A graduate student faces felony charges after MIT Police found three students in a caged room in Building NW16 late Saturday night. The incident is reminiscent of the felony charges filed against three hackers found exploring the Faculty Club in October 2006.

Two MIT Police officers responded to a motion-triggered alarm just before midnight on Saturday, June 7 in the basement of NW16, where they found MIT graduate students Michael P. Short and Harold S. Barnard and Brandeis University graduate student Marina Dang. Short was subsequently arrested and taken to the Cambridge Police Department headquarters for booking.

Short has since been charged with breaking and entering at night with intent to commit a felony and possession of burglarious instruments, both felony charges. If convicted, Short faces up to 20 years in state prison for breaking and entering and up to 10 years in state prison or a fine of up to $1,000 and two-and-a-half years in jail for possession of burglarious instruments.

It is unclear why the police did not arrest the other two students. In the police report for the incident, officer Duane R. Keegan writes that Barnard and Dang “will be issued criminal summons for Breaking and Entering in the Nighttime.”

No documents concerning Barnard or Dang could be found, according to Jessica Venezia, a spokeswoman for the Middlesex District Attorney’s office. But past experience with the Faculty Club incident suggests that those students may still be charged.

Short, who is a former Tech features writer, declined to comment because of the pending charges against him, referring questions to his lawyer, Steven J. Fack. Fack was on vacation and could not be reached for comment yesterday afternoon.

Barnard declined to comment. Dang could not be reached for comment.

Short, Barnard, and Dang were found in the caged room NW16-038, according to the police report filed by Keegan, one of the two arresting officers. They had apparently entered the room after opening a combination lock with a tool traditionally called a “shim,” a piece of metal cut from the side of a Diet Coke can.

According to Keegan, Short said “that he was there to see what he could find for parts in the area.” Short voluntarily showed the officers the tool he had used to open the combination lock and demonstrated how he had done it, according to Keegan’s report. Short was arrested after he confirmed that he was in the locked area after having broken the lock open, Keegan writes in the report. The list of evidence Keegan reports includes “17 pieces of Diet Coke can” identical to the one used to open the combination lock.

NW16, located at 167 Albany St., is one of the buildings that house the Plasma Science and Fusion Center. Barnard conducts research at the PSFC; Short has an office in NW22, two buildings further down Albany St.

A felony charge of breaking and entering requires an intent to commit a felony. But the court documents do not explicitly indicate what felony Short is believed to have intended to commit. Keegan’s report suggests that he suspected theft: “NW 16 [sic] is a common area for theft due to the specialty metals and electronics equipment present in the area.”

Short was taken to the Cambridge Police Department for booking. Along the way, “Mr Short’s cuffs were double locked and checked for comfort,” Keegan writes in the report. After his booking, Short was arraigned on Monday, June 9 and released on $200 bail. His next court date is a July 18 pretrial hearing, Venezia said.

Undergraduate Association President Noah S. Jessop ’09, who has been in contact with Short, said that he “was totally floored” when he learned about this incident. He said that it was his understanding that the three had been hacking at the time, and that Short had been fully cooperative with the officers.

Jessop said he worried about the negative effect that this incident might have on future hackers’ interactions with the MIT Police. “I fear that this sort of response to hacking will undermine hackers’ first instincts to cooperate — complying, they shouldn’t have to worry about being slapped with state charges,” he said.

The current incident is reminiscent of the incident at the Faculty Club in October 2006, when Kristina K. Brown ’09, David Nawi G, and Matthew W. Petersen ’09 were charged with trespassing and breaking and entering with intent to commit a felony after being found by two officers responding to a burglar alarm on the sixth floor of Building E52.

Those charges were eventually dismissed at MIT’s request following substantial public outcry that raised questions of how MIT’s hacking community is to coexist with the police.

Petersen was in possession of an L-shaped piece of metal which he “proudly identified ... as a slide, to slide doors open,” according to the report filed by MIT Police officer Sean Munnelly. He faced an additional charge of possession of burglarious tools.

The students were summonsed to court to face the charges on Nov. 17, 2006, almost a month after the Oct. 22 incident. This delay between the incident and the charges suggests that the two students who have not yet been charged in the NW16 incident may still be charged.

Keegan was present at both the October 2006 incident and the incident on Saturday.

Brown, Nawi, and Petersen characterized themselves as hackers who were, in the words of a statement released by their attorneys at the time, “engaging in a longstanding tradition among MIT students of after-hours exploration of the university campus.” They disputed a claim by MIT Police that they had broken into a locked area — instead, the students said, they simply pushed the sixth floor button on an unlocked elevator.

The public disclosure of the charges in The Tech in February 2007 brought a storm of criticism from student leaders and some faculty and alumni who believed that the matter should have been handled internally at MIT and should not have escalated to external charges. The charges were eventually dropped at the end of that month.

