MIT's residential system should try to support three separate objectives: provide students with adequate, clean, comfortable housing and dining; create a comfortable, welcoming environment – in other words, a home; and promote community by stimulating interaction among students, faculty, staff, administration, and alumni/ae.

The Ad Hoc Working Group was asked by the President and the Dean for Undergraduate Education and Student Affairs to review a number of past reports of committees charged with evaluating different aspects of undergraduate life at MIT. The Working Group's task was to revisit the recommendations of these past committees to determine what might be learned prior to appointing another group to examine a similar set of issues.