MIT World

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.

Traditions

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

"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" has informally become "Brass Rat" in student lingo.

Course numbering

MIT students often 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. Students majoring in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), the most popular department, collectively identify themselves as "Course VI" or "Course 6."

MIT students use a combination of the department's Course number and a number assigned to the class 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'', "2.009" is pronounced ''two double oh nine'', and "5.60" would be pronounced ''five sixty''. This naming is not internally consistent: for example, the digital systems course "6.111" is pronounced ''six one eleven'', but the introductory chemistry course "5.111" is pronounced ''five eleven one''.

Smoots

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.

Tim the Beaver

Tim the Beaver is the official mascot of MIT, appearing at athletic events, fundraisers, and other occasions. 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 Richard Maclaurin proposed the beaver. The sports teams at MIT often choose to feature Tim as their mascot, and go by the name "The Engineers".

Recurring events

Bad Ideas Festival

This event, which usually takes place between the parallels of the East Campus dormitories, features oddball activities, stunts, and constructions. Notable Bad Ideas events include temporary roller coasters and the Green Building Challenge. The event takes place during the last weekend of January.

Baker House Piano Drop

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 dent in asphalt has spawned a unit of volume, known as the Bruno.

Campus Preview Weekend

Campus Preview Weekend (CPW) 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 first fully inclusive event was held in 1999. 2013's CPW was held around early to mid April.

East Campus Rush

Immediately before the beginning of Fall term, during Orientation Week for new students, residents of East Campus dormitory construct large-scale temporary structures, such as a roller coaster, in the space between the parallel wings of the residence. These projects are large enough that the City of Cambridge requires detailed engineering drawings in advance, plus a letter from a licensed engineer certifying that the design conforms to local building codes.

Independent Activities Period

Independent Activities Period (IAP) 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. The final event is a half-day "Charm School" sponsored by the Student Activities Office.  The first IAP was in 1971.

DTYD (Dance Till You Drop)

Dance (previously Drink) Till You Drop (DTYD) is an annual party, hosted by the Burton-Conner living group the Burton 3rd Bombers, which is typically held the Sunday of Patriot's Day weekend in the Burton-Conner House Porter Room. The party has been traditionally accompanied by a hack and hosted live music, and is open to the entire campus. First hosted in 1969, the event celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2019.

Ring events

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.

Spring Weekend

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.

Steer Roast

Steer Roast is an annual weekend of celebration and festivities hosted by Senior House. The first Steer Roast took place in the spring of 1964, and this MIT tradition was maintained for over fifty years on the first weekend of every May. In May 2014, Senior House celebrated its 50th anniversary of Steer Roast. In the past MIT presidents and professors attended, but this time no presidential appearance occurred, in spite of the usual invitations. Then in 2017, Steer Roast was to be held during the first weekend of May, but two weeks before that, the event was cancelled by MIT administrators. Soon afterwards, in spite of student and alumni pleas and protests, Senior House itself was closed down. In May 2017, Steer Roast was celebrated off campus and on schedule.

Non-recurring and sporadic events

Annual Spontaneous Tuition Riot

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 by 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.

''Chrysalis'', ''Monarch'', and ''Daedalus'' human-powered aircraft

From the 1970s until the early 1990s, MIT had a succession of student-led projects which designed, built, and flew human-powered aircraft (HPA), starting with ''BURD'' and ''BURD-II'', and evolving into the flight of the ''Chrysalis'' in 1979, the first of the MIT HPA to successfully fly. ''Chrysalis'' went on to have over 44 pilots, including the first female pilots of an HPA.The Gossamers and Other Planes
Royal Aeronautical Society Human Powered Aircraft Group (accessed November 13, 2012) The ''Monarch B'' was a human-powered aircraft built by a student team 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 the successor to the 1979 ''Chrysalis'' and the earlier ''Monarch A'', and in turn was a precursor to the ''Daedalus'' effort which flew a human-powered aircraft from Crete to the island of Santorini off the Greek mainland in 1988.

MIT Blackjack Team

MIT Gangnam Style

MIT students produced "MIT Gangnam Style", a lighthearted parody of the "Gangnam Style" music video which was an Internet phenomenon in 2012. The video featured hundreds of MIT students dancing in a wide overview of dozens of extracurricular student activities across the campus. The music video closely followed the original version, and included cameo appearances by MIT professors Donald Sadoway, recognized by ''Time Magazine'' in 2012 as one of the "Top 100 Most Influential People in the World", Eric Lander, who was co-chairman of President Barack Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, and Noam Chomsky, a pioneer of modern linguistics.

Soon after the video's release, ''The Huffington Post'' published an article with the headline "MIT 'Chomsky Style' Best Gangnam Parody Yet? Noted Intellectual Steals The Wacky Show".MIT 'Chomsky Style' Best Gangnam Parody Yet? Noted Intellectual Steals The Wacky Show (2012). The Huffington Post. Retrieved from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/29/mit-chomsky-style-best-gagnam-style-parody-yet_n_2040053.html?ir=Technology

Sodium Drop

The Sodium Drop traditionally consisted of a bar of metallic sodium dropped into the Charles River, producing loud 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. 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.

A criminal case was initiated, and a graduate student accepted responsibility, resulting in a fine and a 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. The student newspaper ''The Tech'' has published an editorial urging readers to take responsibility for any injuries to innocent parties that result from the prank.

Time Traveler Convention

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. 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 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. 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 Delorean, 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.

Hacking

Hacking at MIT can refer to two distinct but closely related activities. Both have a rich history at MIT, despite being unsanctioned activities and often violating official policies.

MIT hacks

A "hack" is a practical joke or prank display anonymously installed usually during the night. Many hacks commemorate historical or popular culture events, particularly those relevant to science and technology.

Roof and tunnel hacking

The term "hacking" typically refers to the activity of roof and tunnel hacking, where students explore building rooftops, steam tunnels, and utility shafts.

Activities

MIT has over 380 recognized student activity groups. These are mostly governed by the MIT Association of Student Activities.

Educational Studies Program

The MIT Educational Studies Program (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 local 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 strong desires to learn.

ESP pioneered Splash, a large, short-term academic outreach program that involves over two thousand teachers and five hundred classes. The program has grown in popularity and attracted students from well beyond the local Boston area. Splash emphasizes having a diverse range of class topics, covering a variety of academic fields as well as non-academic games and practical skills.

In 2007, ESP alumni founded Learning Unlimited (LU), a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting educational opportunities like Splash at universities throughout the United States and beyond. LU provides assistance, including mentorship and software support, that helps new Splash programs start successfully. there are over thirty LU affiliated programs in the United States and one in the United Kingdom.

Lecture Series Committee

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...Sucks!", 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.

Student Information Processing Board

The Student Information Processing Board (SIPB) is a computing and information technology student group at MIT. SIPB was founded in 1969 by Bob Frankston. The organization helps MIT students access computing resources and use them effectively.

SIPB has funded, developed, and maintained several important software projects at MIT, including a dynamic web hosting service, a course planning assistant, a virtual machine service, and an instant messaging client. SIPB has contributed extensively to Project Athena, the distributed academic computing environment used at MIT today.

TechX

TechX is a student group that organizes events that bring technology, new ideas, and tech-industry innovators to MIT's campus. These events include:
* HackMIT, the university's largest annual hackathon
* xFair, a job fair and technology expo
* MakeMIT, a hackathon dedicated to hardware and making

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