MIT closed Tuesday, joining many but not all area colleges
Just over six feet of snow have fallen in Boston these past 18 days, setting new records in terms of both depth and speed, according to Weather.com. MIT was among the many institutions that shut down Monday and Tuesday due to the snowstorm that led Governor Charlie Baker to declare a state of emergency Monday night.
Bitter cold followed by more snow
An Arctic front brought some of the coldest air of the season to New England last night. Lows in the Boston area dipped below zero. Today, a tightening pressure gradient will create gusty winds, dropping wind chill values to as low as –15 °F (–26 °C). Increasing clouds signal a more active weather pattern this weekend.
New authentication service on Touchstone
MIT’s IS&T has added a new two-factor authentication system to Touchstone that will provide more secure access to important MIT services such as Atlas. With “Duo,” knowing a person’s username and password will not be enough to log in with Touchstone.
1 in 4 frosh deemed fit for sophomore standing
This year, 27 percent of the freshmen class has been offered early sophomore standing, comparable to last year’s 28.4 percent. Out of the 282 eligible students, 128 have accepted their offers so far.
Senior House gets a new housemaster
Professor Jay Scheib has been named the new housemaster of Senior House, one of MIT’s oldest dormitories. He will replace Agustín Rayo PhD ’01, associate professor in the Department of Linguistics, and Carmen Saracho, a novelist and restaurant critic, who had both served as housemasters since May 2010.
Editors’s Note
The end of a year is a notoriously arbitrary occasion for reflection, and the end of a volume of The Tech is perhaps an even weirder time for contemplation. But my yearlong term as editor in chief tied me to the news at MIT — stories that were by turns surprising, bizarre, and heartbreaking — so this seems to me an apt opportunity to look back.
MIT being sued for 2009 suicide
A wrongful death lawsuit filed against MIT by the family of the late Sloan doctoral student, Han Duy Nguyen, advanced toward a possible trial last month when a Middlesex Superior Court judge denied MIT’s request to dismiss the suit on the basis of a technicality. The claim, filed in 2011, alleged that Institute officials were negligent with regard to his mental health before his suicide in 2009.
Winter weather continues
It sure has been a snowy week — yesterday ended Boston’s snowiest seven-day period since records began in 1891! By 1 p.m. yesterday, Boston had received 34.2 inches of snow since Jan. 27, beating the old record of 34.1 inches set in the week leading up to January 8, 1996. Most of this snow came from last Tuesday’s powerful blizzard, which dropped 24.6 inches of snow at Boston Logan Airport. Yesterday’s storm also contributed 9.9 inches toward the record as of 1 p.m., with snow still falling into the evening hours.
MIT affiliates named AIAA Fellows
MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics Professor David Miller ScD ’88 and Lincoln Laboratory Director Eric D. Evans have been appointed Fellows of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). The AIAA, as stated on its website, is “the world’s largest technical society dedicated to the global aerospace profession.”
8,000 take climate initiative survey
The MIT Climate Change Conversation Committee is seeking community engagement in the Conversation on Climate Change, an Institute initiative to discuss what committee chair Roman Stocker said has the potential to be the “biggest problem [MIT] has ever contributed to solving.”