Welcome, Class of 2009! The Weather Today: Mostly cloudy, 81°F (27°C) MIT’s Tonight: Mostly cloudy, 64°F (18°C) Oldest and Largest Tomorrow: Showers, 77°F (25°C) NewspaperMonday Details, Page 2 Volume 125, Number 31 Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 Monday, August 29, 2005 Not ‘Just Visiting’: First-Years Here to Stay A Mission By Marie Y. Thibault STAFF REPORTER To Bring MIT students like a challenge, and navigating the maze of choices facing a first-year student provides a taste of things to come. Fortunately, Smiles help is on the way, and undergradu- ate and graduate orientations are designed to help acclimate new stu- To Boston dents. Freshman Orientation aims to By Jiao Wang make new students “feel like part of STAFF REPORTER the MIT community,” said Orienta- In a city marked by subway tion Coordinator Timothy D. Pen- bomb scares, high temperatures nington ’06. Orientation 2005 kicks and humidity, and the usual stresses off today with a new event, the Presi- of life, one dent’s Convocation, at 4 p.m. man stands This year’s Orientation has the Feature in the theme Technopoly, playing off the middle of board game Monopoly, said Julie B. Haymarket Norman, associate dean of Academic Square in Resources and Programming. Orien- the sultry tation paraphernalia sport logos that heat urging replace Monopoly’s Mr. Moneybags people to be with Tim the Beaver, complete with happy. top hat and cane, and freshmen re- “Smile, ceive Chance or Community Chest GRANT JORDAN—THE TECH smile, smile tickets for meal cards. Not realizing he is about to suffer the same fate, Jeremy A. Conrad ’06 (orange shirt) launches a success- …” says Ir- Graduate student events range ful strike on an East Campus resident. The annual West vs. East Water War, sponsored by the Dormitory ving Cherander, a 64-year-old, un- from karaoke at The Thirsty Ear Pub Council, was held yesterday at 5:00 p.m. in Kresge Oval. married man of medium build. to a cruise on Boston Harbor. Presi- at the Graduate Welcome Address. tion, freshmen travel around campus in past years, said Dormitory Coun- “Are these free?” asks a pass- dent Susan Hockfield and Cambridge in search of their preferred dormitory cil President Harvey C. Jones ’06. erby. Mayor Michael A. Sullivan will wel- REX 2005 shorter, more intense in Residence Exploration (REX). “What a stupid question. Why come the incoming graduate students During first few days of orienta- This year's REX is shorter than Orientation, Page 14 would I stand here and give away free things?” Dressed in a beige suit jacket, Grad Students MIT Student Zachary Weston Red Sox fan shirt, and blue jeans, Research Cherander stands next to his large Now Pay $17 Disappears on Mount Rainier black umbrella supported by a Associate By Beckett W. Sterner nautics and Astronautics) major, wooden stand and pole. Every once NEWS EDITOR started camping at the park on June in a while, a child who runs ahead For Off-Campus Mount Rainier National Park 22 and was last seen on Aug. 11. of his parents would wander under Shin-Kyu Rangers called off their search for Park rangers found tracks match- the umbrella to shade himself from Phone Service Zachary Weston ’07 on Thursday, ing Weston’s on a ridge separating the sun. Aug. 18, according to an Associ- two glaciers, but were unable to find Smiley buttons adorn the front Yang’s Death By John A. Hawkinson ated Press article. Weston was hik- him after searching for seven days. of Cherander’s jacket, adding radi- STAFF REPORTER ing alone and was reported missing Weston is not believed to have car- ance to the elderly man with blue Information Systems & Tech- when he failed to meet a friend. ried equipment for hiking on gla- A Suicide nology has moved graduate student Weston, 22, a Course XVI (Aero- ciers. Haymarket, Page 12 dormitory phones to a new service By Beckett W. Sterner model, which requires a $17 per NEWS EDITOR month fee for students to receive MIT research associate Shin- calls from outside campus and place Kyu Yang, 44, PhD ’99 committed calls to off-campus numbers. suicide on July 10. The change was Yang, a researcher in the MIT 300 made Monday, Aug. Center for E-Business, received Grad 22. Undergraduate masters and doctorate degrees dormitory residents from the Sloan School of Manage- Students will switch service ment, and was an assistant profes- Sign Up models on Sept. 12. sor at New York University’s Stern Allison F. Dolan, School of Business prior to his re- director of Telephony for IS&T, turn to MIT. said that 300 graduate students Yang was a “rigorous research- have signed up for the full service er” who brought “a really deep skill phones, with more than two-thirds with mathematics” to his work, said signing up only a couple of days be- Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the