Opinion

Letters to the Editor

@MITstudents Twitter account

Stan Gill’s Jan. 5 article on “Tweeting at the ’Tute” provided a good overview of the use of Twitter by students and MIT organizations. We would like to clarify the statement that “None of the major MIT organizations that tweet…specifically mentioned reaching out to the students…” In fact, @MITstudents (http://twitter.com/MITstudents) has been in existence since June of last year.

@MITstudents is used to tweet and retweet announcements, updates and information related to student life and learning at MIT and is specifically targeted to current undergraduate and graduate students. It is jointly maintained by the Offices of the Dean for Undergraduate Education, Graduate Education, and Student Life.

We see the Twitter account as one of several ways to enable better information sharing with students. Also, by retweeting content from accounts across MIT, students get student-related information by following a single account and also become aware of Twitter accounts they may want to follow. The most recent @MITstudents tweets also appear on the Student Life and Learning website (http://web.mit.edu/student/) which is available from the MIT homepage.

Anna Babbi Klein, DUE Communications
Heather Fry, DGE Communications
Tom Gearty, DSL Communications