The traditions and student activities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology encompass hundreds of student activities, organizations, and athletics that contribute to MIT's distinct culture.
MIT has relatively few formal traditions, compared to many other universities, but has a rich culture of informal traditions and jargon. There are a few "big events" such as Commencement (graduation), but many smaller, decentralized activities sponsored by departments, labs, living groups, student activities, and ad hoc groups of MIT community members united by common interests.
"Brass rat" refers to the MIT class ring, which prominently features the school mascot beaver on the top surface. The ring is traditionally made of gold, the beaver is the largest North American rodent, hence "gold beaver" becomes "brass rat" in student lingo.
Tim the Beaver is the official mascot of MIT, appearing at athletic events, fund-raisers, and other occasions.[1] The name "Tim" is simply "MIT" spelled backwards. A beaver was selected as the MIT mascot because beavers are "nature's engineers". This decision was made at the Technology Club of New York's annual dinner on January 17, 1914. President Maclaurin proposed the beaver. The sports teams at MIT often choose to have Tim as their mascot, or to go by the name "The Engineers".
MIT students refer to both their majors and classes using numbers alone. Majors are numbered in the approximate order of when the department was founded; for example, Civil and Environmental Engineering is Course I, while Nuclear Science & Engineering is Course XXII.[2] Students majoring in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, the most popular department, collectively identify themselves as "Course VI." MIT students use a combination of the department's course number and the number assigned to the class number to identify their subjects; the course which many universities would designate as "Physics 101" is, at MIT, "8.01." For brevity, course number designations are pronounced without the decimal point and by replacing "oh" for zero (unless zero is the last number). Thus, "8.01" is pronounced eight oh one, "6.001" is pronounced six double oh one, and "7.20" would be pronounced seven twenty.[3]
The "Smoot" is a traditional unit of measuring length on the Harvard Bridge, which despite its name, connects MIT to Boston's Back Bay neighborhood, across the Charles River.
Independent Activities Period is a four-week long inter-semester "term" offering hundreds of optional classes, lectures, demonstrations, and other activities throughout the month of January between the Fall and Spring terms.
This event, which usually takes place between the parallels of the East Campus dormitories, features oddball stunts and constructions, such as a multi-story temporary roller-coaster engineered by MIT students.
Steer Roast is an annual bacchanal hosted by Senior House.
Each spring, the denizens of Baker House drop an old, irreparable piano off the roof to let it plunge six stories onto the ground, to celebrate Drop Date, the last date one can drop classes at MIT. The resulting noise has spawned a unit of sound volume, known as the Bruno.
Spring Weekend is an annual event that includes performances by local as well as major recording artists as well as picnics, parties, home varsity games, and other celebrations.
Campus Preview Weekend is a relatively new event, sponsored by the Admissions Office, which invites recently-admitted high school students to visit the campus before deciding whether or not to attend MIT. Invited students can sample classes, tour the campus, attend special events, and stay overnight with MIT students.
The "Brass Rat" undergraduate ring is designed and presented in the sophomore year of each class. The design is unveiled during the Ring Premiere in the Fall Term, which is followed months later by the Ring Delivery in the Spring Term. The latter has been a tradition since 1999 (Class of 2001), and is typically a formal occasion, often held off campus.
This "annual" event is generally not scheduled in advance, but occurs spontaneously in the Spring in response to the MIT administration's announcement of the tuition increase for the following year. The "riot" usually consists of a noisy protest march through the campus, accompanied traditional chants of "$$$ is Too Damn Much!", where "$$$" is replaced by the newly-announced tuition amount. Participants generally let off steam in a good-natured way, and injuries or property damage are extremely rare. The tradition has died out and then been revived several times.[4]
The Sodium Drop traditionally consisted of a bar of metallic sodium dropped into the Charles River, producing explosions due to the rapid exothermic conversion of sodium metal to sodium hydroxide and the ignition of the resulting hydrogen gas. In the past, Sodium Drops occurred sporadically, initiated by impromptu groups of students from various dorms and fraternities. However in 2007, five volunteers using a boat to clean up trash from the river banks were injured by a small explosion and fire, apparently caused by unreacted sodium residue.[5] MIT quickly donated funds to pay for decontaminating and repairing the boat, although it was not clear at the time who was responsible for the damage.[6]
A criminal case was initiated, and a student accepted responsibility, resulting in a monetary fine and community service sentence. In addition, a long-running civil suit against a fraternity resulted from this incident, culminating in a six-figure out-of-court settlement.[7][8] Over the years, the student newspaper The Tech has published an editorial and an opinion piece urging readers to be more aware of environmental impacts of the prank, and to take responsibility for injuries to innocent parties that might result.[9][10]
The Time Traveler Convention was a single-event convention held at MIT on May 7, 2005, in the hopes of making contact with time travelers from the future. The convention was organized by Amal Dorai with help from current and former residents of the MIT living group Putz, one of the halls in the East Campus dorm. As of the date of the event, it was the most significantly publicized Time Traveler Convention, including front page coverage in the New York Times, Wired, and Slashdot.[11][12][13] It was presumed time travelers would have the capability to visit any particular time if they could travel to that general time period at all. The idea originated in a Cat and Girl strip[14] by Dorothy Gambrell.
