[UA] Last Byte of the Year! - December 14th, 2015

[Sophia Liu]

[image: Inline image 1]
Hello Undergraduates,

No events were submitted to be put on the Byte this week, but we'll be
restarting over IAP! (Feel free to add your events here
<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1zVbtXskaeNY51cfNeJp0cCdbjlrkSq07OWTTqv-2X3s/viewform>
.) Good luck with exams this week, and take advantage of the many study
breaks--especially those free massages--all over campus!


*Interesting piece of history of the week *from our UA History Chair,
Allan Sadun
 (ua-history at mit.edu; add yourself to the ua-history-interest at mit.edu mailing
list here <https://groups.mit.edu/webmoira/list/ua-history-interest> if
you'd like to receive more):

*"In September 2007, a sophomore named Star Simpson wore an LED breadboard
on her shirt to career fair, then went to Logan Airport to pick up her
boyfriend andgot arrested at gunpoint
<http://tech.mit.edu/V127/N40/simpson.html>. The MIT News Office quickly
released a statement calling her actions "reckless", and MIT offered no
support in her subsequent legal battle
<http://tech.mit.edu/V128/N27/simpson.html>. Students quickly
<http://tech.mit.edu/V127/N41/protest.html> rallied
<http://tech.mit.edu/V127/N41/ackley.html> behind Star, but in particular,
this controversy ignited the faculty, who nearly passed a motion
<http://tech.mit.edu/V127/N63/facultymeeting.html> effectively condemning
the administration's statement in a heated faculty meeting
<http://web.mit.edu/dept/libdata/libdepts/d/archives/facmin/071219/071219-minutes.html>
(certs
required for this link). (Additionally, here is a letter
<http://tech.mit.edu/V128/N17/facultyopn.html> by some faculty in support
of Star.)*

*Star's story has resurfaced this week because of a talk
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQdl_JdTars> that Star gave at a Freedom
to Innovate conference at the Media Lab, which got retweeted by Larry
Lessig, and a piece
<https://medium.com/@starsandrobots/understandably-cause-for-alarm-1f0929be0615#.fjzikfokr>
that
she wrote summarizing her talk. But even without this publicity bump, this
is a well-remembered story among many MIT faculty and administrators, and
in certain student circles."*


Best of luck,
Sophia Liu
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Vice President of the Undergraduate Association
Departments of Chemical Engineering and Biology
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/undergrads/attachments/20151214/bd7df8f6/attachment-0001.html
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: logo16.png
Type: image/png
Size: 21150 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/undergrads/attachments/20151214/bd7df8f6/attachment-0001.png