That incident also sparked a campus-wide discussion of how MIT should balance its concerns about physical security with students’ traditional interest in exploration. The Institute eventually drafted an official statement on hacking based on the traditional “Hacker Code of Ethics” to be added to the student handbook in fall 2008. MIT also updated its unauthorized access policy. (For both, see box below.) The wording was finalized in February 2008 and was completely approved by April, said former UA Senator Steven M. Kelch ’08, who was involved in the drafting process.

“It’s not necessarily a policy so much as it is a statement,” said Kelch. “It doesn’t necessarily say that [MIT administrators] want to support it, because they can’t for legal reasons.”

It had seemed that the 2007 discussion was going to change the way MIT handled hacking cases in ways which should have prevented the NW16 incident. Last fall, then-UA President Martin F. Holmes ’08 told The Tech that all future hacking cases dealing with unauthorized access would be brought to the faculty-student Committee on Discipline.

Only the CoD — not MIT Police or individual deans — should be involved in handling hacking cases, Kelch told The Tech in fall 2007. They “can’t have multiple tracks,” he said. “It’s to hard to be accountable.”

But ultimately the committee working on MIT’s hacking policy “didn’t establish any kind of procedure for police involvement other than to keep basically what was already there, which was that there is always a possibility of legal action in addition to disciplinary action,” Kelch said in an interview last night.

David Kennedy, director of the Office of Student Mediation and Community Standards, clarified that all official disciplinary actions made by MIT receive their authority from the Committee on Discipline, but that the MIT Police are separate, being “state agents.” Kelch also stated, “MIT Police answers to the state first, and MIT second.”

Former MIT Police chief and current MIT security director John DiFava did not respond to phone calls last night. Deputy Chief of Police John E. Driscoll could not be reached for comment.

Captain David Carlson of the MIT Police confirmed the information in the public police log that Short had been arrested, but he declined to comment further, referring questions to the public court documents.

Graduate Student Council President Oaz Nir said he hoped that the MIT administration would support Short as this case proceeds. “MIT should fully support this student as the facts of the case are investigated,” Nir said.

“In responding to this event, I hope that the MIT administration keeps in mind the lessons learned from its responses to similar recent events,” Nir said, referring to the Faculty Club incident and the Star A. Simpson ’10 incident.

Jessop expressed similar sentiments. “I hope the administration supports the students, and from what little I know about the incident, this response seems surprising, particularly considering the community’s response to the Faculty Club incident,” he said.

Kelch also noted the level of discontent among student leaders, who have mounted recent efforts to try to increase the amount of say students have in administration decisions. Kelch warned that improper handling of this most recent event might add “fuel to that fire.”

The court documents of Short’s case, including Keegan’s full statement, are available online at http://tech.mit.edu/V128/N28/hackers/complaint.pdf.

Angeline Wang contributed to the reporting of this story.

Pouring rain gave way to calmer skies as MIT’s 142nd Commencement began last Friday. Over 2,000 students received degrees in front of approximately 10,000 guests, including members of the 50-year reunion Class of 1958.

For the third year in a row, the senior class set a record for participation in the Senior Gift campaign, reaching 64 percent participation and contributing over $41,000 to the Class of 2008 Externship Assistance Fund. The gift included a $25,000 challenge gift from Alumni Association President Harbo Jensen PhD ’74, for the class achieving over 56 percent participation.

Muhammad Yunus, who won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in microfinance, gave the Commencement address. He spoke about his own experiences in building the Grameen Bank in Bangaladesh and urged graduates to spend time “making the world a better place.”

Yunus reminded graduates they represent “the future of the world.” He spent most of the speech describing the step-by-step approach to building a microcredit empire which has focused on helping the poor build their own businesses.

“Whenever I needed a rule or a procedure in our work, I just looked at the conventional banks,” Yunus said. “Once I learned what they did, I just did the opposite.”

Yunus went on to describe his unique approach to lending — essentially focusing on those with the least collateral to offer, and currently reaching 7.5 million borrowers, 97 percent of whom are women. He explained that small loans to the poorest individuals offer a near 100 percent repayment record.

Yunus described the difference between the profit-maximizing ideal that a traditional business is expected to pursue versus the multi-dimensionality inherent in people’s natures. “For a real-life human being money-making is a means, not an end,” Yunus said. He then encouraged graduates to pursue businesses with social objectives and described a wide array of businesses he has built in a variety of industries, based on the roots of Grameen Bank.

Yunus concluded with a look toward the future. “You will take your grandchildren to the poverty museums with tremendous pride that your generation had finally made it happen,” Yunus said.

Speeches from Graduate Student Council President Leeland B. Ekstrom G and 2008 Class President Phi Ho ’08 followed Yunus’ address.

“It is our spirit that sets us apart,” Ekstrom said. “That entrepreneurial, push through the limits, refuse to accept no attitude — if you export one thing from MIT, let it be that spirit.”

“We are stretching ourselves beyond our limits,” Ho said. “Our perspective, shaped by our experiences and ambitions and goals, will empower us to shape the world.”

After accepting the Senior Gift, President Susan Hockfield took the podium and charged graduates to focus on the state of the world as they leave MIT.

