MIT students create virtual community through Discord server
Server created by BusyBeavers allows students, staff members, and campus groups to chat and host events online
A team of MIT students have established a server on the gaming communication platform Discord to connect the MIT community during social distancing. The BusyBeavers team started and manages the server. The team was founded by Anthony Bau ’20, Chad Qian ’20, and Diana Ma ’21 and has since expanded to nine members.
Team member Bethany Moore ’21 wrote in an email to The Tech that there are “roughly 975 students and 5 staff members in the Discord.” Moore added that the team would like to see that number grow.
The server is broken down into community channels for purposes such as general discussion, meme sharing, and gaming. Students can also opt to join more specific ranked channels, such as those for living groups, geographic locations, and majors.
“We want people to stay connected and make new connections even though we don’t get to see each other in person. The MIT community can come out of this ordeal even stronger if we use the technology and resources we have to make an effort to do so,” Moore wrote.
A bot developed by Bau automatically verifies users seeking to join the server.
Moore wrote that the team plans to partner with more student groups in the future. Popular events have included live-streamed movie nights with LSC, as well as game nights where users could join a voice channel and play games such as Jackbox and wiki-racing.
By expanding their reach in the MIT community, the BusyBeavers team hopes to make the Discord server a “hub for online activities throughout this new and bizarre situation we find ourselves in,” Moore wrote.
Student groups looking to advertise or host their events online can reach out to busybeavers@mit.edu about integrating them into the Discord server.