Addressing academic inequity at MIT through grade transparency
Allowing students to know where they stand in their classes, where they may be going wrong, and how they can improve their performance is crucial to their learning process.
Breaking point
In the past year, it has become even more difficult to perform regularly in classes, due to the pandemic and the stress and grief surrounding the horrifying racial injustices we have seen against the Black and Asian communities.
MIT must bear the same burdens it is placing on its students
What are undergraduates, who normally rely on MIT’s summer housing to stay here and e.g. engage in UROPs, supposed to do in one of the most expensive cities in the world, a month and a half before the start of the summer?
Blurred vision
In reflection of MIT’s 160th birthday approaching this Saturday, I have been pondering what has become of the school founded by a slaveholder in 1861. Thus, I have been pondering this plan.
African-American fiction
In the United States, de jure (and subsequent de facto) prohibition of teaching both reading and writing to its enslaved population (called ‘Black’) was both ubiquitous and fatally enforced. This inhumane (and racist) practice resulted in many unwritten stories and silenced voices of the enslaved African population.
The cloak of racism
Just because it takes critical thinking to use language which adequately reaches for the truth, does not mean we should give up or sacrifice the right words for a sound bite or quick answer.
Petition for opt-in commencement ceremony is exclusive and misguided
There are students in the Class of 2021 who are unable to fly themselves or their families into Boston, whether because of international travel restrictions, financial circumstances, or being at high risk for COVID-19.
MIT should guarantee funding for graduate students amid the pandemic
Now, the pandemic is exacerbating these long-running financial pain points. Before COVID-19, degree timelines were already crunched. Now, with pandemic delays, students face even more time before completion, with even less financial support from MIT.
Silencing
Understanding the way silencing happens is paramount if we are to move toward unity, justice, and appreciation of the critical insights we all bring to bear in the advancement of the spaces we have been gifted to occupy.
MIT leadership needs to restore students’ trust; until then, student leaders must step up to save our semester
The question is: how do we avoid further escalation of noncompliance, which could result in more cases of COVID infections and ultimately lead to undergraduate residence halls depopulated — again?
The friend of racism
Almost every day at MIT, I hear the words “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” or DEI. What becomes apparent is that we do not know anymore what we are saying and where we are going. Language should not stop at halfway attempts to capture an idea. Justice is the goal.
The climate is changing, and so must MIT
The 2021 CAP must contain ambitious, appropriate goals that align with current climate science and include clearly defined actionables. Our responsibility is to talk, sing, write, protest, and ultimately encourage MIT to descend from its perch of privileged ignorance, open its eyes to this accelerating, alarming crisis, and act.
Climate Action Plan: Why you need to care and the importance of student voices
A number of steps are being taken by student leaders to advance the conversation and consideration of the student proposals, as well as to educate and consider the broader student body.
Reimagining our MIT curriculum
Each year, hundreds of MIT students graduate lacking a fundamental understanding of the effects that anti-Black racism and other systems of oppression have on our present-day technologies, even our own decision-making.
Don’t be surprised by the administration’s decision on Seth Lloyd
The clear conspiracy on all levels of the Institute to knowingly accept money from a child sex trafficker has been justified and downplayed in a variety of ways.
Undergraduates must follow MIT’s COVID-19 policies
Breaking self-quarantine to gather in person both puts MIT community members in danger and shows a concerning disregard for publicly available health guidelines.
How merit-based raises hurt DEI
Recently, MIT Human Resources announced that it will be instituting across-the-board 3% raises for all staff making under $75,000 in 2021. This is a welcome reversal of a policy that MIT announced last April, suspending all merit-based raises for the year due to financial concerns related to COVID. According to MIT’s 2020 Quality of Life Survey (conducted before the pandemic), 65% of staff reported increased cost of living as a source of stress, and 61% said the same about the cost of housing alone. With the additional financial pressure of the pandemic, the wage freeze threatened to push staff even deeper into economic precarity.
New year, new MITIMCo: MIT’s chance to lead in socially responsible investing
In 2020, the MIT Investment Management Company (MITIMCo) joined Climate Action 100+ (CA100+), a global investor-led engagement initiative to ensure that the world’s largest corporate emitters take necessary climate action. Among our peer institutions, only Harvard and Brown are part of CA100+. We commend MIT for joining the ranks of more than 545 investors committed to admirable efforts on climate.
Elitist and racist egg donation ads have no place in student newspapers
If you are a female MIT student with the last name Wu, Huang, or Chen, you may have received an email in the past two weeks with the subject line “亞州精英 Outstanding Asian.” The email offered $50,000 in compensation for an Asian egg donor, ideally a “21-year-old Chinese MIT student, top in her class,” with “several awards in high school and university.” This concerning request is actually a permutation of an advertisement that The Tech has run twice in the past decade, once in 2012 and once in 2017. The ad, paid for and submitted by the same individual, has not changed much over the years, though the most recent email iteration has swapped out “genius” for “outstanding” and more than doubled the compensation from $20,000 to $50,000. Both the 2012 and 2017 appearances of the ad disturbed MIT community members for its racial stereotyping, tactless wording, and lack of acknowledgment of the medical risks involved with egg donation.
MIT’s proposal for a new graduate dorm on Vassar should include ground-floor public space
The Cambridgeport Neighborhood Association (CNA) submitted this letter to President Reif and the MIT Campus Planning team Dec. 7, 2020.