News Briefs
New Lobdell Thai Restaurant Construction Slated For Summer
Construction for a new Thai restaurant that will fill the last spot in Lobdell Food Court is slated to begin over the summer, according to Richard D. Berlin III, The new Subway restaurant is scheduled to open next month.
Prices at the new Thai restaurant will be competitive with those of other restaurants in Lobdell and the Student Center, according to Berlin. It has not been decided whether new employees will be hired or if the restaurant will partner with an existing company on campus, Berlin said.
Mai Fong, the owner of Lemon Grass Restaurant, located in Sacramento, Calif., is a partner of the new Thai venue and was brought on to help develop the menu, Berlin said. A preliminary copy of the menu has already been completed. The restaurant will start out as a "Thai noodle bowl shop, and we will add things as we go along," Berlin said.
Based on a campus-wide dining survey from last term, MIT favored the addition of either an Italian, Thai, or Chinese food restaurant. Thai was ultimately chosen because of the survey results, the popularity of the Japanese restaurant, Shinkansen, and because the predecessor of Café Spice was an Italian restaurant which was not very successful.
The new Subway is already under construction behind a wall which secludes it from public viewing.
The new Thai restaurant, called Pho Noodle and Thai Cuisine, according to the Web site of the Division of Student Life handbook, will occupy the spot behind a wall where the old Burger King used to reside, Berlin said. It will be located next to Café Spice and the new Subway in the Student Center's second floor food court.
—Ji Qi
Planned GRE Changes Canceled
Previously scheduled changes to the Graduate Record Examinations were canceled by the Educational Testing Service early this month. Students who take the GRE will continue to take it in its current form, a computer-based "continuous testing format," according to an ETS press release. According to Dean for Graduate Students Isaac M. Colbert, who chaired the GRE board in charge of overseeing the changes, the impediment to the launch of the new test was the difficulty of guaranteeing complete access to the new Internet-based exam.
Colbert said that there had been difficulties "ensuring that everyone who wanted to take the test would have a seat." "It has been very difficult to get firm commitments to ensure this," Colbert said. "There were some sites that could guarantee some dates but not others. It turned out to be a much more difficult undertaking" than expected.
Colbert said he expected ETS would roll out the changes to the test in stages rather than all at once, stating that he believed the changes would make a better GRE. The GRE board will decide which changes to introduce first at their next meeting in late May or early June, according to Colbert. "We will have a better test that reflects the kinds of skills we're trying to measure."
The scheduled changes included making the GRE into a computer-based linear exam which would allow test-takers to skip and come back to questions, adding in an online calculator, and altering the curriculum and composition of the test.
—Angeline Wang
Caltech Pranks The Tech During CPW
On April 13, the Friday of Campus Preview Weekend, staff members of the California Institute of Technology's student newspaper, The California Tech, distributed fake copies of The Tech to the MIT community. According to Marissa Cevallos, The California Tech's editor in chief, 15,000 copies of the prank issue were printed and 11,000 copies were distributed.
Cevallos said that the prank was in the spirit of one pulled by the University of California, Los Angeles on the University of Southern California and was suggested by an advisor to The California Tech. Work on the issue began soon after the newspaper's April Fool's edition was released, Cevallos said.
MIT students have different opinions of the hack. "I thought it was incredible," Christa M. Margossian '07 said. "I thought it was really funny." "It was a nice prank, but it wasn't really comparable to the hacks MIT pulls on a regular basis," James A. Ostrowski '10 said.
Cevallos said the cost of the prank was reimbursed through the "Caltech Prank Fund" and declined to give more specifics. The remaining 4,000 copies were taken back to California, Cevallos said.
Nick Bushak