High pressure heralds return of spring
After a brutal winter in which it was colder than 40°F for over a month, the Boston area is finally getting a taste of above-normal temperatures. With a high of 69°F (21°C), yesterday was the warmest day of 2015 so far, 14° warmer than the normal high of 55°F (13°C) for this time of year.
Davis and Liu sweep UA presidential elections
The Undergraduate Association announced on April 11 that Matthew J. Davis ’16 and Sophia Liu ’17 had won the election for president and vice president with 61 percent of votes cast in their favor.
CORRECTIONS
Ray Wang was incorrectly listed as an author on an article that ran last week with the headline “Tsarnaev guilty of bombing marathon, killing MIT officer.”
MIT holds debate on divestment as part of 'climate change conversation'
MIT became the first university to hold an administration-sponsored debate on fossil fuel divestment last Thursday, amid demands from student group Fossil Free MIT (FFMIT) that the Institute reallocate what they call “investments that will lock us in to catastrophic climate change.”
Norovirus outbreak ‘likely over’
Last week’s norovirus outbreak is likely over, MIT Associate Medical Director Howard M. Heller wrote in an email to The Tech.
Cambridge ban on single-use plastic bags will affect campus retailers
Cambridge has become the largest city on the East Coast to ban single-use plastic bags with the passing of the “Plastic Bag Reduction Ordinance” on March 30. City councillors voted 8-1 to ban single-use plastic bags and impose a 10-cent fee on paper bags.
SAO to put ‘checks and balances’ on student group transactions
In wake of the controversy surrounding rapper Lil B’s appearance on campus, the Student Activities Office (SAO) will be adding additional “checks and balances” to the process by which student groups can enter into contracts with outside service providers and transfer funds between other groups, according to Leah Flynn Gallant, director of the SAO.
Four professors named 2015 MacVicar Fellows
On March 13, four MIT professors were named MacVicar Fellows for their contributions to undergraduate education: Arthur Bahr, Catherine L. Drennan, Lorna J. Gibson, and Hazel L. Sive. Each will receive $10,000 annually for 10 years to aid them in their efforts to enhance the learning experience at MIT.
Spring?
A late-season push of cool air has reminded Bostonians of a dreadfully active winter. Yesterday, Boston saw light rain with sleet mixing in at times. A low pressure system to the south has pushed a tongue of warmer air into region, causing snow to melt as it falls to the surface. After passing through the warm layer, precipitation refreezes and reaches the ground as sleet.
Man arrested after bag of human remains found in Kendall Square
A duffel bag containing parts of a dismembered body was found in front of the Biogen office in Kendall Square roughly half a mile away from the MIT campus on Saturday after the Cambridge Police Department received a call about a suspicious package.
CORRECTIONS
Undergraduate Association President Shruti Sharma ’15 has retracted a quote published last week in an article about her authorization of a payment to rapper Lil B. Sharma originally said: “I wanted to do something that would make it easier and the way it was presented was almost like SAO [Student Activities Office] also wanted me to sign this … it seemed like I needed to sign it that day.” In an email to The Tech, Sharma clarified her position: “It was not the SAO pressuring me directly as conversations with Leah [Flynn] only started after the fact. Instead, it was presented from the student that the contract had been signed already and as a result, funding had to be delivered so BSU [Black Students’ Union] would not go into debt. As the UA’s responsibility is to help students and especially to support groups, it seemed to me that the UA needed to step in to help.”
Tsarnaev found guilty of bombing marathon, killing MIT officer
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found guilty on Wednesday of all 30 counts he was charged with in the Boston Marathon bombings, including the killing of MIT police officer Sean Collier. The verdict was unanimously reached by the jury after 11 hours of deliberations over two days.
President of Niger visits MIT
On April 3, President Mahamadou Issoufou of Niger visited MIT and toured the biophysics laboratory of Ibrahim Cissé, a native of Niger and an assistant professor of physics courses including 8.01 and 8.02.
Government rests its case in Boston Marathon bombing trial
The prosecution called its final witnesses to describe the bombing victims' injuries in graphic detail, which left several jurors in tears.
UA Judicial Board calls Lil B expenditure 'constitutionally inappropriate'
The Undergraduate Association Judicial Board issued a decision last week which found that UA President Shruti Sharma ’15 had authorized a “constitutionally inappropriate” transaction when she transferred $12,500 to fund Lil B’s November visit to MIT.
UA president says that confusion led to controversial Lil B payment
The Undergraduate Association Judicial Board issued a decision last week which found that UA President Shruti Sharma ’15 had authorized a “constitutionally inappropriate” transaction when she transferred an unbudgeted $12,500 to fund Lil B’s November visit to MIT.
MIT computer science researcher wins ACM Turing Award
Michael Stonebraker, a researcher at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, won the 2014 Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM) A.M. Turing Award for fundamental contributions in modern database systems on March 25.