Causing a little mayhem is acceptable, but breaking the law is not, a top MIT official warned students in a campuswide e-mail yesterday after a series of high-profile pranks gone awry. The same goes for endangering yourself or acting irresponsibly in the process.
Since last school year, students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have made headlines after breaking into the school's Faculty Club and allegedly dumping sodium metal in the Charles River. Some students said the acts were done in the spirit of the school's long-chronicled tradition known as hacking, MIT-speak for harmless pranks (not the theft of computer records.)
"Historically, hacks have been creatively and thoughtfully executed without injury, destruction of property, or public notoriety for the hackers or MIT," Phillip Clay, the school's chancellor, said in the e-mail.
Clay cited references to the hacking code, which is on display for all to see in the Stata Center, a campus building. "True hackers quickly identify themselves when they encounter the police, and they do not confront or evade the police," he wrote in the e-mail. "Hackers do not create public hazards."
Clay said his letter, written in consultation with a student and faculty committee on hacking that began meeting last spring, will be followed up in a few weeks with stronger language and clearer rules in the student handbook about the prankster practice.
--------------------Check out the MIT Gallery of Hacks for all the past "hacks".
I like the recent Halo3 hack. =)
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