The RPI men’s club rugby team took on Marist on a beautiful Saturday afternoon at Anderson Field. The Engineers started strong in their first game of the year, crushing the Red Foxes 43 to 12. RPI has high hopes for the upcoming season after only winning one game and losing five last season. The team is led by senior captains Cody Clifford and Dominick Petrelle. Read more...
In response to the United Nations Climate Summit, over 400,000 attended the People’s Climate March on September 21, in New York City. The largest climate-related march in history by attendance, the People’s Climate March’s mission was to demonstrate the level of public interest in political action regarding climate change to the over 120 heads of state intending to attend the UN Climate Summit two days later. Read more...
In early 2014, Comcast and Charter Communications began their formal bids for their acquisition of Time Warner Cable. Since the beginning of proposals, Comcast’s $45.2 million bid and Charter’s acquiescence to the proposed sale of 1.4 million subscribers to them from TWC by Comcast for an additional $7.3 billion have created a fervor online and offline against the merger. The merger of two of the largest telecommunications corporations in the United States would, according to Comcast vice-president David Cohen, be “all about increasing competition and creating more consumer benefit as a result of gaining additional scale.” A majority of the population, however, is opposed—a March 2014 Reuters/Ipsos poll concluded that over half of the American population was opposed to the merger, whilst less than a quarter, 22%, thought the merger to be beneficial. In March, as attention to the matter grew, the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Federal Communications Commission, and the U.S. Department of Justice began to review the merger, though the fact that the FCC’s current chairman was a lobbyist for Comcast caused a bit of a stir among many. Such a unified public opinion is quite rare to behold, and it begs the question—why are these sorts of mergers so commonplace anyways, when the supposed core tenet of capitalism is competition? Read more...
Just a little more than a month ago, Netflix expanded its collection of original series with a new animated show, BoJack Horseman. To be honest, I wasn’t exactly excited to check out this new show. Although Netflix has had a good history of original content, a cartoon about a horse just didn’t seem all that funny to me, and I was right in that regard. The show isn’t that funny because despite what it may appear, it’s not a comedy. Rather, it’s one of the best sitcoms I’ve ever seen. Read more...
This past Saturday at Harkness Field, Skidmore scored early and often against the RPI field hockey team. Right from the start, the Engineers defense was challenged by a potent Thoroughbred attack, which fired off three quick shots on RPI senior goalie Hannah Clough. Clough saved the first two, but the third one found the back of the net to give Skidmore a 1-0 lead. The Engineers then made a persistent charge of their own, forcing Thoroughbred goalie Amy Beck to deflect back-to-back shots on goal. Then, a penalty corner from junior attack Angela Cascio resulted in a sophomore midfielder Colleen Fowler equalizer. But Skidmore quickly struck back with two goals of their own in the 23rd and 29th minutes, respectively. Read more...
Last Thursday, Scotland voted 55 to 45 percent in a historic referendum to reject independence from the United Kingdom. Voter turnout on the matter reached a record of 85 percent. Poll data from the weeks before the referendum underscored a stark schism between the two sides. Most of the differences were grounded in concern for Scotland’s finances and relations with its neighbors. To further analyze the desire of many Scots to secede, however, one must first analyze Scotland’s history with its more powerful southern neighbor, England. Read more...
Recently, I’ve been spending a lot more time in The Poly office than I have in past years. This semester and last semester, The Poly and its staff have become not only a team that cranks out a newspaper every Tuesday, but a group of friends. Additionally, The Poly has been working on improvements and changes to our work environment and office. Last semester, I headed the project to install LED light strips to illuminate the new letters in the Poly office windows. The idea of the project is to make the newspaper more visible on campus, especially to Freshman Hill. The project was more than just picking up some parts at the hardware store and strapping them together. The design utilizes a custom PCB that takes an Arduino and gives it 16 high-current PWM channels, perfect for driving and dimming long strips of LEDs. The board also entails a potentiometer knob, pushbutton, and LED display for configuring modes/choosing between the different outputs. Read more...
Last weekend, I participated in the Rensselaer Outing Club’s annual Fall Lake George trip. Over 100 students spent three days, and two nights out on Turtle Island in the middle of Lake George. Read more...
This week’s Senate meeting was held on September 22 in Union 3202 at 6:30 pm and featured topics such as the fall career fair, services offered by the Center for Career and Professional Development and class council budgets. The meeting opened with a presentation by Jennifer Walters from the CCPD who had come to discuss the upcoming career fair. Walters’ presentation overviewed the strategies involved at the career fair and many of CCPD’s services that can help students prepare. Walters outlined the counseling services, online aides, and resume help that the CCPD currently offers to students including a Clothes Closet where students may borrow business attire for the career fair. According to Walters, the CCPD offers resume critiques, mock interviews and sessions that will help prepare students for the fair. Read more...
