MIT and the climate challenge
A plan for action is for MIT an essential early step. Following up now with concrete action, and ramping up commitments as opposed to letting them dwindle, will be a momentous task.
The need to hold Abbas accountable
The role of Abbas and his government in the downfall of the peace process must be recognized and condemned on the international scale.
Students: get involved with MIT's policymaking processes
I urge you: don’t let your discontent live and die in your hall, on mailing lists, or on anonymous Facebook rants. Talk to people. Get involved. Act.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
As MIT’s Title IX Coordinator, it is my job to work with our community to ensure that MIT properly responds to complaints of sexual misconduct, including sexual harassment.
Reporting harassment at MIT
Over the course of 2010-2011, while I was a graduate student at MIT, I struggled to find help with harassment. I encountered both bureaucratic ineptitude and a culture of denial and silence that made the situation needlessly difficult for me, my advisor, and others in my lab. I am writing because I hope that by sharing my experience and insights into how MIT’s system can fail, I can help those working to improve it. While I understand that there have been some changes on campus since I graduated three years ago, I think MIT still needs to improve the way it handles harassment on campus.
MIT students examine Easter
Editor’s Note: Professor Anne McCants of the History Department contributed to the editing process of this article.
The Republican Party created Donald Trump
The political developments in the Republican Party this election cycle have defied even radical projections. A bombastic real-estate mogul has dominated the primary contest by tapping into a deep disillusionment among the Republican primary electorate that few political analysts fully understood. Mr. Trump has thrived by scathingly criticizing his rivals and offering vague and facile solutions to the portion of America that has felt disenfranchised by social and political change in this country.
Mens et … mens?
The very first class I attended at MIT was 7.012, four and a half years ago in the fall of 2011. I remember how excited my fellow freshmen felt in Maseeh dining that morning, how tightly the Infinite was packed with students finding new classrooms, and how crowded 26-100 was once my friends and I got there. But looking back on that first class, I cannot actually recall much of what the professor said. Or really much from any other 7.012 lecture. Or from 18.02 lectures that fall or 5.111 lectures the following spring. Why is that? I have a fairly good memory, and in four years it shouldn’t seem reasonable for me to forget the material. I suspect that I don’t remember what was taught in these three classes because all of them were rigid lecture-based classes. Although these were core freshman science classes, there was little to no student engagement through hands-on learning.
The self-fulfilling prophecy of polarization
In a 1944 radio address to the American people, FDR said, “Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves — and the only way they could do that is by not voting at all.”
Housing deliberations should involve student body, not just accept student input
Conversations in Dormcon and the UA have revealed that although the plans to turn the Metropolitan Storage Warehouse into a dorm by fall 2018 have fallen through, MIT is still planning to build an undergraduate dorm by fall 2019. In addition, as posts on MIT Confessions have hinted, the Chancellor’s Student Housing Advisory Committee (SHAC), made up of five to ten students, is planning some kind of experiment in alternative community structure for this dorm. SHAC has mountains of data about the ways in which different ideas succeed or fail at promoting diversity, community, and academic development, and although they’ve been secretive for the past half-year, we’ve been promised that they’re soon going to conduct more surveys, focus groups, and discussions to get student input.
Freshmen internships: a bit elusive, but not impossible (and not all there is!)
Last week, The Tech ran a piece near and dear to the hearts of all of us at MIT’s Career Services: In search of an elusive freshmen internship by Zachary Collins.
Appeasing Iran
In a recent visit to Italy, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told a group of Italian business leaders that Iran is the “safest and most stable country of the entire region.” Why, then, are leading global players tiptoeing around the regime? In the past month, four major world players — Italy, the U.S., France, and the U.K. — displayed conciliatory attitudes to Iran in different events.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Last week in this space, a recent graduate shared a painful story. We commend the writer for coming forward with such a deeply personal account. Shining a spotlight on sexual assault, mental health, and medical leave will help our community come together to continue to improve our support for students.
What’s best for you
Editor’s note: This article discusses issues relating to mental health, forced psychiatric treatment, and sexual assault. The writer is kept anonymous due to the nature of this content.
How eliminating the smartphone has simplified my life
The smartphone has become an essential technology for many of us nowadays. Three years ago, I wrote an ominous article in The Tech about the worrisome dominance these devices have over their owners, and in 2015 the effect is more prominent than ever. At an outing this summer, I was caught sneakily using my phone under the dinner table and not paying full attention to the speaker, at which point I was subtly called out by a friend who remembered that opinion piece. The point was spot-on, illustrating my own downfall to the little device. The decision was made: the phone had to go.
Alcohol abuse, illegal drugs, and misinformation
Earlier this week, members of the MIT community found in their inboxes an email from Chancellor Barnhart. Immediately beneath the ominous subject line of “Alcohol abuse, illegal drugs and our community” were the expected exhortations against binge drinking and drug use. This time, however, these words came backed by evidence. To quote the email, “The results of the 2015 Healthy Minds Study and 2014 Community Attitudes on Sexual Assault survey show the direct — and negative — links between substance abuse and student health and safety.” Included helpfully were also hyperlinks to these two studies, as well as one to the MIT “Statement on Drug-free Campus and Workplace Policies,” which contains, among other things, a list of “selected drugs and their effects.” In short, a bevy of material to support a seemingly obvious claim.
High pressure to dominate end-of-week weather
After the recent passing of a low pressure system, high pressure over the eastern U.S. will dominate the weather through the end of the weekend, leading to clear skies and similar temperatures each day. Lows each night will dip down to around freezing under the clear skies. Daily highs will be in the low-to-mid 50s (°F). The relatively dry air will be a change of pace from the weather of this past week. Early next week, the chance for another low pressure system returns.
A gathering storm in the cloud
The United States and the nations of the European Union don’t see eye to eye on many topics: the more interesting version of football, the appropriate minimum age of alcohol consumption, and the use of international military force being among them. Yet for several years, one such conflict — on data protection — has grown from a divide into a gulf, and just about two months ago, the bridge connecting the two collapsed.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Chancellor Cynthia Barnhart has charged organizations we lead, namely the Committee on Academic Performance (CAP) and the Office of the Dean for Undergraduate Education (DUE), with reviewing the undergraduate withdrawal and readmission policies at MIT. We are writing to update the community on our progress and to solicit input to our review.
Weighing in on the proposed changes to the STEM OPT Extension
MIT is home to a large number of international students on F-1 student visas. In the 2014-2015 academic year, 42 percent of the graduate student body was composed of international students. Most of these students apply for the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program after graduation in order to work in the U.S. in their field of study. Every international student who completes a post-secondary degree in the U.S. on an F-1 visa is eligible for 12 months of OPT. Since 2008, those who complete a degree in a STEM field have also qualified for a one-time 17-month extension of OPT. This extension, however, was recently challenged in court by the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, and this August, the District Court for the District of Columbia vacated the STEM OPT Extension on the grounds of procedural deficiency. The court order is set to take effect in February 2016.