The convention was held at 22:45 EDT on May 7, 2005 (May 8, 02:00 UTC) in the East Campus courtyard and Walker Memorial at MIT. That location is 42.360007 degrees north latitude, 71.087870 degrees west longitude.[15] The Convention was announced in advance (that is, before the event) and over 300 contemporary people attended. (For fire safety reasons, a handful of attendees watched the convention via a closed circuit broadcast.) The spacetime coordinates continue to be publicized prominently and indefinitely, so that future time travelers will be aware and have the opportunity to have attended.
The convention featured lectures on various aspects of time travel from MIT professors and faculty, including Erik Demaine, a MacArthur "genius grant" winner, Alan Guth, an Eddington Medal winner for theoretical astrophysics, and Edward Farhi, winner of numerous MIT teaching awards. A De Lorean DMC-12, the car featured in the Back to the Future trilogy, was also on display, near the "landing pad" located at the exact coordinates advertised.
The convention inspired a full-length musical entitled The Time Travelers Convention, in which three college students, who all want to change their pasts, hold a convention in the hopes that they will be able to borrow an attendee's time machine. Although the school in the musical is not MIT, MIT is mentioned twice, once by name and once in the coordinates, which are the same as the coordinates given in the original convention.
The Monarch B was a human-powered aircraft built by a team at MIT in 1983 which won a Kremer Prize of £20,000 for sustaining a speed of over 30 km/h over a 1.5 km triangular course. It was a precursor to the MIT Daedalus effort to fly from Crete to the Greek mainland in 1988.
MIT has over 380 recognized student activity groups,.[16] These are generally governed by the MIT Association of Student Activities.
The Education Studies Program, or ESP, was created by MIT students in 1957 to make a difference in the community by sharing MIT's knowledge and creativity with local high school students. Since then, its programs have grown to support well over 3000 students each year. ESP classes are developed and taught by MIT undergraduates, graduate students, alumni, and members of the community. ESP's students are given the chance to learn from passionate and knowledgeable teachers; ESP's teachers can gain experience developing their own curricula with access to students with the strongest desire to learn. MIT ESP is the largest student-run program of its kind in the United States.
The Lecture Series Committee (LSC) organizes weekly screenings of popular films as well as lectures by prominent speakers.
As one of the few Institute-wide gatherings on a weekly basis over the years, LSC movie screenings have developed and retained a few quirky traditions which sometimes befuddle outsiders. One unspoken tradition relates to the 1950s style introductory film clips that announce "coming attractions" movie trailers. When stereophonic sound was a new development in movies, the movie trailers would be preceded by a clip announcing, "Coming Next Week", followed by "In Stereo". For whatever reason, MIT audiences would spontaneously read the announcements aloud, in unison. This eventually became such an ingrained habit that, even though LSC discontinued screening the "stereo" announcements, the audience would intone the (now unseen) words. Even though LSC has replaced the sound system several times since the appearance of stereo sound, and now operates a Dolby/Bose multi-channel theatrical sound system, the tradition has continued unchanged for decades.
A second tradition is less obscure; if there is an annoying technical problem with the screening (e.g. bad focus, bad sound, a botched film reel switchover), eventually an annoyed patron will yell out "Focus!" (for example), and "LSC...Sux!", with the crowd chiming in loudly on the second word. This outcry alerts the projectionist, who might not have noticed the defect, to fix the problem.
6.370, also known previously as "RoboCraft" and now as "BattleCode", is the MIT ACM/IEEE Programming Competition. <http://battlecode.mit.edu/> It is held every year during the Independent Activities Period at MIT, and the competition is changed annually. The game consists of armies of autonomous virtual robots battling each other, controlled solely by the AIs written by competition participants. BattleCode is programmed in Java, and the AIs (called "players") are written as extensions of a base robot class.
