leaks and further deterioration, but there was no funding to renovate the interior of the structure.
[46] McCormick Hall was designed to advocate and encourage female participation in the field of STEM, supporting gender equality in the former US educational system.
[56] Dorm amenities, including a dining hall, a communal kitchen, a courtyard, a makerspace, and group study lounges, were chosen to promote social engagement.
The incident drew heavy criticism of MIT's leadership and decision-making process, with extensive student feedback and cooperation regularly being overturned with "vague appeals" to statistical data.
The incident gave rise to several activities and celebrations regarding The Milk, including birthday parties, awards for the "Ugliest Manifestation on Campus", and a joke application for admission to MIT.
Some residents owned pet cats and allowed them to roam free around the building, decades before MIT officially adopted a cat-friendly policy in 2008.
"[80] On May 7, 2013, MIT announced that Bexley Hall would be closed for up to three years, due to significant water damage inside the building's exterior walls that rendered the dormitory unsafe to live in.
[82][83][84] On October 17, 2013, MIT's Department of Facilities recommended that Bexley be demolished, deeming it too expensive to repair and bring up to modern building code.
A tower at the center of the north side features neo-classical columns that reflect the architecture of the original MIT Cambridge campus.
[99][100][101] An article in Wired described the MIT dorm closure as part of a wider trend among American universities of emphasizing safety and orderliness while minimizing legal liability and bad publicity.