“The changes that erupted during your time at MIT have transformed our cultural landscape. Facebook and social networking have changed the structure and texture of friendship; they have transformed business and politics; and they have established entirely new networks of understanding,” Hockfield said.

Hockfield stressed the pursuit of realistic but ideal-driven goals, describing Yunus as a practical visionary, the founding of MIT as “practical inspiration” and the “practical, unwavering spirit that pushed MIT researchers and graduates through … immense technical problems.”

“We will certainly miss you, but the world right now needs you.” Hockfield said.

Graduate Shiva Ayyadurai ’87 took the exhortation to act immediately and literally, procuring poster board during the ceremony to make a sign saying “Out of Iraq” which he pulled out from under his gown and held up on his way back from the podium after receiving a postdoctoral degree in Biological Engineering.

“Yunus was saying powerful things … and we’re supposed to be the next generation of leaders,” Ayyadurai said in an interview yesterday. “I wanted to wake people up a bit.” He added that while the Commencement speakers addressed problems in the developing world, “I was upset that no one up there said anything about the fact that we have a war going on.”

Parents and family members attending the ceremony expressed their pride at watching their students graduate.

MIT has provided a “diverse set of exceptional programs,” said Seward Pulitzer Jr., whose son Seward Pulitzer ’98 graduated from MIT 10 years ago.

“Joining a sorority” was the most surprising thing her daughter did at MIT, said Tama Andres, mother of Teagan Andres ’08, a member of Alpha Phi. “In the end, it helped a lot.”

Yun-Pung Paulhsu, an MIT postdoctoral student in 1981, said he has witnessed many changes watching his daughter Irene Hsu ’08 attend MIT. “I still remember my old office, Building 16, Room 439,” said Paulhsu. “But there are a lot of new buildings now.”

Rosa Cao contributed to the reporting for this article.

An MIT graduate student was injured Wednesday in a small lab explosion in Building 16.

An experiment “had an exothermic reaction and exploded,” according to WBZ-TV’s Web site.

The explosion occurred at about 6 p.m. in 16-276, located at the junction between Buildings 16 and 56. The room is part of Professor Angela Belcher’s lab.

The injured student was taken to a nearby hospital, according to the MIT News Office. The student suffered injuries to his hands and arms, according to WBZ-TV.

The student’s injuries were not life-threatening, said David M. Barber of MIT’s Environment, Health and Safety Office. “We believe he will eventually be fine.”

William VanSchalkwyk, managing director of EHS, said the damage to the facility was limited to one table and an adjacent window.

EHS, MIT Police, the Cambridge Fire Department, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation assessed the situation at the site on Wednesday evening.

The room was closed off yesterday as the Cambridge Fire Department investigated what chemicals were used and what caused the explosion. VanSchalkwyk said that Cambridge Fire Department had completed its investigation on Thursday, though the results have not yet been released.

The Cambridge Fire investigations unit did not immediately return a call for comment.

“In general, any time we have any incident where there has been a spill or a release in the laboratory, once it is stable and once the investigation has taken place, there’s a clean-up that has to be done,” Barber said. “An environmental contractor comes in and decontaminates.” EHS then tests the area to make sure the lab is safe to reenter.

The lab was cleaned and was expected to return to service yesterday, according to the News Office. But yesterday evening, the lab was still closed off.

Students in Belcher’s lab declined to comment and directed questions to the MIT News Office. Belcher declined to comment yesterday.

The Task Force on Student Engagement was established to increase student involvement on Institute decisions, announced administrators and student government leaders in the March/April issue of the MIT Faculty Newsletter.

The task force was created as part of a new effort to address student concerns about faculty and administrative support for students and student involvement in Institute decisions. These concerns have been provoked by recent administrative actions cited by the letter: the presentation of NW35 to the MIT community, the conversion of Green Hall from graduate to undergraduate housing, the response to Star A. Simpson’s ’10 arrest at Logan Airport, and the response to three students’ arrests at the MIT Faculty Club.

The task force, which met for the first time in early May, is comprised of four graduate students, four undergraduate students, five administrators, and two faculty members. In a draft mission statement, they describe their intention to “identify issues relevant to student life and learning that have not been appropriately vetted by existing committee structure on which students serve” and to “propose ways to obtain student input on those issues.”

The task force was conceived in meetings between former Undergraduate Association President Martin A. Holmes ’08, Graduate Student Council President Leeland B. Ekstrom G, Chancellor Phillip L. Clay PhD ’75, Vice President for Institute Affairs Kirk D. Kolenbrander, and other senior officers.

Following the announcement of the task force’s creation in the Faculty Newsletter, 26 faculty members signed a statement of support for the group, Holmes said. In addition, Holmes said that about 600 undergraduate students signed a petition supporting the task force and asking that its work be taken seriously. He said the petition has yet to be submitted because the UA is still deciding how and to whom the petition should be presented to maximize its impact.

