Last weekend, members of the student-run RPI TV club headed down to Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City to exclusively cover the ECAC hockey championship, streaming HD video through pay-per-view provider America One. They were the only broadcasters filming the event, which included four games between Colgate University, Cornell University, Harvard University, and Union College over the span of two days. Read more...

Hello RPI! I hope everyone had a refreshing Spring Break. We could not have asked for better weather for our return to school! Read more...

Many different studies have shown the adverse effects that raising and growing livestock in an industrial setting has on the local environment. The animals themselves tend to either have bone defects or other problems accrued from the extremely fast growth rate that the animals experience. Not only are they grown so quickly to be killed, but most of them are suffering their whole lives. Arguments have been made that livestock aren’t susceptible to conscious thought; why does it matter to us? That does not mean they are not capable of suffering. Regardless of the view on the situation, the overall goal seems to lead to reducing the number of animals killed. Read more...

A motion has been made in the Student Senate to amend the Rensselaer Union Constitution, moved by Alice Yueh ’12 and written by Christopher Girard ’14. The amendment, were it to pass, would add a senator position so that both the Interfraternity Council and the Panhellenic Council, which represent RPI’s fraternities and sororities, respectively, would be represented in the Senate. Read more...

Hello RPI! I hope everyone had an amazing Spring Break. As elections are fast approaching and students are starting to declare candidacy, I figured that I would write an article about what being the President of the Union entails. I hope that this will give any potential candidates a better understanding of the position. I will do a later Derby article on what it means to be a Union Executive Board representative, and official applications for the Union Executive Board will be released to the student body shortly after the next PU is elected. The Board is appointed primarily by the PU and approved by the Student Senate. Read more...

Omer’s Take

John Carter is a film that has been stuck in the bowels of development hell for years. Based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ seminal science fiction series of novels, Barsoom, John Carter represents Pixar director Andrew Stanton’s first foray into live action. Stanton’s Pixar films Finding Nemo and WALL-E are considered some of Pixar’s best films, and two of the best animated films of the last decade. Brad Bird, another excellent Pixar director, also recently made the jump to live-action in the critically acclaimed box office smash Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. However, Stanton’s transition from lost clown fish and wistful, love-struck robots is a little bit more uneven. Read more...

RPI softball’s trip over Spring Break to Florida was a rollercoaster ride of big wins and heartfelt losses but in the end it won half of the games it played. The first win came in its season opener against the Rhode Island College Anchorwomen. Read more...

Recently, Troy Property Group, the company which owns all Campus Habitat facilities in the city, pressed charges against RPI regarding notifications and advice the Institute provided to students residing in their off-campus apartments. The property group is seeking financial reparations for alleged damages resulting from the actions taken by Rensselaer. Read more...

On February 14, posters which were demeaning to women appeared on campus. They referred to a term known as RIBS, or Ratio Induced Bitch Syndrome, suggesting that the female to male ratio at the university leads women to have an inflated sense of themselves. This term and the posters do not reflect the values of our community and misrepresent us to each other as well as to those beyond our gates. Such acts offend the sensibilities of various community member’s sensibilities, attack other’s humanity, and by extension, offend us all. Read more...

Alrighty, I am going to Tarantino this and just start my ranting and raving with the end of Mass Effect 3, then work my way back from there. Read more...

For Spring Break, the RPI baseball team headed to Florida to play its final tune-up games of the preseason. The team started things off with a doubleheader against the College of Brockport. Read more...

You won’t get any arguments from me about Mass Effect 3 being a fun game; what’s better than firing a big anti-material rifle and killing four Guardians (troopers with riot shields) in a single shot? The game is full of surprises, including its fair share of bugs and annoying keybindings. While BioWare did good to introduce dodges and rolls into the combat mix, the studio added these functions to the already crowded spacebar key. Now pressing spacebar means you do one of five things: get into cover, activate an object, sprint, dodge, or revive a teammate. In a multiplayer setting, this could mean the difference between life and death. Let’s say you’re trying to revive someone. If you accidentally double tap spacebar instead of holding it, you’ll dodge over your fallen teammate. But, if you hold the spacebar key when you are moving, you’ll just sprint over your fallen comrade. And God forbid the third time around, you actually manage to revive your ally … as a giant Banshee instantly kills the both of you by impaling your now limp bodies with her tendril-like arms. Congratulations, now you are both dead. Thank you spacebar for being the omnipotent, oversized button you are. Read more...

As far as I have played, I have thoroughly enjoyed the Mass Effect games; at time of writing, I am very close to the ending of the third game. As such, I have decided to write this as a look back on the series as a whole and discuss a few places that I think it has misstepped. This will contain some spoilers from the first two games, so if you haven’t finished them and don’t want to know, go finish them now, then come back and read this. Read more...

Last weekend, Rensselaer hosted Genericon XXV in the Darrin Communications Center and the Low Center for Industrial Innovation. This year’s iteration of the annual convention attracted approximately 1700 colorfully costumed attendees over 48 hours of panels, activities, and performances. Special guests included Nicki Clyne, an actress on the sci-fi television show Battlestar Galactica, Johnny Yong Bosch, who is famous for playing the second Black Ranger on Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, and Eyeshine, a band from West Hills, California. Read more...

Last semester was exciting. For once, the Student Senate was on the radar of the average student. The State of the Institute Report made waves, in part because of the infamous motion which included the phrase, “removal of Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson.” The Senate’s actions may not have had unanimous support, but at least they were taking action—or building up to it. These efforts culminated in an essentially disregarded recommendation to the Board of Trustees. Read more...

Tonight—March 7—at 6:30 pm in the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies Auditorium, the winner of this year’s Lemelson-MIT Rensselaer Student Prize will be announced. The Lemelson-MIT Prize is a $30,000 award given to an RPI senior or graduate student who has created or improved a product or process, applied technology in a new way, redesigned a system, or otherwise demonstrated remarkable inventiveness. Winners of the prize gain invaluable exposure to the science, business, and investment communities through the press around the award. This year, the three finalists are graduate students Christopher Rivet, Zepu Wang, and Fazel Yavari. Read more...

It may have taken nearly all season for RPI to find its scoring touch, but it came when games finally matter—the ECAC Tournament. The Engineers defeated Clarkson University in a best-of-three series on the road, taking the first and third matches to continue onto the tournament quarterfinals. Read more...

On Monday, during its weekly meeting, the Student Senate adjusted and passed the 2012 GM Week Handbook. Chair of the Rules and Elections Committee Reilly Hamilton ’12 proposed the majority of the changes. Read more...

If you ask a computer science major what class they dread the most, or what class they hated the most, chances are they’re going to say that they were not a huge fan of Software Design and Documentation. The reasons for this vary, but the general consensus is the same: it’s just not a good class in its current form. Read more...