A Mansion on Merit
In a slide show titled, "Earned Housing" the NY Times portrays the experience of Marist College students who are awarded campus housing based on accumulated points for good behavior, community service, and good grades. Those with the most points get the most posh (poshest?) crib.
Depending on your behavior, you might get a large, multi-room apartment with a kitchen, or a small, dank, dark hole (well, I'm exaggerating) in the freshmen dorm. Yuck.
Students are given points for high G.P.A.'s, campus involvement and good conduct (like not being written up for under-age drinking) and receive deductions for infractions (like leaving a damaged room). Groups with the highest average scores choose first. At an all-day event in April, students gathered in the gym to learn the housing consequences of their actions and friendships.
Naturally, if you want to boost your score, you invite a goodie-two-shoes to be your roomie. You avoid the baddies like the plague. I wonder if there is an appeal system for unfair treatment? You know, like, "It was his keg, he bought it, and he was drinking it. I was just holding the funnel in his mouth." I suspect that, like communism or The Expendables, this one sounds great in theory, but there are a million ways it can wrong. What do you think?
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May '10
Re: A Mansion on Merit
I'm really torn. The lesson in cause and effect has to be valuable, but the equivalent lesson in paternalism problematic. There is also something equalizing and healthy in the age-old luck-of-the-draw system. My fear would be that over time, just as with the tax code, the impulse to pile on all manner of desired outcomes would be overwhelming and the system would ultimately collapse on itself as a sham. But what a great story!
Re: A Mansion on Merit
Trace, I completely agree! I read it and my immediate reaction was, "Awesome! If only things worked like that in NYC apartments," I thought, "our family would be made in the shade."
But then I started to imagine what would happen over time. People would make all kinds of time-consuming and costly appeals based on unfairness. Exceptions would be granted, perhaps rightfully, in certain circumstances. For example, an exception might be given to a student whose parent died during a semester and thus had poor grades. (I have no idea what happens at Marist, I'm just making things up, here.) But then the lines of what qualifies as an exception would begin to blur, and then ... well, then we get abuse of what is, "on paper," a great system.
Edited on Aug 27, 2010 at 10:32amMay '10
Re: A Mansion on Merit
I'm reminded of the valedictorians in my youth who took typing and gym to get straight A's.
I am one of those who never experienced dorm life. I worked my way through school over 5-1/2 years, lived at home till I got married in my last year. I have no clue what a freshman dorm is like.
There are a lot of other Americans in my shoes.
Jun '10
Re: A Mansion on Merit
Does anyone really think that this merit-based distribution of the goodies will survive more than one semester before "disparate impact" arises and we have to be sure that the dorm "looks like America?" Or at least like America would look if America were "fair"
Re: A Mansion on Merit
I'm with Trace and Ursula. What happens when the inevitable criteria-creep tends to enforce political correctness? I can't wait for "campus involvement" to be defined as showing adequate enthusiasm for the plight of the polar bear or Al Gore's stock portfolio -- oh wait, those are the same thing. In my mind I see a soft, sensitive Two Minutes Hate each day against whatever malefactor of great wealth is being frozen, personalized and polarized by the Alinskyite politician of the moment.
Re: A Mansion on Merit
Alas, doesn't it always come down to this: Who gets to define "merit?" The same people who get to define "fairness"?
May '10
Re: A Mansion on Merit
That's as thin a reed as I need Bill to say thank you for the editorial coverage in the Journal today on the for-profit college industry. I have no idea how anything works in your editorial processes or if you participated in that decision, but it was well-reasoned, credible, welcome and sadly, rare (apart from the WSJ).
Edited on Aug 27, 2010 at 12:00pm