" All in all by the 80's the MITers were basically a bunch of geeks.
ln the past, however, bigger Hacks had taken place."
That is absolutely NOT TRUE! In the past few years, several new M.I.T. hacks
have occurred. They may not have been documented well, but that doesn't
mean they didn't happen. Let me shine some light on this topic....
* A pedestrian sign marking the Massachusetts Avenue crosswalk used most
frequently by MIT students disappeared for a few days. When it was re-
installed, it had been modified to "Nerd Xing"; the man was carrying
a briefcase and was wearing glasses.
* The M.I.T. Art gallery (in the Media Lab) was displaying works of modern art.
An M.I.T. student snatched a plastic tray from a cafeteria, as well
as a fork, a spoon, a glass, and a plate, and made a common table
arrangement out of them. He then included a sign reading, "No knife" and
placed the work in the art exhibit. The work went unnoticed for several
weeks.
* A large cloth cut-out skull was draped over the face of a man in a mural
on one of the walls in an M.I.T. cafeteria (Walker Memorial).
The man was sitting in a chair presiding over the heavens. Below him
(in hell) was M.I.T...
* "The great dome", a large domed building at M.I.T. was adorned with
festive holiday lights in December, 1990. The lights were bright enough
to be seen across the river in Boston.
* At registration day (spring 1988) brochures were passed out announcing a
new seminar (half-credit class). It was entitled "The Physics of Gravity".
A fictitious course number was also provided as well as the
phone number of the physics department. The phones in the physics department
were busy all day...
* At the beginning of every fall term, during R/O week (Registration /
Orientation), the Sheraton hotel sign, on top of the Sheraton hotel in
Boston, does weird things. Only the letters ato, near the end light up.
The rest of the letters aren't burned out - they are merely switched off
by some M.I.T. Alpha Tau Omega fraternity brothers for the entire week.
Several years ago, the manager of the Sheraton hotel in Boston agreed to
allow M.I.T. students to install a simple switch, that when thrown, will
extinguish all the letters in S-H-E-R-A-T-O-N except A-T-O. The M.I.T.
students warned that if the switch is ever removed, the Sheraton will go
without a sign for a long time.
* This year MIT inaugurated a new president, Charles Vest. When Charles
went looking for his office, he only found a bulletin board where his
office should have been. After the physical plant people pryed and
pryed, they finally removed the bulletin board that had obscured his office
door. Behind the bulletin board, they also found a bottle of champagne for
the occasion.
* In '90 during the half-time of the Harvard-Yale game, a rocket
came up out of the ground, disrupting the parade. It
wrapped a banner with MIT written over it around the Harvard
goal post.
These are only some of the hacks that I remember from my undergraduate years
at M.I.T. I may have mixed up a few facts, but I am retelling them the best
that I remember.
W H Y C O P S H A T E Y O U <<<<&l <
-if you have to ask get out of the way-
Have you ever been stopped by a traffic cop and, while he was
writing a ticket or giving you a warning, you got the feeling that
he would just love to yank you out of the car, right through the
window, and smash your face into the front fender?...
