CASE leaders and MIT deans on financial hardship
Last week’s Tech article on the Class Awareness, Support, and Equality (CASE) socioeconomic study was a stark reminder to the MIT community that financial hardship is a real issue on campus. It affects undergraduates and graduate students alike, often invisibly. At an institution like MIT, it is unacceptable for any student to go without basic needs due to a lack of funds.
Please vote Nov. 7
When I was a student at MIT, almost no one voted in municipal elections; they seemed so inconsequential. After I left MIT, I was surprised to find that participating in municipal elections has a direct impact on my life and a much greater impact than national elections.
The case for MIT graduate student apartments
Starting this year, MIT’s investment arm, MITIMCO, is undertaking a new development near Kendall Square which will bring in well over 10,000 workers. Jobs are good, but new workers will make housing in the Cambridge area even more scarce. We need the MIT student body to take a stand: we should not bring new workers to Cambridge without providing more housing for graduate students.
MIT Turing laureates propose creation of School of Computing
There comes a time, in the course of scientific evolution, when a discipline is ready to emerge from the womb if its parent disciplines and take its own place in the world. For computer science, or more accurately, for the field of computing, this moment is now.
Making a pledge for the climate with our careers
We, as MIT-trained individuals, are future leaders. Both in our careers and our personal lives, we will “hack the world” using our minds, hands, and hearts to solve the world’s greatest challenges.
The Cambridge-MIT Exchange: an ungraceful end to an era
After hearing news of the program's end, a few alumni of the exchange are rallying to revive the program; however, their years of removal from the program and its flaws shield them from the ways in which the program is unfair and, at times, harmful to MIT students.
Open letter to President Reif about the events in Charlottesville
Thank you for your August 15 e-mail about the horrific and frightening events in Charlottesville, VA over the weekend. I urge you to go one step further.
The chancellor’s timeline of the Senior House decision
Given the high level of interest in facts surrounding the Senior House decision, I thought it might help to lay out the milestone events of the last year and share my thinking.
Senior House students respond: the chancellor’s allegations are unfounded
The punishment being implemented by the MIT Chancellor and President goes far beyond individual accountability, or the desire to eliminate drug use in the dorm. Allegations of widely tolerated drug use were made by the chancellor, but prior to the investigation, very few students were aware of the events that have now been punished by the COD.
MIT misused survey data to take action against Senior House
Chancellor Barnhart and President Reif should jointly apologize to the MIT community as a whole and HMS participants in particular for any pain or distress related to the study or actions informed by the study.
MIT IS&T has been injecting Google Analytics code into HTML pages being served from MIT’s Athena lockers
Since April, IS&T has been injecting Google Analytics code into HTML pages being served from our Athena lockers.
Who lost Senior House?
To protect these students from further harm, and to protect other and future students from similar harm, the MIT Corporation should fulfill its fiduciary responsibility to investigate how the Institute’s senior leadership came to compel the waste of thousands of person-hours of precious MIT student time.
Abolishing Senior House not only alienates current residents but also alumni
Nearly 1,400 alumni, going back to 1958, signed a letter to Barnhart earlier this month expressing their alarm with the administrative actions regarding Senior House.
Senior House residents respond to Chancellor Barnhart
We agree that it is appropriate to remove from Senior House anyone who has violated an MIT rule or actively, repeatedly, and affirmatively encouraged rule-breaking behavior. However, it would be entirely inappropriate to prevent any of the rest of us — the overwhelming majority of Senior House residents — from returning home.
Pilot 2021 threatens the LGBTQ community at MIT
As the presidents of MIT’s three undergraduate LGBTQ organizations, we feel compelled to advocate against the dispersion of one of MIT’s largest LGBTQ communities and the destruction of one of its vibrant queer-affirming spaces that has existed for decades in Senior House.
Give the chancellor a break
Since her appointment as Chancellor in February 2014, Cynthia Barnhart, PhD ’88 has overseen a variety of changes for student life on campus. Recent actions regarding Senior Haus have proven unpopular with some of the student body. However, Chancellor Barnhart has taken, at her own risk, unprecedented steps towards including students in the decision-making process at MIT over the past three years.
Keep it weird, keep it awesome
Numerous MIT alumni, including myself, are rushing to protect Senior House from the recent attacks on the dorm and its community. The Senior House community and set of values were a constant source of joy, belonging, and refuge for me and for so many others, during my years at MIT.
SIPB: IS&T’s rollout of NAT creates more problems than it solves
SIPB believes that access to a virtually unlimited pool of public IPv4 addresses is a privilege that tremendously enhances the value of an MIT education, both for students learning to build new internet services and for students who use those services. As such, we advocate for a full rollback of NAT deployment on campus networks.
The Senior House decision: Chancellor Barnhart responds
I’m writing because many of the concerns people are bringing to me are based on inaccurate information and a misunderstanding of what brought us to this point. What I find most troubling are the accusations that this is somehow intended as an attack on vulnerable populations or on students’ ability to self-govern. This decision is about one thing: providing every MIT student with a safe environment.
Senior House is a vital refuge for its residents
As a woman in science, I never felt like I fit anywhere. But I belonged in Senior House.