Students have held voting positions in several faculty and presidential committees, but until the creation of the task force, there had been no centralized body to solicit student input on issues outside the business of those committees. Dean for Graduate Education Steven R. Lerman ’72, said, “There are areas that don’t naturally fit into a committee,” and the task force will be a means to address issues that are out of the scope of those committees but still involve students.

Holmes, one of the letter’s authors, hopes that the group will serve as a means to bridge that gap and allow students to be more involved in decision-making processes.

Incoming GSC President Oaz Nir G said, “I would like for us to have a solid vision of what student engagement should be and have it signed up by administration and faculty leaders.”

“I would like to avoid disappointments of the past where decisions are made unilaterally,” he added. He said he hopes that the task force will mark the beginning of a renewed effort “to keep up consistent meetings between major administrators and student leaders.”

A copy of the article in the Faculty Newsletter can be found at http://web.mit.edu/fnl/volume/martin.html.

Robert S. Langer ScD ’74, an MIT Institute professor and a leader in the development of controlled drug delivery and tissue engineering, has won the world’s largest award for technology innovation.

Langer received the Millennium Technology Prize Wednesday from Technology Academy Finland for his research, which advanced the treatment of cancer, heart disease, and other illnesses. Winners receive 800,000 euros, or about $1.2 million.

Langer was given the prize in Helsinki Wednesday by President Tarja Halonen. The award is given every two years to the developers of technology that “significantly improves quality of human life.”

“He and his laboratory have pioneered the use of new materials to allow drugs to be delivered to patients in new and very flexible ways,” said Tyler E. Jacks, the director of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for which Langer heads a laboratory.

Langer said he developed the materials for controlled drug delivery in the 1970s while successfully working with oncologist Judah Folkman to inhibit the growth of blood vessels, a process used to treat cancerous tumors as well as certain forms of blindness.

“I was trying to figure out a way to stop blood vessels from growing, and that led me to this,” Langer said in an interview. “Now today, there are new treatments for people with prostate cancer based on this, schizophrenia, and heart disease.”

Controlled drug delivery is commonly used in heart stents, which clear blocked heart arteries and slowly emit drugs to prevent the arteries from closing up after the insertion of the stent. More than 100 million people a year benefit from advanced drug delivery systems, according to Technology Academy Finland.

Langer, who has taught at MIT since 1977, runs the largest biomedical engineering lab in the world at the university and has written about 900 research papers. In 2005, he was made an Institute Professor, an honor given to a handful of MIT professors that gives them more academic freedom.

He is working toward developing nanotechnology that would allow for the precise delivery of genes and drugs to specific cells.

“I feel very pleased that we’ve been able to accomplish some things,” Langer said.

A deeply controversial plan put forth by MIT scientists to end the standoff over Iran’s nuclear program is getting increased interest from senior members of both parties in Congress and nonproliferation specialists.

The plan, which was rejected three years ago by the Bush administration, argues for a dramatic shift in U.S. policy: Rather than trying to halt Iran’s efforts to enrich uranium, the United States should help build an internationally run enrichment facility inside Iran to replace Iran’s current facilities.

Supporters argue that such a program would fulfill Iran’s insistence on enriching uranium on its own soil, while preventing the dangerous material from being diverted to weapons.

Three years ago, when the proposal was first advanced, it was widely considered unthinkable. Administration officials argued that tougher sanctions and the threat of military strikes would force Iran to stop its program to enrich uranium, a process that uses thousands of spinning centrifuges to create fuel out of rare uranium isotopes that can be used for nuclear power or weapons.

But now, as Iran appears on the verge of mastering enrichment technology, the call to try to internationalize Iran’s facilities is getting more attention on Capitol Hill and from nonproliferation specialists as a face-saving compromise.

Iranian officials proposed building an international enrichment plant inside Iran in a letter they submitted to the United Nations last month, but declined to say whether such a plant would be in addition to or a replacement for their own facilities.

In an interview last month, Iran’s ambassador to the U.N., Mohammad Khazaee, said the details should be negotiated.

Thomas Pickering, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President George H.W. Bush, endorsed the idea in a March article in the New York Review of Books that was co-authored by Jim Walsh, a nonproliferation specialist at MIT, and William Luers, president of the United Nations Association, which organizes meetings with Iranian officials. The three have spent more than a year in informal talks with officials from Iran’s foreign ministry and Atomic Energy Organization.

John Thomson, a former British ambassador to the United Nations who is now at MIT, and Geoffrey Forden, an MIT physicist and former weapons inspector in Iraq, have spent more than two years on separate research into the technology needed to safeguard such an international facility, including equipment that would prevent Iranian scientists from taking control of it or learning how it works.

Senators Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, and Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, have said publicly that the plan should be explored.

Representative Edward J. Markey, a Malden Democrat, went further, calling the plan “a creative, thoughtful, and productive potential solution.”

Presidential candidates John McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee, and Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, have both endorsed using international consortiums to produce nuclear fuel as a way to take production out of the hands of unpredictable states, but neither has said he would consider placing such a facility inside Iran. McCain’s campaign said an Iran-based plant would not be “subject to transparent and accountable international safeguards.” But advisers to Obama did not rule the option out.

