[Editors] MIT Editors' Club Minutes, April '07

[Elizabeth Thomson]

MIT EDITORS' CLUB

*Meeting Notes from April 19, 2007*

*Virginia Tech*

This meeting began on a somber note as the Virginia Tech shootings 
had happened only a few days earlier. People were distressed. What 
would MIT do in such a situation?

Although none of us could speak professionally about preparing for 
such a calamity, a few of us had heard a short talk just the day 
before, at another meeting, by Bill  Van Schalkwyk, managing director 
of MIT's Environment, Health, and Safety Programs.

Suffice it to say that all of us who'd heard Bill thought him quite 
impressive, and certainly felt in good hands should some calamity 
ever hit MIT.

Susan Curran (you know, the Spotlight Lady!) reported that, in 
essence, Bill said that the emergency you plan for is never the 
emergency you get, so the process of general planning in advance is 
really most important. To that end, he stressed the importance of 
working with key people, and getting to know them well in advance. 
So, for example, he has close ties to MIT's Chief of Police, John 
DeFarva, among other key people....

*Tech Hack*

To relieve the tone, someone brought up the CalTech hack of The Tech 
on....Friday, April 13.

Here are some highlights:

Under "The Weather" on the front page:

Today: Cold
Tonight: Colder
Tomorrow: I wish I were in California.

=========
Page 1 Headlines:

"Infinite Corridor Not Actually Infinite"

"Architects Deem Campus "Unfortunate"
---continued on p. 8 under "eyesore," with the subhead "MIT buildings 
drive down property values" and a photo of Simmons Hall.

On the World & Nation page:

"Indiana Declares War on Illinois"

More:

Math Dept. Hires Rising Star
(photo of Matt Damon, with caption "New math professor Matt Damon 
enthusiastically accepts post.")

Sports:

Men's Basketball Suffers Loss to Wellesley

Women's water polo canceled after pool freezes over

*Tech TV*

Catherine Avril, communications director for the School of 
Engineering, shared with us a cool new program: MIT Tech TV. It's a 
web-based video service designed to make it easier to post, host, and 
find video content related to MIT.

The idea is that anyone with an mit.edu e-mail address can upload 
videos to the site. For more info, go to 
http://techtv.mit.edu/about/. The beta version is now up, so you can 
test it. You can also vote on the videos that are posted by MIT 
students----a contest is currently underway to pick the best.

*Next Meetings*
The next meetings of MIT Editors' Club will be as follows. All 
meetings are in the News Office, 11-400, from 12-1.

Monday, May 21

Friday, June 22

Cheers,

Elizabeth
-- 

================================
Elizabeth A. Thomson
Senior Science and Engineering Editor
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
News Office, Room 11-400
77 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA  02139-4307
617-258-5402 (ph); 617-258-8762 (fax)
<thomson at mit.edu>

<http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/www>
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