SMS
RSS feeds
Reddit
NewsvineEach year, before residents arrive, staff from each dorm meet together and decide on the dorm’s theme. Residents are usually happy or at least neutral towards the decision.
Enlarge
But controversy flared recently in Kimball when resident Justin Hirsch ‘08, rubbed the wrong way by the “KimbaLand Before Time” theme, started an online vote to change it, causing some residents to respond angrily.
“When students enter their dorm, they assume that the theme is set in stone,” Hirsch said. “The idea of changing the theme was more of a question of whether it could be changed and to see if it could be done.”
Hirsch had an alternative theme: “KimBaller.” Hirsch claims that his attempt to have a live vote during the dorm meeting was stopped by dorm government, though dorm co-president Navin Kadaba ‘08 says they let him express himself as he wanted.
But after the meeting, Hirsch set up a poll on Surveymonkey.com asking residents whether they would like to stick with the current theme, or change it to his proposed one.
Survey results were favorable to Hirsch — 59 votes in favor of his theme, versus 30 for the current theme and 11 for another theme, “Kimballin’.” But some dorm residents questioned the veracity of the survey and whether it was needed.
“It’s pointless and frivolous,” said Lucas Moller ‘10. “By trying to make a statement, he’s annoying people.”
“The theme of the dorm doesn’t really matter at the end of the day,” said Dan Ha ‘10. “Because the RAs came up with the theme and have already decorated the dorm, changing it would not be respectful to them.”
Though Hirsch argues that the survey was confined to the dorm because he sent it only to Kimball’s mailing list, Moller noted that theoretically, anyone could vote in the survey, as long as each computer used had a different IP address.
Dorm co-president Kadaba expressed disgust at the proposed theme, and doubt at the number of online voters.
“Out of a 215 person dorm, the fact that 100 responded to the survey is very impressive,” he said. “I didn’t think that that many people cared.”
Dorm staff declined to speak individually to The Daily, instead replying together by e-mail.
“A lot of time, money, and planning goes into bringing the theme to life,” they wrote. “Unless someone is personally offended by the theme for legitimate reasons that speak to a cultural, religious, or identity misunderstanding, rather than a personal preference, the theme will not be changed.”
Were the dorm theme to be changed, as long as it was not offensive it would not need to be approved by Residential Education, said ResEd Associate Director Josh Schiller.
“Each house is its own community,” Schiller wrote in an e-mail. “Decisions about minor issues that have little to no bearing on policy-related matters are best handled on the dorm level.”
Some Kimballites just wondered what all the fuss was about.
“I think it’s silly that people take this so seriously,” said resident Connie Yu ‘09. “But if the immaturity of dinosaurs impacts on our subconscious, then sure, let’s be ‘baller’.”