“This is nobody’s first choice, but it may be the compromise we end up with,” said Joseph Cirincione, a nonproliferation specialist who serves informally as an adviser to Obama’s campaign. Cirincione is president of the Ploughshares Fund, a nonproliferation organization based in San Francisco that provided funding for talks that Pickering and his associates held with Iranian officials.

International consortiums to make fuel for nuclear power plants have been around for decades. In 1973, France, Belgium, Spain, and Sweden formed a joint enrichment company called EURODIF, and a year later the shah of Iran lent $1 billion to the project in exchange for a 10 percent share in the venture. But after the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, the deal was canceled and the loan frozen. The United States, fearing that Iran’s radical regime was secretly pursuing a nuclear weapon, pressured the rest of the world to cease all nuclear cooperation with Iran.

For the next 20 years, Iranian scientists worked in secret to construct their own enrichment facility using items purchased on the black market, violating the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which mandates that nuclear work be monitored by the U.N.

In 2002, an Iranian exile group exposed the existence of the facility, prompting the U.N. Security Council to demand that Iran halt all enrichment efforts.

Russia has offered to supply Iran’s reactor with enriched uranium under a deal that would ensure that no fuel is diverted to weapons. But so far, Iranian officials have refused, saying they can’t rely on outsiders.

In early 2005, officials from the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency studied the idea of placing a facility inside Iran. Later that year, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran gave a speech at the U.N. inviting other countries to join in Iran’s enrichment facility. U.S. officials dismissed it as insincere.

That summer at MIT, Forden began researching how to design a plant in a way that would prevent Iran from taking control of it. Later, Walsh and Pickering began their talks with Iranian officials. “I think that there are parts of the Iranian establishment, and more parts than not, that are open” to it, Walsh said.

But Forden and Walsh initially got a cold reaction from U.S. officials and other nuclear experts. At the time, Iran had only 164 centrifuges and seemed far from being able to enrich enough uranium for a bomb. But now, as Iran ramps up to more than 3,500 centrifuges, despite international sanctions and pressure, the idea is getting a second look, they said.

“When we first talked about it, people in Congress were openly hostile,” said Forden. Now, he said, it is easier to get meetings on Capitol Hill. “People are starting to take it much more seriously,” he said.

Cirincione initially opposed the idea, but now says it is “worth exploring.”

“The preferred option is no centrifuges in Iran, but that horse has left the barn,” he said. “Their position has gotten stronger and ours has gotten weaker. The longer that deal isn’t made, the higher the price goes.”

Still, many remain deeply skeptical. Stephen Rademaker, who recently served as the State Department’s assistant secretary for nonproliferation, said the plan rewards Iran’s bad behavior and does not guarantee that Iran will not try to secretly reproduce the international equipment on its own. “We would be standing up a far more capable facility on Iranian soil than they would ever stand up on their own,” he said.

But others say the MIT plan may eventually become the best policy choice, if the current strategy fails. Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said it is too early to give up on trying to persuade Iran to halt its enrichment program. “But in the long run, it may not be possible,” he said. “In which case, this proposal may be the best available option.”

Most TV series are propelled into the world by creative vision, ambition, all-out effort, and dreams of market domination. With “Click & Clack’s As the Wrench Turns,” the upcoming PBS cartoon featuring “Car Talk” stars Tom Magliozzi ’58 and Ray Magliozzi ’72, it took something else — a whole lot of cajoling.

Cajoling the proudly indolent Magliozzis into believing that a series about themselves would require minimal work on their part. Cajoling PBS into buying the concept of an animated show for grown-ups. And now comes the real trick: cajoling PBS viewers into sampling a show built not on some high-minded notion of quality, but on Click and Clack’s popular NPR shtick of self-mockery and perpetual sarcasm.

“As the Wrench Turns” is a tongue-in-cheek take on what Click and Clack’s off-air lives might be like, featuring those familiar radio voices in exaggerated cartoon bodies. It centers on a fictionalized version of the brothers’ car repair shop in Cambridge, where some characters glug motor oil in coffee cups and a local politician is named Marty Bezzle. (The campaign button reads “M. Bezzle.”)

PBS is treading cautiously into this new world. The show premieres July 9 as a limited experiment: five Wednesdays worth of back-to-back half-hour episodes, followed by “we’ll see.” Which, on some level, suits the “Car Talk” guys just fine.

“How much stupid stuff can we possibly — oh, in that case, the show might be able to go on forever,” Ray Magliozzi said in a recent conference call with his brother, who pointed out that all they had to do for the show was sit in a studio and read a script.

“It’s dumb work; we didn’t have to think much,” Tom Magliozzi said. “We usually don’t.”

