On Thursday, Vice President for Student Life Timothy Sams held the annual Student Senate Cross-Cutting Review of the draft of the Student Life Performance Plan. However, due to low attendance, the event was repeated a second time on Monday. Read more...

Last Friday, the Student Senate released its State of the Institute (http://docs.studentsenate.rpi.edu/documents/1701), a document the Senate used in passing its recent motion in regards to the direction that Rensselaer is heading and President Shirley Ann Jackson’s style of leadership. The Poly would like to recognize the effort that the Senate has put in to this report; it is evident that a great deal of time and effort has been put into it, as there is a significant amount of information and research. We encourage everyone in the Rensselaer community to read the document and voice their opinion. Read more...

The Rensselaer Game Development Club hosted the 2011 Game Development Showcase on Saturday in the McNeil Room. The intent of the showcase was to present games made by RPI students and local developers, and let people play them in brief tournaments. Laptops were set up around the room with playable game demos for the audience to check out. Food was also provided—there were aluminum tubs of chicken and salad with zesty Italian dressing. Read more...

The women’s basketball team headed to Salisbury, Md., for some action in the Salisbury University Optimist Tournament. The Engineers first game would be against the hosts, but RPI would handle them in an overtime victory in which the Engineers had four players score double digits. Read more...

On Friday, the Student Senate released its long-awaited report on the state of the Institute. The report represents the culmination of the research conducted by the Senate’s ad hoc committee. Separated into four main sections, the publication outlines the changes made at RPI since the Rensselaer Plan was initiated in Summer 2000. The four sections are made up of “Programs and Initiatives,” “Institutional Rankings,” “Work Environment and Academic Culture,” and “Institutional Finance.” However, the report itself is not the position of the Senate, but that of the ad hoc committee. This, the Advocacy, Community, and Advancement Committee chair Anasha Cummings ’12 said, “is one of the most common misconceptions about the report.” Read more...

The last time I wrote an editorial was in the beginning of the fall semester. In that article, I talked about my return to school from a year-long leave of absence, and how great it was to be back at RPI for the fall semester. Read more...

Tuesday morning blues. It’s still dark in my room. No slits of pale yellow between the blinds. That must mean it’s either cloudy or still night. I lift my head, not too far, but just enough to see the clock. Through bleary eyes, I can make out 8 … 30. Crap. Class started 30 minutes ago. Now, I’m on overdrive; I jump out of bed and immediately start coughing from dry mouth—open mouth breather, what can I say? I reach down and grab the cap of the water bottle beside my bed. Unfortunately, the lid had not been screwed on properly—to say the least, no more water in bottle, no water for my throat, and a wet carpet and power cord. Smooth. At least I didn’t get electrocuted. Read more...

A week after its loss to The Sage Colleges, the men’s basketball team headed to Massachusetts for their game against Williams College. Williams is ranked seventh in the nation, so RPI expected a challenging game ahead of time. Despite a strong first half, RPI could not hold on and the Ephs came from behind for the 91-84 victory. Read more...

The Capital Region Economic Development Council, co-chaired by President Shirley Ann Jackson and CEO of SEFCU Lou Castellana recently released their five-year strategic plan for improving the economic status of the Capital Region. Earlier this year, Governor Andrew Cuomo appointed a number of committees throughout the state to come up with plans to revitalize their regions and compete for $200 million in state aid. CREDC’s plan would benefit eight counties in New York state. Read more...

When I first started Biology 1010: Introduction to Biology in the beginning of this semester, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. On the one hand, all of my friends were telling me how awful the class was. All the work felt like busy work and the amount of effort they put into the class didn’t feel proportional to the amount of satisfaction they got out of it. On the other hand, I had also been hearing that the biology department was trying to fix its introductory course. Now that the class is basically completed (all that is left is the final exam), I feel that I can finally give a well formed opinion on the class as a non-biology major at RPI. Read more...

David’s Take

Monday Night Combat! It’s sort of like Monday Night Football, but instead of horrendous injuries that will haunt athletes for the rest of their lives, players mostly die from facing overwhelming numbers of deadly, deadly robots. It’s a vicious blood-sport take on a family favorite. As you can probably guess from my tone, I’m not a huge fan of this game. Read more...

Patrick Maxwell, who has a doctorate in Molecular Biology from Syracuse University, is one of the newer members of the RPI faculty. Maxwell chose RPI for the resources available, the potential in the department for teaching, and, most importantly, the effect it would have on his family. Luckily for Maxwell, RPI is right across the river from where he was working: Albany. Maxwell worked at Wadsworth Center in Albany before deciding to come to RPI. Read more...

After being at RPI for entirely too long, if I were to give one piece of advice to current students, it would be to get a hobby or two. Hobbies help remind you why you’re going through with your RPI degree. I wouldn’t have been able to finish my two degrees over the course of eight years without any. They give you something interesting to do when you need to blow off some steam. As a student, you have plenty of options for picking up a hobby; you can join a club, find an outside activity, or even look to your classes. Read more...

Immortals. A movie whose title is in desperate need of an article, and which is in desperate need of a better writer in general. Overall, the movie was decent. In fact, it was exactly what I was looking for and expected of it. It was an over-the-top action flick, where men with swords struck at other similarly armed men. To its credit, the movie never misrepresented itself. The trailers all contained ridiculous scenes that actually occurred in the movie, which is something that not all action movies have been doing as of late. Read more...

It was another rough weekend for the men’s hockey team as the Engineers dropped their final two ECAC contests of 2011. The Princeton University Tigers upended RPI by a 5-3 margin on Friday evening, while the Quinnipiac University Bobcats broke a 2-2 tie with two seconds left on the board to earn the victory. Rensselaer drops to 3-12-0 overall with a 1-6-0 league record following the two losses. Princeton improved to 4-7-2 overall with a 3-5-1 conference record, while the Bobcats jump to 9-6-3 on the season with a 2-4-3 ECAC mark. Read more...

On Wednesday, November 30, RPI’s Resident Student Association hosted the annual Residence Life Fall Housing Forum. The forum—led by RSA President Joseph Baca ’13—provided Dean of Residence Life Todd Schill and Associate Dean Amanda Bingel with the opportunity to inform students of the various plans currently being considered by Res Life in an attempt to improve on-campus residential life for all students. Vice President of Administration Claude Rounds also made an appearance. Read more...

I was hoping this week to write an article wishing students well for their holiday break as well as a discussion on recent national events and their impact on Rensselaer (namely, the impending sequestration—automatic budget cuts—triggered as a result of the Congressional Supercommittee failing to reach consensus have some fairly significant and interesting implications for us). However, as this is the last issue of The Polytechnic for this calendar year, I believe that there are some common misconceptions surrounding the Senate’s passage of its motion this past Monday, which requested the Board of Trustees to conduct an investigation into the state of the Institute and other specific concerns, that need to be cleared up for the discussion to progress. Read more...

Just over a month ago, official estimates of global population hit seven billion. It is a milestone of the human population reaching its highest levels ever, with no sign of stopping in sight. This number also hides an increasingly more apparent truth; there are now more people than ever before competing for resources on the Earth. Read more...

RPI women’s hockey closed out 2011 on a sour note, losing to Clarkson University in a 10-0 decision on Friday and falling to St. Lawrence University by a score of 6-3 on Saturday. The Engineers dropped to 4-12-4 overall on the season, including a 1-5-2 league mark, placing them 10th overall in the standings. Clarkson, who currently sits in second place, is 10-4-4 overall and 6-3-1 in conference action. St. Lawrence is in the middle of the pack, posting a 8-7-3 record with a 5-4-1 ECAC mark. Read more...