The competition has been roughly doubling in size every year since 2007. As of 2008, BattleCode has been opened up to virtually anyone interested in participating outside of MIT. The competition is a class at MIT and its software has been used for several other classes and projects.
The MIT IDEAS Competition encourages teams to develop and implement projects that make a positive change in the world. Entries are judged on their innovation, feasibility, and community impact. One component of the competition is the Yunus Challenge, named in honor of 2006 Nobel Prize winner Dr. Muhammad Yunus, where teams are invited to tackle a specific development need. Previous topics include increasing adherence to tuberculosis drug regimens and affordable small-scale energy storage.
The competition was developed in part by Amy Smith, who has developed a number of inventions useful to poor communities.
THINK stands for Technology for Humanity guided by Innovation, Networking, and Knowledge. The competition challenges high school students across the United States to take a refreshing approach to designing a technological solution to a social problem. Its founding vision is that applicants will learn how to be resourceful in society, which makes networking a core component of the competition.
The MIT Marching Band is purely student run, and is open to the entire MIT community.
The band plays at all types of events year-round. In its recent history, it has performed at football, basketball, lacrosse, field hockey, women's rugby, water polo, and hockey games. The band has also played for events such as the re-opening of the MIT Museum and the Cambridge Science Festival. During MIT's Campus Preview Weekend in April, the band leads the prospective freshmen from the keynote address in Rockwell Cage to an activities fair in Johnson Ice Rink. Every December, the band tours downtown Boston playing holiday music.
The MIT Symphony Orchestra is the symphony orchestra of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The origins of the MIT Symphony Orchestra (MITSO) date back as far as 1884 when the first MIT Tech Orchestra appeared on campus along with the Banjo and Glee Clubs. The orchestra disbanded and re-appeared several times over the years that followed until 1947, when Klaus Liepmann (1907–1990), MIT's first full-time professor of music and founder of the music program, became director of the MIT Glee Club, the Symphony and the Choral Society.
Nine years later John Corley (1919–2000) took over the direction of the Symphony until 1966, when David Epstein (1931–2002) became the Symphony Orchestra's music director. Under Prof. Epstein, the orchestra performed at Carnegie Hall and made several LP recordings. David Epstein's tenure ended in the spring of 1998 upon his retirement from the Institute. The MITSO has also performed with artists such as Peter Schickele, when he performed works of P.D.Q. Bach as a dog chained to the concertmaster. After an international search, Dante Anzolini became Music Director of the Orchestra and Associate Professor of Music at MIT in September 1998. For the 2006–2007 season, Paul Biss from Indiana State University served as interim conductor for MITSO, and in the fall of 2007, Adam Boyles began his tenure as the current music director.
The MIT Wind Ensemble (or MITWE or 21M.426) is a group of instrumental performers who are students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The group performs classic (such as Holst and Grainger) and contemporary wind ensemble repertoire. It also commissions many new works.
The ensemble was formed in 1999 by Dr. Frederick Harris Jr.. It is led by him and Kenneth Amis, tuba player in the Empire Brass.
The ensemble performs 4 concerts per year in Kresge Auditorium. The concerts are open to the public. The ensemble also has performed with local middle school and high school bands, as part of an outreach program.
Admission to the MIT Wind Ensemble is by audition only. Current players must re-audition at the beginning of every year to remain in the ensemble. The audition consists of a short piece of the student's choice, a sight reading exercise, and a chromatic scale. Undergraduate students in the ensemble may choose to take MITWE for academic credit. In this case, the student must take a short playing exam at the end of each term.
In 2002 and 2003, the ensemble recorded its first CD ("Waking Winds") featuring 4 works by Boston area composers:
The recording sessions took place in Jordan Hall, Kresge Auditorium, and Killian Hall.
The ensemble's second CD ("Solo Eclipse") was released in 2008, featuring new works by:
The ensemble has commissioned many works for Wind Band, including pieces by Kenneth Amis, Kenny Werner, Erica Foin, Forrest Larson, Ran Blake, Guillermo Klein, Evan Ziporyn, and others.
The Musical Theatre Guild is an entirely student-run theater group which performs four musicals per year (spring term, summer, fall term, and IAP). Membership is open to anyone, but preference is given to MIT students and MIT community members for cast and production roles. Performances are open to the general public.
In IAP 2003, MTG produced Star Wars: Musical Edition, a musical version of the original Star Wars movie, featuring musical numbers from existing musicals with the lyrics changed to fit the plot. In April 2005, part of the group performed selections from the show at Celebration III, a Star Wars convention for which George Lucas was present. In the fall of 2005, MTG produced Star Wars Trilogy: Musical Edition, which encompassed the entire original trilogy.