On one hand, it should be no surprise that PBS, which has suffered from flagging ratings and waning corporate sponsorships in recent years, would turn for help to one of public radio’s most successful franchises. The talk show about cars — featuring two mechanics with MIT degrees, loud guffaws, and thick Boston accents — is NPR’s most popular entertainment program, drawing 4.5 million listeners each week on more than 600 stations. “Car Talk” spinoffs include a twice-weekly syndicated newspaper column, a franchise of books and CD compilations, and products that range from T-shirts to coffee mugs. (The Magliozzis own the show and the business behind it and declined to release revenue figures or reveal their stake in “Wrench.”)

“I like the idea of doing something unexpected and surprising that may cause viewers to stop the remote in its tracks,” said John Wilson, PBS’s senior vice president for programming. “I like the idea of doing something that’s animated. I like the idea of doing humor. I like the idea that it’s not completely terra incognita.”

On the other hand, PBS has reason to tread with caution, given how much “Wrench” departs from the network’s identity, said Laurie Ouellette, a communications professor at the University of Minnesota and author of “Viewers Like You: How Public Television Failed the People.”

“PBS has an aura of middlebrow educational sensibility. That’s been one of the reasons why it’s occupied such a small place in television culture,” Ouellette said. “As the Wrench Turns,” by contrast, “isn’t being promoted as educational or superior in any way,” she said. “I think that’s a really positive development for PBS.”

Comedy itself is hardly new to public television: PBS introduced “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” to America and has often filled its lineup with British comedies. But “As the Wrench Turns” owes much more to “Family Guy” than “Fawlty Towers.” The show’s quirky characters cook up schemes to avoid honest work at the garage; they range from Fidel, a mechanic partial to Armani suits, to a Harvard-professor-turned-repairman named Crusty. In the cartoon, Click and Clack have a radio show, too. In one of many public-radio jokes, their producer is an earnest type named Beth Totenbag.

The plots often touch on topical subjects, from globalization (they decide to outsource the radio show, and ratings soar) to the environment (they invent a car that runs on pasta). In one episode, the guys face cancellation after they actually lose money in a PBS fund drive. They decide to make up for the loss by running jointly for president so they can apply for federal matching funds.

“All we wanted to do is be funny,” said Howard Grossman, an independent producer who dreamed up the show and spearheaded its creation. Grossman, a longtime “Car Talk” fan, has produced a couple of serious dramas for PBS, including an “American Playhouse” episode from 1984. He first had the idea for a cartoon take on “Car Talk” in late 2000, found the show’s e-mail address from its website, and sent a pitch cold. In February 2001, “Car Talk” executive producer Doug Berman gave him a call.

The Magliozzis had been offered TV opportunities for years and usually had little interest, Berman said. “They didn’t want to be TV stars. They didn’t want to be recognized when they went to their Chinese restaurant.”

But the concept of an animated series had appeal, said Berman, who is now also head writer for “Wrench.” “They’re larger than life on radio, and to just put them on TV as themselves sort of makes them only life-sized. Whereas if you animate them, you can keep them larger than life.”

Eventually, Grossman visited the “Car Talk” offices in Harvard Square and started to tinker with concepts. His first proposal was to present the radio call-in show as is, but with animated characters — a sort of PBS version of Comedy Central’s “Crank Yankers” puppet show. PBS didn’t like it. Grossman went back to the drawing board. For years he toyed with ideas, wooed investors, and provided “Car Talk” with frequent updates.

“You’d be sitting in a stall in a public restroom and he’d knock on the stall next to you,” Berman said.

It took about four years, Grossman said, to sell a final concept to PBS. The Magliozzis, notoriously reluctant to do anything promotional, agreed to attend the “green light” meeting via conference call.

PBS’s Wilson said the show is a calculated risk. (PBS declined to release information on funding for “Wrench,” but said its financial stake in the shows it airs varies widely, averaging 20 percent.) Fitting the show into a lineup dominated by serious mainstays like “Masterpiece,” “Frontline,” and “American Experience” was a challenge, Wilson said. And he didn’t have a compatible half-hour show to pair it with, which is why he’s running episodes back to back.

As for the future of the series, Wilson is circumspect. “This could be one of those things where we slap our foreheads and say, ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he said. “Or it could be the start of something big.”

The image of Asian-Americans as a homogeneous group of high achievers taking over the campuses of the nation’s most selective colleges came under assault in a report issued Monday.

The report, by New York University, the College Board, and a commission of mostly Asian-American educators and community leaders, largely avoids the debates over both affirmative action and the heavy representation of Asian-Americans at the most selective colleges.

But it pokes holes in stereotypes about Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders, including the perception that they cluster in science, technology, engineering, and math. And it points out that the term “Asian-American” is extraordinarily broad, embracing members of many ethnic groups.

“Certainly there’s a lot of Asians doing well, at the top of the curve, and that’s a point of pride, but there are just as many struggling at the bottom of the curve, and we wanted to draw attention to that,” said Robert T. Teranishi, the NYU education professor who wrote the report, “Facts, Not Fiction: Setting the Record Straight.”

“Our goal,” Teranishi added, “is to have people understand that the population is very diverse.”

