RIB

New parking rules

Many of the parking lots on campus will soon by controlled be electronic gates and transponders. Gates have already been installed in the North, West, Academy Hall, and AS&RC parking lots, and also at the Sage Avenue entrance. Contractual guards will be posted at these locations until the gates are fully functional and the transponders have been distributed.

Faculty and staff will be able to park in the same lots as last year. Parking decals without expiration dates will remain valid for 2003-2004, but if your permit has expired, you may pick up new decals that do not expire.

New meters will also be installed in the Visitors’, Blaw Knox, and Academy Hall lots. Parking at these sites will be allowed with a valid permit until meter installation is complete. Visitor permits can be obtained at the Visitors Center.

Hand-washing stations

As part of a new campaign to keep faculty, staff, and students healthy, the Health Center staff will be installing new hand-washing stations in September. The stations will be located wherever food is served as well as in other common areas. The new dispensers will provide a special alcohol-based, antimicrobial cleanser that kills germs and is easy on the skin. The stations will be accompanied by posters that will explain the benefits of regular hand-washing.

Hockey tickets on sale

Application forms for men’s hockey season tickets are now available online at http://www.rpi.edu/dept/athletics/

hockeySeason_final.pdf and can be sent in immediately, while student season tickets will go on sale on September 16. Student forms are available at http://www.rpi.edu/dept/

athletics/Student Brochure.pdf.

The Engineers will start their season on Saturday, October 11, at Boston University, and will play their first home game on October 17 against UConn, beginning at 7 pm.

Opening Doors

To assist new students in making the transition to residence hall life, teams of faculty and administrators will soon be going door to door in Bray, Cary, Crockett, Hall, Nason, Barton, BARH and the Quad to talk to students in a new program called “Opening Doors.” The goal of the program is to introduce faculty and staff to as many new students as possible and to assess Residence Life’s check in process, programming, services, and to answer academic and administrative-related questions.

In addition, ResLife has created a classroom in the recently renovated Nason Hall. The goal of the classroom is to create a “synergy between academic and residential life”, and to promote more of a “living-learning community.”

Opening Doors will take place on Tuesday, September 2, from 7 to 9 pm.

ASHRAE places first

The RPI branch of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers has earned the title of best student branch in the Northeastern United States for the fourth year in a row. The group competed against 30 other branches in this region.

This is the first year that the RPI branch has seriously entered the student design project competition, and placed in the top five in the world. J.P. Carioto of the Class of 2001, Student Activities Chair for the Northeast Chapter, went to Rochester to receive the trophies.

False alarms elicit fines

Troy Councilwoman Carolin Collier says RPI has had too many false alarms and wants the school to start paying fines. The city Fire Department responded to alarms on campus 363 times in 2002 and 367 times in 2001, with 95 percent of them false alarms, according to statistics compiled by the Department. Collier wants RPI to pay $50 per incident, the maximum fine allowed, which adds up to $34,700.

Mayor Pattison and other city officials said they weren’t sure if people have already been fined for false alarms, while RPI officials disagree with the amount of false alarms and Collier’s definition of one. According to Theresa Bourgeois, the number of times that students pulled alarms when no emergency existed is negligible, and the school is required under state code to call the Fire Department when any of the thousands of smoke alarms goes off. Smoke alarms are regularly set off by students cooking in campus-owned apartments.

Troy Fire Chief Thomas Garrett said that out of the 16,000 calls the department gets every year, about 20 percent are false alarms—so many that the department now sends one engine to respond to the original call and more later if there actually is an incident.

DotCIO responds

Due to the prevalence of the SoBig.F virus on the internet, the Department of the Chief Information Officer has taken steps to curtail its spread by blocking e-mails from RPI users which contain certain subject lines. The DotCIO will be monitoring the number of these e-mails and will remove the blocks when the activity drops to a more manageable level.

The blocked subjects lines are “Re: Your password!,” “Re: Thank you!,” “Re: Details,” “Re: Re: My details,” “Re: Approved,” “Re: Your applications,” “Re: Wicked screensaver,” “Re: That movie,” “Your details,” and “Thank you!”