The MIT Folk Dance Club, founded in 1959, sponsors 3 public dance sessions every week: international folk dancing, contra dancing, and Israeli dancing.
In the 1960s it sponsored four Folk Dance Festivals. Folk Dance Festivals
A student-run theater group that puts on plays by Shakespeare during the year and non-Shakespeare during the summer.
MIT's only co-curricular theater group.
An a cappella group consists of people singing, usually in multi-part harmony, but unaccompanied by any musical instruments. The sound consists of the human voice, sometimes enhanced by hand clapping, foot stomping, or other improvised percussion effects.
Founded in 1949, the MIT Logarhythms is an all-male a cappella performance group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Logs began as a close-harmony octet, singing popular and comedy melodies of the 1940s. The Logarhythms were named by one of their founding members, Ed Kerwin. Their current repertoire consists primarily of modern pop, hip hop, and classic rock, and their close-harmony lives on in many tunes.
The Logs perform throughout Massachusetts and the New England area. Recent biannual tours have included performances around Washington DC, California, Michigan, and Texas. The group has earned songs on the Best of College A Cappella (BOCA) compilation albums from 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2009, and their album Soundproof received near-perfect marks in its review from the Recorded A Cappella Review Board.[18]
In March 2007, the Logs participated in and took first place in WERS' All A Cappella Live competition at the Majestic Theatre in Boston, competing against the Tufts Beelzebubs, Brandeis VoiceMale, and the Harvard Low Keys.[19][20]
Natural features cover songs performed and recorded by the '04-05 and '05-06 members of the MIT Logarhythms. The tracks were recorded at MIT at the Logarhythms' studio. Tracks were subsequently mixed by producer John Clark.[21]
"Part-Time Lover" soloist Chris Vu won a 2007 CARA award as Best Male Collegiate Soloist.[22] "Such Great Heights" received a 2007 CARA nomination for Best Male Collegiate Song.
Soundproof features cover songs performed and recorded by the '02-03 and '03-04 members of the MIT Logarhythms. The tracks were recorded at MIT at the Logarhythms' newly-built studio.[23] Track one was mixed by Viktor Kray. All remaining tracks were mixed by John Clark.
"The Kids Aren't Alright" was featured as the first track on the Best of College A Cappella 2005 compilation.[24] "No Such Thing" appeared as track nine on the Best of College A Cappella 2004 compilation.[25] "Learn to Fly" was Runner Up for Best Male Collegiate Arrangement in the 2005 CARA awards.[26]
The Chorallaries of MIT is the first co-ed a cappella performing group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Founded in the winter of 1976-77, the group is typically composed of undergraduates, graduates, and occasionally faculty. They perform several free public concerts a year on the MIT campus, as well as at a numerous on-campus events and at concerts, festivals, and private venues off-campus. The Chorallaries, as keepers of the MIT alma mater ("Arise All Ye of MIT") also perform at Freshman Convocation in September and at the Commencement Ceremony in June.
Their signature song, the Engineer's Drinking Song, is a traditional tech favorite.
The Chorallaries have competed in the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella numerous times, winning the quarter-finals in 2000, 2003, and 2006, as well as the semi-finals in 1996 and 2006. In 2010 the Chorallaries of MIT released their most recent album "Stereophony," whose track "Hot Air Balloon" was featured on both Voices Only 2010 and Best of College A Cappella 2011. Previous recognitions include:
In total, the Chorallaries have produced 13 albums:
The group is known for its humor and creativity, culminating in "The Nth Annual Concert in Bad Taste".
Bad Taste is a concert devoted solely to off-color, nerdy, controversial, offensive, and often humorous material; a good-faith effort is made to offend everybody equally, but no quarter is given. Popular topics include: offensive sexual references; mocking the MIT administration; lambasting Harvard University, Wellesley College, Simmons College and other colleges in the region; excruciatingly hilarious science puns; and disgusting sexual references. The concert is usually about 2½ hours long, with a mixture of skits, songs, and general hilarity.
The MIT/Wellesley Toons are a cross-campus, co-ed college a cappella singing group. Founded in 1990, the group takes its members from both the undergraduate and graduate students of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the undergraduates of Wellesley College. The group performs several times each year at free concerts on both campuses, as well as at a variety of other venues both nearby and out-of-state.
The Toons host an annual Concert for a Cure in support of Multiple Sclerosis research, which draws large crowds from around the Boston area to enjoy music, dance, and other performing arts from a diverse array of groups from New England colleges and universities. The fourth annual concert - held in November 2009 - raised nearly $3000 in audience donations, which was donated to the Accelerated Cure Project.
