Baker, Maseeh top summer lottery
MIT has finally finished the most complex housing cycle in recent memory. The 460-bed Maseeh Hall opened alongside a substantial overhaul of the Institute’s undergraduate dining system. Both Maseeh and the dining system were predicted to influence the choices freshmen make about where they want to live.
Resignations shake faith in Columbia Pres. Bollinger
NEW YORK — Several Columbia University professors said this week that the recent resignations of two high-ranking black administrators have shaken their confidence in the institution’s president, Lee C. Bollinger, and reignited concerns among their colleagues about other aspects of his leadership.
MIT welcomes Pfizer to the neighborhood
Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced yesterday that it signed a 10-year lease with MIT for 180,000 square feet of space in a building to be constructed at 610 Main St. The site is just north of MIT’s main campus in the Technology Square area, several blocks up Main St. from the Kendall Square T-stop. Pfizer predicts they will move into the new building when it is completed by the end of 2013.
News Briefs
Class registration is stepping into the 21st century. This year, students majoring in courses 4, 14, 15, 16, 18, 21W, and 24 will take part in an online registration pilot program, which will eventually replace the current paper mechanism for class registration. This program is one of the first steps of MIT’s three-year “Education Systems Roadmap,” which aims to digitize, streamline, and centralize operations at MIT.
Irene slams East Coast, but MIT mostly spared
Last Friday, Governor Deval L. Patrick declared a state of emergency in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and called 500 National Guard troops in preparation for the landfall of Hurricane Irene, to be joined by 2000 more on Saturday. The City of Cambridge activated Code Red phone alerts — which sent pre-recorded messages warning of the threat to all landlines and to opted-in cellular phone lines — and email and text messaging alerts were sent out to the MIT community announcing the Sunday closure of MIT and encouraging the community to stay indoors.
Saturday Morning Breakfast at the ’Tute
Applause erupted in the standing-room-only 6-120 yesterday at 3:58 p.m. as Zachary A. Weiner, creator of popular webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (SMBC), entered the room for a Q&A session packed with questions touching on topics from fellow web comic artists to the merits of Star Wars vs. Star Trek (for the record, Weiner prefers Star Wars). The free event, sponsored by the MIT Lecture Series Committee, concluded with a signing session of the new SMBC compilation, Save Yourself, Mammal!: A Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal Collection, and went an hour over its anticipated 4–6 p.m. runtime.
News Briefs
The start of 2011 Freshman Orientation and Residential Exploration (REX) marks the third year in a row that a REX/Rush/Recruitment agreement between the Dormitory Council (DormCon), the Interfraternity Council (IFC), the Panhellenic Council (Panhel), and the Living Group Council (LGC) has not been signed.
Class of 2015 invades campus… early
Every year, freshmen flock to campus early to explore engineering, play with physics, go hiking, become leaders, observe the stars and — most importantly — bond with their fellow classmates. These Freshman Pre-Orientation Programs (FPOPs) have brought the Class of 2015 on campus a week early to get a brief introduction to one aspect of the Institute.
Next, New Houses see renovations
Even for students who will not be moving into Maseeh Hall, coming back from summer vacation might mean returning to a new and improved dorm space. Both Next House and New House saw major changes over the summer while other dorms, both undergraduate and graduate, have been subject to other smaller improvements.
Stata café wormhole creates portal to Palo Alto
Getting to Stanford is as easy as walking to the Stata Center, thanks to the Institute’s newly installed “wormhole.”
No East Campus roller coaster this year
There will be no East Campus roller coaster this year, revealed Mike T. Nawrot ’12, EC rush chair, in a video released last week. The City of Cambridge required the dormitory to obtain building permits for their coaster, but the process was not completed in time.
Freshman admissions website gets a facelift
Potential members of the MIT Class of 2016 are surfing through a vastly different MIT Admissions website (http://www.mitadmissions.org). The site, launched in 2004, underwent its first major upgrade on July 11. The process involved simplifying access to links formerly hidden on the admissions site and launching the new MIT Wiki (http://www.mitadmissions.org/wiki), which can be edited by any user with an mit.edu email address.
Maseeh to hold in-house lottery mixer
Tired of the same old floor and wing rush in every other dormitory? How about a mixer instead? After much debate over how the Maseeh Hall in-house readjustment lottery will work, a deal was reached between the Maseeh housing advisors and the house government. On Aug. 30, the house government will hold a mixer for all those who have entered the lottery. Immediately after the mixer, attendees must fill out a form indicating with whom and where they would like to live. On the next day, the new roommates move in.
A PEEK OFF-CAMPUS Tropical diseases infect powerless
Every year, 13 diseases that affect a fifth of the world’s population are responsible for the loss of 56.6 million disability-adjusted life years and 534,000 deaths. But because these diseases only afflict the world’s most impoverished and powerless people, the international community has forgotten about them.