The Senate meeting last Thursday was a direct follow up of the previous week’s two meetings. First off, there was a temporary motion to have a formal queue for that night’s meeting, meaning one can speak for an unlimited time, rather than just two opportunities of a maximum of 10 minutes each. The motion passed with a vote of 19-3-0, ensuring all senators had a chance to voice their opinion during the feisty meeting. Read more...

Every day is filled with monotony. Get up, go to class, eat, do homework, and go to sleep. Maybe you don’t have classes or, let’s be honest, maybe you don’t study. But you do something like this every day. It’s like clockwork. Maybe some days you smile or laugh, but mostly, you’re just bored and tired. Tired of Data Structures labs. Tired of Sodexo food. Tired of the freezing winds. Read more...

RPI may have had some rather nasty weather on Saturday, February 21, but those who braved it to get to the McNeil Room at around 7:30 pm were rewarded with a very enjoyable evening. The Black Student Alliance hosted its annual fashion show this weekend, which is the main event in their celebration of Black History Month. Read more...

This past weekend, the women’s hockey team broke even at the Houston Field House in Troy, NY, losing Friday night to Cornell University 4-1 and winning Saturday night 5-3 against Colgate University, making it a successful senior night. Read more...

On Saturday, February 21, the Office of the President, Divisions of Student Life and Administration, and the Rensselaer Union held their sixth annual Winter Carnival from 12–9 pm at the East Campus Athletic Village. This year’s theme was AVALANCHE and featured a number of winter related activities. Read more...

Now, what I’m about to say here might be a bit controversial, but I’m not a fan of dining hall food. Yes, it’s true, I’m not a fan. However, as someone who has lived off campus for a little while now, I can tell you that there is a whole world—well, a whole city—full of food just waiting to be explored. Read more...

A few weeks ago, I was a little under the weather. More than that, I had the flu and wasn’t really capable of doing many things, like homework, reading, or even just eating. Yeah, it was not fun. And while I wasn’t able to do any thought provoking activities, I did find a game that was simple, cheap, and definitely what I needed to get through my illness. Read more...

On Friday, men’s basketball traveled to Vassar College for a Liberty League road game. Early, it appeared as though RPI would win in a rout. Baskets by junior forwards Chase Almond and Brian Hatcher and a 3-pointer by senior guard Josh Dugas gave the Engineers a commanding 9-2 lead. But, Vassar went on a run of its own, scoring six unanswered points. Read more...

After protests from students and faculty, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst has lifted its ban on Iranian students from the school’s graduate engineering programs. The decision for the ban arose in early February of this year from the university’s desire to comply with the “Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act of 2012.” The aforementioned sanction prevented Iranian nationals from conducting research on nuclear energy at American universities. The majority of Iranian students in the U.S. are in graduate engineering or science programs. UMass Amherst’s policy would have banned Iranian students from being admitted to fields such as mechanical, computer, and chemical engineering. UMass hosts around 60 Iranian students on its Amherst campus. Other universities with admission policies concerning Iranian students include Virginia Commonwealth University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Read more...

Unreliable people make my life much harder than it needs to be. Here are four cases where unreliable people have impacted me in negative ways. Read more...

On Saturday, February 21, the Rensselyrics hosted the fourth International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella Northeast quarterfinal in the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center Concert Hall. A total of ten a cappella groups competed, including RPI’s Partial Credit and The Rusty Pipes. Read more...

After the Engineers stumbled in the second half and lost against Vassar on Friday, they returned home on Sunday for their final game of the season against last-place Bard College. Read more...

Happy Wednesday RPI. This week marks the beginning of a three-week period of constitutional discussion in the Student Senate. If you recall, the Constitution Committee was re-established earlier this year with the explicit purpose of resolving ambiguities in the document, making fixes to inconsistent or inaccurate sections, and performing edits at the explicit request of various organizations. Read more...

We all know the experience of heading to your local pharmacy to pick up medication for an ailment, but what we often don’t even consider is the extensive process by which that drug was created. When a drug company wants to test their product on the human body, they must start in the lab using man-made environments replicating the human body. Currently, these conditions do not contain “fluid flow,” arguably the most important element in the environment. Ultimately, this static condition does not allow the cells to accurately mature into a tissue model that mimics the tissues of the body. These undeveloped models can have direct negative impacts in research areas such as the drug discovery field. Meet CULTURE-SHIFT (Cell cULTure Under REpresentative SHear Induced Flow in Transwells), a team of four students working to develop a device that allows researchers to grow cells under the conditions of the human body. Their vision is to provide researchers with the tools they need to more accurately and effectively develop drugs. Read more...

This week’s athletes of the week are senior guard Josh Dugas and junior forward Tyler Gendron of men’s basketball. These two combined to lead RPI to two consecutive wins to finish their regular season. Read more...

Hey RPI!

I would like to start this article off with some congratulations. As the winter sports seasons come to an end, we have many club sports teams to highlight as they continue to compete at the highest level. We have three teams that have qualified for nationals. A huge congratulations and good luck to the curling team, the ski team, and the racquetball team; they will be continuing their seasons in the upcoming weeks representing RPI while competing against the best in the nation. We also have two teams; which are competing in their regional tournaments this weekend: ACHA ice hockey and wrestling will be competing for a chance to continue their seasons and play in nationals. Good luck to all teams competing and congratulations on your success so far. Read more...

On Wednesday, February 18, Terra Café served their first lunch of the spring semester. The club partners with Sodexo to provide the RPI community with local and organic food that is affordable. For seven dollars (FLEX, RAD, cash, or credit), you can get a main dish (meat, vegetarian, or vegan), side of salad, and a delicious dessert. Beverages that are served include water, local apple cider, coffee, and tea. Located at the Experimental Media and Peforming Arts Center, Terra Café will be open every Wednesday, serving their local lunches from 11am to 2 pm. Read more...

College students are probably the most popular demographic target for accusations of media “piracy,” e-book sharing, and other purported forms of copyright infringement. Firstly, we consume far more digital media than the general population, a trend which steadily increases annually. The majority of college students also live on miserly budgets, with parents being a common primary source of financial support. Combine this with far superior technical literacy than that of the average adult, and higher education students become prime violators of existing laws that forbid the decrypting, viewing, or distribution of copyrighted media. Students at RPI are no exception; we download and share movies, books, television shows, and other content without discretion because it is faster, easier, and cheaper than navigating the minefield that is purchasing copyright-protected media. While some may ask whether or not the accusations of theft against our demographic are justified, I believe the important question is, are the current laws surrounding copyrighted works fair themselves? Read more...

The Student Senate met last Thursday to discuss two important topics: changes to the Student Activity Fee and the Union Annual Report. Shoshana Rubinstein ’15 presented to the Senate to highlight important changes to the UAR and answer any questions that the senators had. Some of the changes included a $500 food cap for the fund that clubs are allowed to use to buy food for their members once per semester. The Union also agreed to subsidize food for club events lasting longer than five hours. When questioned, President of the Union Erin Amarello ’15 stated that the Executive Board felt that being unable to leave an event for more than five hours would require missing a meal, and thus require food for the event. Club travel was reduced back to its previous rate of 60/40, where the Union would cover 40 percent of travel costs. It was previously an even 50/50 split, but only because the Union had extra funds that they wanted to return to the students. Read more...

Someone recently told me that the Opinions section of a newspaper is simply unnecessary. I was advised that no one wanted to hear my opinion and would customarily skip over or disregard this part of the newspaper in order to get to the more exciting and superior content of, say, the Features section of The Poly. Read more...