The report, based on federal education, immigration, and census data, as well as statistics from the College Board, noted that the federally defined categories of Asian-American and Pacific Islander included dozens of groups, each with its own language and culture, as varied as the Hmong, Samoans, Bengalis, and Sri Lankans.

Their educational backgrounds, the report said, vary widely: while most of the nation’s Hmong and Cambodian adults have never finished high school, most Pakistanis and Indians have at least a bachelor’s degree.

The SAT scores of Asian-Americans, it said, like those of other Americans, tend to correlate with the income and educational level of their parents.

“The notion of lumping all people into a single category and assuming they have no needs is wrong,” said Alma R. Clayton-Pederson, vice president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, who was a member of the commission the College Board financed to produce the report.

“Our backgrounds are very different,” added Clayton-Pederson, who is black, “but it’s almost like the reverse of what happened to African-Americans.”

The report found that contrary to stereotype, most of the bachelor’s degrees that Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders received in 2003 were in business, management, social sciences, or humanities, not in the so-called STEM disciplines: science, technology, engineering, or math. And while Asians earned 32 percent of the nation’s STEM doctorates that year, within that 32 percent more than four of five degree recipients were international students from Asia, not Asian-Americans.

The report also said that more Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders were enrolled in community colleges than in either public or private four-year colleges. But the idea that Asian-American “model minority” students are edging out all others is so ubiquitous that quips like “UCLA really stands for United Caucasians Lost Among Asians” or “MIT means Made in Taiwan” have become common, the report said.

Asian-Americans make up about 5 percent of the nation’s population but 10 percent or more — considerably more in California — of the undergraduates at many of the most selective colleges, according to data reported by colleges. But the new report suggested that some such statistics combined campus populations of Asian-Americans with those of international students from Asian countries.

The report quotes the opening to W.E.B. Du Bois’ 1903 classic “The Souls of Black Folk” — “How does it feel to be a problem?” — and says that for Asian-Americans, seen as the “good minority that seeks advancement through quiet diligence in study and work and by not making waves,” the question is, “How does it feel to be a solution?”

That question, too, is problematic, the report said, because it diverts attention from systemic failings of K-12 schools, shifting responsibility for educational success to individual students. In addition, it said, lumping together all Asian groups masks the poverty and academic difficulties of some subgroups.

The report said the model-minority perception pitted Asian-Americans against African-Americans. With the drop in black and Latino enrollment at selective public universities that are not allowed to consider race in admissions, Asian-Americans have been turned into buffers, the report said, “middlemen in the cost-benefit analysis of wins and losses.”

Some have suggested that Asian-Americans are held to higher admissions standards at the most selective colleges. In 2006, Jian Li, the New Jersey-born son of Chinese immigrants, filed a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights at the Education Department, saying he had been rejected by Princeton because he is Asian. Princeton’s admission policies are under review, the department says.

The report also notes the underrepresentation of Asian-Americans in administrative jobs at colleges. Only 33 of the nation’s college presidents, fewer than 1 percent, are Asian-Americans or Pacific Islanders.

Ten thousand people are expected to attend this morning’s Commencement exercises, at which a Nobel laureate will speak and about 2,300 students will receive almost 2,600 degrees.

This year’s Commencement address will be delivered by Muhammad Yunus, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his development of microlending and for his work in alleviating global poverty.

In addition, President Susan Hockfield will address the graduates, and Institute Chaplain Robert M. Randolph will deliver the Invocation. Outgoing Graduate Student Council President Leeland B. Ekstrom will offer a salute from the graduate student body. 2008 Class President Phi T. Ho will present this year’s Senior Gift, a fund that will support students working outside MIT during January’s Independent Activities Period.

According to Registrar Mary Callahan, 2,334 students confirmed they were attending the ceremony located in Killian Court, with 983 undergraduates receiving 1,140 undergraduate degrees and 1,351 graduate students receiving 1,453 graduate degrees.

About 150 students who received degrees in September 2007 or February 2008 will also walk across the stage today.

Each graduating student received four commencement tickets, and each faculty member who marches in Commencement can request one ticket. But because some graduating students hope to seat far more guests (or far fewer), a robust ticket distribution network has evolved over the years.

The Class of 2008 has set up a Web site at which people can advertise that they have extra tickets to give away or need extra tickets. Meanwhile, dormitory e-mail lists are full of offers to give away, sell, or buy tickets. And as of press time, 18 Craigslist posts offer to sell tickets at prices from $40 to $100.

Guests who don’t have a ticket will be able to view the exercises at many locations set up around campus. (The located are advertised online at http://web.mit.edu/commencement/2008/.)

In case of inclement weather, additional viewing venues will be provided, Gayle M. Gallagher, executive officer for Commencement, said in an e-mail.

The ceremony can also be viewed online starting today at http://web.mit.edu/commencement/2008/webcast.html.

The level of security during the exercises will be as high as it has been for MIT Commencement exercises since Sept. 11, 2001, Gallagher said. All guests must pass through metal detectors when entering Killian. Only guests with tickets or event staff with credentials will be permitted onto the court.