The Toons have released five albums:
MIT Resonance is a student rock/pop a cappella group from MIT. Founded in the 2000–2001 school year, the group is co-ed and typically consists of sixteen undergraduate and graduate students (though its size varies). It is one of seven a cappella groups at the school, and is known across campus for its frequent free performances and its funny, edgy interludes used to keep audiences amused between songs.
Nationally, Resonance is perhaps best known for its recognition through CASA, the Contemporary A Cappella Society, having received a 2004 and 2008 Contemporary A Cappella Recording Award (CARA) nomination for Best Mixed Collegiate Arrangement, a 2008 CARA award for Best Scholastic Original, as well as a berth on the 2006 Best of College A Cappella compilation CD. The group is also known for regularly hosting the International Championship of College A Cappella New England Semifinals.
The group has produced three albums, its latest being the self-titled "Resonance" released in Fall 2007.
Resonance was envisioned by Sara Jo Elice who, with her friend (and eventual co-founder) Jessica Hinel, fleshed out the original idea while waiting to audition for an MIT Musical Theatre Guild production. Jay Humphries was auditioning for the same production and ended up becoming an inaugural Resonance member as well. In 2001, the MIT Association of Student Activities recognized Resonance as its seventh a cappella group on campus at the time.
The name Resonance follows an established joke among MIT a cappella groups of using a science or math-based pun to name the group. In science, resonance has to do with vibration and harmony. Specifically, resonant frequencies are the frequencies that cause natural amplification of signal - a commonly cited example being the singer who can, at the right frequency, break glass with their voice. Keeping with the theme, the resonance name is often formatted as "res(((o)))nance." and displayed alongside a logo of a shattered wine glass.
Resonance regularly performs on the MIT campus, at the minimum presenting a single full-length concert per term. Each concert is primarily composed of a collection of songs, both covers and originals, selected and arranged for a cappella by members of the group. Over 100 different songs have been performed by the group since 2001.
Resonance, like many a cappella groups, has a single "alum" song, taught to all members and used to close almost all performances. Group alumni are invited to join the current members on stage to finish the night. Resonance's alum song is "Easy People" by the Nields.
Resonance has released three albums:
Resonance is also featured on two a cappella collections:
All three Resonance full-length albums are available only through the group directly. Best of College A Cappella is produced and distributed to various retail sources by Varsity Vocals. acaTunes awards are produced by acaTunes.
The Cross Products are MIT's Christian co-ed a cappella singing group. Founded in 1988, their stated purpose is: "We exist to glorify God through music, and to tell others about the ways that He has changed our lives: we are each products of the cross of Jesus Christ."
MIT's only all-female a cappella group.
Techiya is MIT's Jewish, Hebrew, Israeli a cappella group. Founded in 1994, the group released its first album in 2002, entitled Half-Life. Currently they sing songs in Hebrew, English, Yiddish, and Ladino.
The Asymptones are MIT's low-time-commitment a capella group. Founded in 2007, they have infrequent concerts and just sing for fun.
Syncopasian is an Asian a cappella group at MIT. Founded in 2008, Syncopasian's mission is to promote Asian music and pop culture at MIT and in the surrounding community. Unlike other a cappella groups on campus, its repertoire includes songs in not only English, but also in Chinese, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, and other East Asian languages. The group holds two large concerts in the winter and spring and also performs at a variety of other on-campus events. It released its first album titled Syncopasian in 2011.
The MIT International Review (MITIR) is an interdisciplinary journal of international affairs published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The aim of the publication is to "foster solution-oriented discourse about international problems.[27]
This periodic publication reports on results from recent and ongoing Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) projects.
MIT's student body has several governing organizations. The Undergraduate Association is the primary representative body for undergraduate students while the Graduate Student Council represents the interests of graduate students. Organizations like the Interfraternity Council (IFC), Panhellenic Council (Panhel), Living Group Council (LGC), and Dormitory Council (Dormcon) are independent bodies that represent the interests of fraternities, sororities, independent living groups, and undergraduate dormitories respectively.
MIT has 33 varsity sports teams. Of the previous 41 varsity sports, eight (Alpine Skiing, Golf, Men's Ice Hockey, Women's Ice Hockey, Men's Gymnastics, Women's Gymnastics, Pistol, and Wrestling) were cut in 2009 for budget reasons.[28] MIT also has an extensive club and intramural sports team. MIT undergraduates must complete physical education classes as well as a swim test in order to graduate.
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