Rensselaer announced the Summer Arch program last Thursday, which will eventually require rising juniors to live at RPI during the summer and have them go on a co-op or similar internship during their fall or spring semester. Students and alumni expressed their reactions across social media with mixed feelings. Some felt that this would be a great opportunity for students to have real world experience, while others questioned its implementation and effect on non-academic activities. Read more...

So, I just got back to campus last night after being away since Friday. Why, you may ask? I was in Connecticut celebrating Rosh Hashanah! This holiday, which literally translates to “Head of the Year,” is more commonly known as the Jewish New Year. It commemorates the start of a new calendar, which is marked by two days of prayer, introspection, and lots—and I mean lots—of good, home-cooked food. Read more...

The fall semester is a bit of a drag. You’ve spent all summer relaxing and/or getting valuable work experience, then you have to go back to classes, and homework, and the general, crushing sadness that is RPI. And while I desperately want to follow the theme of resilience this year, starting out, I didn’t know if I could make it. I wrote all the previous stuff in past tense because after watching Rick and Morty’s second season, I know I can wake up bright and early for my 8 ams knowing there will be an episode released once a week. Read more...

RPI men’s soccer chalked up two more wins this weekend to improve to a record of 5-0. The undefeated start is the Engineer’s best since 2008. Read more...

Not even Inspector Clouseau could have predicted the actions of this jewel thief. On Sunday, September 13, in Bangkok, Thailand, a Chinese woman had a six-carat diamond, worth $300,000, surgically removed from her intestines. According to sources of the BBC, the woman was thought to have exchanged this gem with a fake at a jewelry fair on Thursday. An airport arrest, hospital x-ray, and an attempt with laxatives later, authorities decided to have the woman undergo surgery. Not to alarm any sympathizers, the surgery was a brief twelve minutes and our “heistress” is on her way to recovery. Read more...

Playing video games has been a large, influential part of my life. I started out with a Game Boy Color and Pokémon Yellow, and I continued to play Pokémon until the Black and White editions. Pearl was the edition I played the most with about 350 hours of gameplay. I remember all my cousins having Nintendo DSs and when we were at our grandparent’s house we would play eight player Mario Kart together. When it was time to go to sleep, we would use the PictoChat room to talk to each other long past the time we were supposed to be asleep. Read more...

On Saturday September 5, hundreds of people from around the Capital Region gathered in the McNeil Room of the Rensselaer Union for the Super Smash Brothers tournament “Black Fish.” Over 130 participants came not only from RPI, but also from colleges such as Siena College, State University of New York Albany, Hamilton College, and Vassar College to compete in tournaments held in the various games of the Super Smash Brothers series. A total of $1670 was at stake in the prize pools, with Eric “Manalord” Garb winning over $500 in prize money. Read more...

Rensselaer junior materials science engineer and men’s cross country standout Ben Fazio, showed his home course in Saratoga Springs, NY, who’s boss on Saturday. He crossed over the finish line with a winning time of 18:51.5 for the 6K race, helping his team to a third place position out of 21 schools. Picking up where he left off last season with a second place finish in the Liberty League Championships and placing 26th in the National Collegiate Athletic Association National Championships, Fazio was named Liberty League Men’s Cross Country Performer of the Week for Saturday’s performance. Read more...

The meeting started off with the appointment of Victoria Tong ’16 to chair the Senate Rules & Elections Committee. Following questions about the level of time commitment and her reasons for applying to be chair, the Senate voted unanimously to approve the appointment. Former chair and current senator Paul Ilori ’17 will now be the Co-Chair of the R&E Committee. Read more...

Resilience has two meanings, the power or ability to return to the original form, position, etc., after being bent, compressed, or stretched, and the ability to recover readily from illness, depression, or adversity. Considering RPI students are not made of elastic material, it’s safe to say President Jackson was referring to the latter definition in her email to the Rensselaer community. Read more...

As someone who only started his musical journey in recent years due to conservative parents, there are many things that I have yet to experience in the vast, awe-inspiring universe that has come to exist as the music industry. Stemming from my concentrated Korean background, the only music I had any experience with was the disgustingly generic albeit, revolutionary genre of K-pop. If you haven’t heard of this genre, do yourself a favor and stay away. Read more...

Rensselaer field hockey won 3-1 against visiting Utica College, scoring two of them in the second half. The win came on the heels of the team’s first loss at Hamilton College on September 9, during which a late rally by the Engineers wasn’t enough to erase the two-goal lead built early by the Hamilton Continentals. Read more...

The Rensselaer Union Executive Board met for the first time this semester last Thursday to discuss Union Performance and Activities Committee Lights and extra money from the dues of the Class of 2015. Read more...

Hello RPI Students,

The Student Senate is hard at work to ensure that you have the best possible experience here at Rensselaer. However, at the end of the day, we are all students, and have our limitations. This may be ridiculously cliché considering Troy is the Home of Uncle Sam, but the student body needs YOU! Read more...

Darren Aronofsky’s psychological thriller Black Swan lends itself well to the dark melodrama of cinema; the film isn’t so much a foreboding “In a world” scenario as it is “In a life.” Any piece centered around the world of elite ballet is bound to play on theatrics, but this Tchaikovsky-fueled nightmare speaks volumes about the duality of perfection and proves itself to be a haunting reminder of the dangers of mental illness. Read more...

A thread created on the RPI subreddit early Tuesday morning included details about a Rensselaer Union-affiliated group’s Facebook post, and the post is causing controversy among students. Read more...

Hi RPI!

I hope your weeks are going well. First and foremost, I am looking to fill the remaining four seats on the Executive Board! Applications are live now until 11:59 pm on Saturday September 26, 2015 and can be filled out at http://goo.gl/forms/CtAeiFuJxg/. I am looking for at least three freshmen and a member at-large. If you have already applied and would like to still be considered, send me an email at pu@rpi.edu and I will consider your application again. If you are not interested in being a rep but still want to be involved, there is always need for committee work! With a plethora of projects at our fingertips, the E-Board is always seeking help. Please see http://stugov.union.rpi.edu/eboard/committees/ for contact information of each committee chair and brief descriptions of the committee work. Read more...

Every day presents a set of problems, some serious, some trivial. No, this is not in reference to homework problems. Rather, the problems that everyone faces in life. Though few may talk about them, they exist and do not appear to have a solution…until now! If you think that you can solve such a problem, then you should enter the Change the World Challenge! Read more...

Last week, RPI residents gathered in the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center to listen to a speech delivered by Courtney Banghart, Head Coach of the Princeton Tigers Women’s Basketball team. Last March, Fortune magazine included Banghart in its list of The World’s 50 Greatest Leaders. This places her among the ranks of world-renowned individuals including Tim Cook, Taylor Swift, and Mark Zuckerberg. In fact, she is ranked 43—two places above Jimmy Fallon. Banghart started her college career at Dartmouth College as a psychology major, and had no idea at the time that her talents would carry her down a completely different path. She wrote her graduate thesis, however, on the subject of sports leadership, and at the same time she took on the role of women’s basketball assistant coach at Dartmouth. Shortly after her graduation, she was hired at Princeton, where she turned a mediocre team into the best team among the Ivy League. Read more...

The news about the Rensselaer Summer Arch program, which will require all rising juniors to take summer classes followed by spending one of their junior year semesters off-campus, concerns me, an alumnus who wants to see her alma mater succeed. Read more...