Brookelyn Parslow

While Big Red Freakout and Winter Carnival went on without a hitch, administrators placed severe restrictions on some students’ biggest events of the year, citing concerns with coronavirus. “It’s discriminatory and wrong,” said Multicultural Leadership Council member Sundjata Suma ’20 while discussing the issue in a meeting.

Rensselaer lobbied for the New York State Senate bill that would grant peace officer status to certain public safety officers, which was posted publicly on the government website earlier this month and sparked concern in the RPI community. There has been no communication about this initiative to the student body, besides the bill’s posting.

The student mail center has been relocated to the first floor of the Rensselaer Union and will open on Monday. It now features an “intelligent parcel locker” system for packages aimed at decreasing wait times.

Our feelings about anonymous articles have evolved over recent years, so we want to take this time to explain the thought process behind the decision not to publish the submission. This is a new type of article in our Opinion section—dubbed “behind the URL”—that will be used by members of the Editorial Board to give a behind-the-scenes look at our organization and decisions.

A survey conducted by the Student Senate showed that 78 percent of respondents were unsatisfied with the Arch after they participated in it. 94 percent of respondents thought that students should be able to live in off-campus housing during the Arch. 64 percent of respondents said they would not participate in the Arch if it were optional.

President Shirley Ann Jackson confirmed that she would not consider making the Arch optional, when asked by The Polytechnic during her biannual town meeting on Wednesday, regardless of if the majority of students wanted it to be.

Over five police vehicles and a SWAT team were seen on campus stopping a vehicle and apprehending multiple people on Tuesday around 9 pm. Near the time of the stop on 15th Street, uniformed officers with guns lined the Darrin Communications Center walkway near Russell Sage Dining Hall, where an arrest took place.

Six months after the Student Senate declined to consider the Union Annual Report because the Executive Board was "strong-armed" into making the changes it entailed, members unanimously approved the same document without discussion.

To start the celebration of Earth week, Design for America held a dinner party in partnership with the Student Sustainability Task Force on Saturday. This event was open to all community members, and yielded about 50 attendees, ranging from RPI students to families with small children.