Hello RPI! We’re now nearing the end of September, and well into our first exam period. As October approaches, there are a slew of community and national events requiring our attention. Read more...
On Tuesday, September 30, the RPI chapter of Engineers Without Borders will be hosting “Cookies and Cocoa for a Cause” to support further work on their project in Panama. In January 2015 five members of EWB RPI will be traveling to Panama to implement a water catchment and treatment system for the 350 community members of Isla Popa II. The community members support themselves on six times less than the average American, and half the usage of an average Panamanian. Currently, without a reliable source of potable water, the island-dwelling Panamanian community members have been collaborating with EWB-RPI since 2010 in drafting a large-scale water harvesting system that will sustainably provide water for the community’s school. EWB-RPI is hard at work finalizing the designs for a pavilion-based rainwater catchment system that will be constructed during this first implementation trip. Two 600-gallon tanks will be mounted near this pavilion and will store water collected on the roof. As a preliminary water treatment procedure, a “first-flush” system designed by EWB-RPI club members will pre-flush the first few millimeters of water that falls on the pavilion roof to rid the water of solid contaminants. Furthermore, four to five bucket-based biosand filters will be constructed and placed in the local school cafeteria for use in filtering the gathered rainwater. EWB-RPI prioritizes sustainability of projects, and thus will ensure that community members have been trained to properly use and maintain the constructed system. Before leaving the community, club members will search for future construction sites, analyze current drinking water practices, and collect water contamination data using microbial testing kits. Read more...
Hey RPI!
Today, I would like to talk about opportunities. As the career fair approaches, each of us tends to look at ourselves and ask “What can I bring to the table?” At the same time, we look at the list of companies and wonder, “What job will I be happy going to every day?” These are not easy questions, and they do not have simple answers. Read more...
This week’s athletes of the week are the RPI men’s golf team. This past weekend, the Engineers won the team competition at the Williams Fall Invitational. The event featured 19 teams from around the northeast, two of which came from Williams College, the host school. After finishing in a tie for fourth after day one with a combined score of 304(20+), the Engineers climbed out of a seven shot deficit to win by two with a clutch second round total of 294 (+10). This was the second consecutive win for the golf team, as it also won its previous tournament, the Duke Nelson, the week before. Read more...
The business school at Rensselaer, proudly known as the Lally School of Management, is 50 years old. Significant milestones give us pause to reflect on what has transpired previously, to acknowledge accomplishments, and to look ahead to the future. Read more...
In nearly a week, freshman elections will take place and the first year class will elect their senators and class president. With a large number of candidates showing strong interest in the five open positions, the race this year will prove to be incredibly interesting. However, Grand Marshal Kyle Keraga ’15 believes that the freshmen “don’t really know the scope of what Student Government can do yet” and hopes that with this surge in interest, more of the class will understand the importance of the organization and one of the last student-run unions in the country. Keraga and President of the Union Erin Amarello ’15 have both focused on an open approach this year and freshman elections this year are showing that their efforts have begun to work. The number of freshmen running for Student Senate is nearing a record and committees in Student Government are seeing a huge jump in student participation from both members and non-members. Read more...
Last week, The Poly released an article on rush policy violations. The piece has received both positive and negative feedback, and we want to make our intentions clear in publishing the article. Read more...
On Saturday, September 13, the RPI Smash Club hosted the Pastimes Legends Final Battle tournament in the McNeil Room of the Rensselaer Union. From as early as 9 am until 10 pm, the common area was transformed into a battle hall with almost 100 TVs lining the tables around the room. With registration opening at 10 am, the tournament offered singles and doubles competitions in Melee, Brawl and the competitive Brawl mod Project M. Games played at station one were live streamed throughout the day on Twitch, reaching 2,500 views with an average of 120 people watching at any given time. The player pool of over 160 individual people was incredibly diverse and consisted of players from all over the Northeast, with players from Connecticut, Vermont, New York, and more. Professional players, including Mew2King, DJ Nintendo, PB&J and The Moon, among others, showed up to fight against other Smash enthusiasts for the top spots in the competition, as well as the cash prizes paid to the top five in singles and the top three in doubles. Read more...
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute football lost its home opener on a rainy Saturday afternoon, in an out-of-league matchup against the Alfred University Saxons. RPI played in front of an enthusiastic home crowd for their home debut. The Engineers, having won the week before, were hoping to bring momentum into Saturday’s contest. Sadly, Alfred thwarted this notion beating RPI 34-31 at the East Campus Stadium. Read more...
