There is a Town Hall Meeting on March 30 (this coming Wednesday) at 3 pm in the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center. If you are a student, you need to go.

Push aside the piles of homework, duck out of lab during an incubation, take an hour out of a rare break in your schedule, do whatever you have to, but I want you to be there. I understand this is an unfamiliar idea to many of you. Maybe you’re new here. Maybe you’ve never had the chance. Maybe you’ve just been practicing that long-held RPI tradition of persistent apathy. I can’t fault you if your goal has to been to keep your head down, get your degree, and get out.

The bottom line, though, is that RPI needs your help. And it needs you for this meeting, not the next one, not the next time some egregious infringing of your autonomy as a student happens. We need your bright and shining faces in the audience to show the people that are supposed work for you that you are there and you are listening. Even if all you do is show up, you’ve made a statement to the administration that you care about the direction this school is taking. If you stand up and ask a question, you give that message even more impact. You don’t need to be a tin-foil hat-wearing conspiracy theorist to see that there are things happening here at good ol’ Rensselaer that demand your attention. Summer Arch, financial troubles, the independence of the Student Union, you name it, there is something for you to care about, even if it’s just for an hour.

Keep your eyes pointed towards the RPI Reddit community (https://www.reddit.com/r/rpi) for more information about the challenges RPI is facing.

Kate Marciano ’G14

Research Technician

Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies