Well I’m back, and I’m pleased to say that there are in fact other Engineering schools out there with traditions and history as rich as Waterloo’s. This issue, I decided to cross the border to visit our neighbours down south, and take advantage of some duty-free alcohol on the way back up. So pack your bags kids; we’re headed to MIT!
Ever since it opened in 1865, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has apparently been attracting traditions in the same way that running water tends to attract local beavers. In its 154 years of life, the students of MIT have created and maintained so many traditions, and performed so many pranks that I don’t know when they find the time to do school work at all. For instance, at final exam time all of the first years are hauled from their rooms the night before the dreaded first year physics exam and pushed into the residence showers by seniors in the annual event known as the “Freshman showering.” The purpose of this even, it seems, is to prevent the first years from getting any studying done and usually devolves into an all-out water war by the time the night is complete. But this is only the start of the crazy hoops you would have to jump through to be a student at MIT.
The next, and probably most confusing tradition students take part in is the academic numbering system. While MIT has perfectly good names for buildings and classes, the student body seems to have rejected it for a much more efficient numeric index of all important academic titles. Every major, for example, has a number associated with it, starting with 1 for Civil Engineering. Buildings are similarly indexed, with most buildings (excluding residences and a few others) referred to primarily by their numbers. But the real kicker in this system is the class codes, which receive a decimal designations. Each class has an official course code and number, just like Waterloo. But at MIT, they replace the course code with the related major number, and add on the course number after the decimal. So the civil engineering course Uncertainty in Engineering is referred to as 1.010. As someone who is still adjusting to the fact that saying “M.E.” can refer to five of the six classes I am taking this year, I would probably just try to never talk about my courses with another student ever.
It’s time now to move away from the group activities which students of MIT participate in together, and into the much more fascinating and daring traditions: pranking. MIT has a long history of pulling elaborate, elegant pranks known as “hacks”. It’s a well-respected tradition, and the successful pranksters are well respected. On the prank-pullers part, all pranks must be safe and enjoyable to the victims, an ideal which is strictly adhered to.
One common focal point for pranks is the “Great Dome” which sits atop building 10, the Barker Engineering Library. In 1994, students created a doppelganger of a police car out of wood and exterior car-body parts—complete with flashing lights—and assembled it on the great dome overnight. In 1999, the Great Dome was the target of another attack, when students dressed up the structure like R2-D2 to celebrate the imminent release of The Phantom Menace. But perhaps the greatest pair of hacks were performed on MIT’s rivals, Yale and Harvard, 8 years apart. The first hack, in 1982, occurred during a Yale-Harvard football game in Harvard Stadium in front of 10 000 people. During the first quarter, the game was rudely interrupted by a weather balloon, “MIT” proudly painted onto its side, which burst from the ground in the middle of the field and exploded. The second hack also occurred at a football game, this one in 1990. Following in the fashion of the 1982 hack, MIT students buried a rocket at one of the goal lines. Sometime in the second half of the game the rocket was launched, dragging behind it a banner again emblazoned with “MIT”.
That’s all the traditions I have room for I’m afraid, and it doesn’t come even close to documenting all of the traditions and history that MIT holds within its ancient, confusingly indexed, walls. I have no idea what I’ll be writing about next issue, but I worry that MIT sets a difficult act to follow. I might even have to do two universities at once just to match.
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