Thanksgiving Day Letter
November 26, 2010Dear Campus Dining Petition signer,
Thanks for signing the petition last week, and happy Thanksgiving! The organizers are committed to updating you on the results of your efforts so that we can all help maintain the group’s strong momentum.
First of all, the stats: we have over 1700 signatures, of which about 1400 are students (the rest are alumni and parents). That’s about 1/3 of the total undergraduate student body, so there’s ample room for us to keep building support. Talk to your friends, floormates, brothers, sisters, classmates, fellow sports team and club members--ask them if they know what the HDAG plan is and whether they’ve seen the petition. We need to push support for the petition in order to reach critical mass.
Second of all, the administrative reaction: there has been no response from Dean Colombo or HDAG yet, but our collective efforts are putting immense pressure on both parties, and the organizers expect an announcement from HDAG after Thanksgiving break about some revisions to the plan. We should all be excited, because this is progress forward, but the organizers believe that HDAG is still not willing to make all of the necessary concessions and that the announced revisions will not truly address the concerns in the petition. Expect HDAG to attempt a strategy of appeasement instead of addressing the real problems with the new plan, and be insulted when they do.
Lastly, our goal for this week is to inform the parents of MIT about the issues at stake. So, this Thanksgiving, talk to your family about dining. Parents have considerable influence on the administration’s evaluation of the dining plan, and we want them to be fully aware of opposition to the proposed changes. To simplify the process, please use this form to automatically send your parents an email with some of the facts, along with information about how they can help us fight the plan:
https://sayno.mit.edu:444/parents-contact.php (certificates required)
The bottom line: We can and will stop this plan if we work together, but we all need to push harder to get the petition signed by everyone who stands against the proposed changes to dining and HDAG’s blatant disregard for student input.
Enjoy the break! We'll be in touch soon.
Sincerely,
Your organizers