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
I spoke to Senior House residents, who were explicitly informed by Chancellor Barnhart that the HMS survey was the data source used to justify the actions taken against the house.
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?
Thousands of hours of student time were lost preparing for, attending, and following up on meetings that were part of the official Turnaround, Probation, and Readmission processes for Senior House, all of which failed. These failures can be attributed to poor leadership: The Turnaround process lacked clear goals, objectives, and evaluation criteria. The Probation process lacked clear goals, objectives, and evaluation criteria. The Readmission process had the vague goal of creating "a new community", but no clear evaluation criteria.For MIT's top administrators (President, Vice-President, Provost, & Chancellor) to put students through such clearly flawed but time-consuming processes was, at best, amateurish. Due to the gross imbalance of power, students felt compelled to devote considerable time to try to save their community by participating in the administration's ill-defined Turnaround, Probation, and Readmission processes, each of which, lacking clear goals, objectives, or criteria, was doomed to fail.The natural reluctance of affected students to raise this issue with the very academic officers who still wield immense power over them may be exacerbated by the fact that each of the three processes was initiated and terminated unilaterally by the administration, without student input or consultation, accompanied by statements blaming the entire Senior House community. In a rare public account, an MIT Admissions blogger reports having "...spent late nights drafting documents to present at these meetings, losing sleep only to have to wake up that next morning for even more 8 AM meetings. I missed classes and mandatory recitations... I was exhausted, overcome with guilt, and felt powerless. Hours and hours of meetings, writing, and planning for nothing.... once again, with no discussion, the nuclear option was taken..."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. The Corporation should then direct corrections to any misaligned programs, policy, or personnel, in order to ensure that MIT upholds its core values, and that students can safely pursue their studies.James J. Pekar, Ph.D.S.B. Physics '81, Senior House resident ’77-'81
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
The chancellor responds to ‘inaccurate information’ regarding Senior House and Pilot 2021. ‘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.
Pilot 2021 will be a fatal experiment
The MIT Administration has announced its inauguration of an experiment on human subjects called "Pilot 2021." They have not yet published the hypothesis they are attempting to test with this experiment. I offer my own hypothesis in the sincere hope that it will be disproved:
Pilot 2021 is is a move in favor of student freedom, not against it
My name is Mike Short (’05, PhD ’10), and I'm an assistant professor in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering. I'm one of relatively few to have both lived at Senior House and joined the faculty or staff at MIT, and I'm the faculty member serving on the Academic and Well-Being subcommittee of the Senior House Turnaround Team. I therefore would like to offer a unique perspective on the Senior House Turnaround Team and the recently announced Pilot 2021 program.