fore the switch. Center for E-Business and profes- Only 17 undergraduates have sor at MIT. signed up so far, she said. All stu- Brynjolfsson said Yang was “a dents must sign up before Sept. 12 very funny, outgoing guy” when he or pay a $25 activation fee. was a student at MIT. Yang’s thesis IS&T placed stickers and flyers on how organizations benefit from on phones to notify students of the information technology investment service change. “might be one of the best master’s The decision to charge students theses ever written,” Brynjolfsson for outgoing calls was made by said. Housing and IS&T. IS&T raised OMARI STEPHENS—THE TECH Johann K. Komander ’09 demonstrates his tire-swinging skill to upperclassmen and freshmen alike. Shin-Kyu Yang, Page 13 Phones, Page 13 Senior House held its Tire Swinging competition on Saturday, Aug. 27. Comics NEWS World & Nation. 2 MIT researchers make ice cream The Tech reviews options for pur- Opinion . 4 with liquid carbon dioxide. .........12 chasing textbooks. ........................14 Arts . 6 Kathy Lin reviews local grocery SafeRide stops for all four shuttle Daily Confusion . 15 stores. .............................................12 routes. .............................................14 Sports . 15 Page 10 Page 2 THE TECH August 29, 2005 WORLD & NATION Congress Is Feeling Heat As Hurricane Katrina Nears, From Public Over Iraq By Carl Hulse THE NEW YORK TIMES WASHINGTON Residents Flee New Orleans With lawmakers facing tough questions at home about the war in Iraq, Sen. John W. Warner, the chairman of the Armed Services Commit- By Joseph B. Treaster bowl-shaped city from flooding. Ernest Paulin Jr., a 55-year-old tee, says he intends to summon Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Abby Goodnough That possibility was enough for unemployed welder from New Or- quickly for a hearing when Congress returns next week. THE NEW YORK TIMES many of the city’s 485,000 residents leans, said he looked around his Warner, a Virginia Republican who is one of the most important con- NEW ORLEANS to heed the mayor’s call to leave, par- three-bedroom, wood-frame house gressional voices on military policy, said mounting numbers of dead and Hurricane Katrina, one of the alyzing traffic along major highways where he has lived alone since the wounded Americans, the contentious process of drafting an Iraqi consti- most powerful storms ever to threat- from just after daybreak and into the death of his wife last year and de- tution and the economic cost of the war were adding up to new anxiety en the United States, bore down on evening. cided to head for the Superdome. in Congress. the Gulf Coast on Sunday, sending “I probably won’t have a house “I just didn’t want to take a “The level of concern is, I think, gradually rising,” Warner said in an hundreds of thousands of people when I go back,” Tanya Courtney, 25, chance,” said Paulin, who like many interview on Friday. “Our nation has given so much to the Iraqi people, fleeing the approach of its 175 mph who lives in the city’s French Quar- arrived with hastily-packed posses- and what are they giving us in return?” winds and prompting a mandatory ter, said Sunday in Gulfport, Miss., sions. He was carrying a small plas- Unlike some of his colleagues in both parties, Warner said he did not evacuation of New Orleans, a city where she and a group of friends tic bag containing his eyeglasses, see parallels between the current situation and the Vietnam era. perilously below sea level. bound for Atlanta stopped for a rest. medication and a paperback book, “We are facing a storm that most Many others in New Orleans, in- a Tony Hillerman novel, “The First of us have long feared,” said Mayor cluding stranded tourists, stayed be- Eagle.” Killing of Two Serbs Raises Fear C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans, who hind, with as many as 10,000 of them After crossing South Florida late issued the order to evacuate. “This is crowding into the Superdome arena, last week, killing nine people as a Of Ethnic Unrest in Kosovo a once-in-a-lifetime event.” which the city designated as a shelter weaker storm, Hurricane Katrina By Nicholas Wood The hurricane’s eye was expected of last resort. intensified over the warm waters of THE NEW YORK TIMES BELGRADE, SERBIA to make landfall around daybreak People five and six abreast waited the Gulf of Mexico, growing early Two Serbs were killed late Saturday in a shooting in Kosovo, police on Monday in southeastern Loui- in line for hours to get into the arena, Sunday morning into a Category officials said Sunday, ending a yearlong lull in attacks on the Serbian siana — possibly squarely in New clutching children, blankets and pil- 5 storm, the strongest step on the minority in the province.