Concessions will be available for purchase on Killian Court again this year. “This was a break-even proposition last year but [food vendor] Sodexho is again committed to donating any monetary proceeds this year to the Senior Class Gift,” Gallagher said in an e-mail.

This year’s Commencement is the 142nd that MIT has held. But the Class of 2008 will be the 141st class to graduate from the Institute. Why the discrepancy? Because of World War I, MIT held no Commencement exercises in 1918 or 1919. During World War II, MIT held “double exercises” in 1942, 1943, and 1944. There have been three extra Commencements and two skipped Commencements — a total of one extra.

MIT encourages graduating seniors to donate money, in what the Institute calls a Senior Gift campaign. This year, 645 seniors donated $16,454, representing a record-high 64.2 percent of the class. Last year, 52 percent of the graduating class donated, which was at the time a record-high percentage.

All MIT donors can specify a particular group or fund to receive their gift. Of the 645 seniors who donated, about 317 specified that their donation should go towards the class gift, which this year is an externship fund meant to support students working outside MIT.

Those students donated about $7,000 to the fund, according to Senior Gift Adviser Rosheen B. Kavanagh, of the MIT Alumni Association.

The senior class gift will support students who take on otherwise unpaid work during January’s Independent Activities Period as part of the Alumni Association’s externship program.

In IAP 2008, 269 students participated in externships through the program.

An additional $25,000 will be donated to the externship fund by Harbo Jensen PhD ’74, Alumni Association president, who had agreed to make the donation if more than 55 percent of the class donated money.

“This class is really special. They should be so proud of what they did,” Kavanagh said.

“We hope they continue to support MIT after graduating,” she added.

Star A. Simpson ’10 was sentenced Monday to one year of supervised pretrial probation on a charge of disorderly conduct. The charge stems from a Sept. 2007 incident when she was arrested at gunpoint at Logan International after airport personnel mistook a circuit board on her sweatshirt for a bomb. The incident — and MIT’s public relations — incited national and local controversy.

An East Boston District Court judge sentenced Simpson to one year of supervised pretrial probation on a charge of disorderly conduct and ordered her to perform 50 hours of community service, half of which much be completed with veterans, and to publicly announce that she had made a mistake.

“I want to apologize for the results of my conduct on September 21, 2007. Although I never intended to act in a disorderly fashion, I now realize that the shirt I created caused alarm and concern at Logan Airport,” Simpson said in a statement released Monday by her attorney, Thomas E. Dwyer, Jr. “I am appreciative to the Massachusetts State Police for their diligence in protecting our citizens and apologize for the expense that was caused that day.”

On the morning of Sept. 21, 2007, Simpson wore a black hooded sweatshirt. Atop the sweatshirt was a circuit board which contained green light-emitting diodes in the shape of a star, which she had used as a “name tag” during that week’s Career Fair. That morning, she traveled to Logan Airport to pick up her boyfriend.

When she approached an information booth at Logan Airport’s Terminal C, an employee questioned her about the device on her sweatshirt, according to Assistant District Attorney Wayne Margolis, speaking at Simpson’s Sept. 21 arraignment. She “said it was a piece of art” and “refused to answer any more questions,” Margolis said. Simpson then left the building and disconnected the battery that was powering the LEDs, according to a press release provided by Suffolk County District Attorney press officer Jake Wark in September.

Outside Terminal C, Simpson was arrested at gunpoint by state troopers wielding MP5 submachine guns.

“Thankfully, because she followed instructions as was required, she ended up in a cell as opposed to the morgue,” said State Police Maj. Scott Pare at a Sept. 21 press conference before Simpson’s arraignment.

In a Sept. 21 press release, the MIT News Office said that “Ms. Simpson’s actions were reckless and understandably created alarm at the airport.” The statement ignited controversy among many at MIT who wished the Institute had not called her actions “reckless.”

At the May 2008 faculty meeting, President Susan Hockfield expressed regret over the way her administration had handled the case. Hockfield was unavailable to comment for this story.

“It’s really important to me to thank the MIT community,” Simpson said in an e-mail to The Tech. “I’ve received a whole lot of support from many fabulous individuals within it.”

Simpson was originally charged with “possession of a hoax device,” a charge which would require prosecutors to show she meant to scare people with her circuit board, which contained light-emitting diodes in the shape of a star. But they “determined that they could not move forward on that count and dismissed it to the disorderly [conduct] charge,” according to a press release supplied by Wark.

Instead of going to trial, Simpson accepted the pretrial probation offer on Monday, June 2. If Simpson performs the community service and does not re-offend in the next year, the charge of disorderly conduct will be dropped. (Otherwise, the district attorney’s press release says, “the case will be returned to the court docket for trial.”) Simpson said she does not yet know what the community service will be.

According to the press release, prosecutors weighed Simpson’s behavior during her trial against her lack of criminal record, her academic involvement, and her experience of arrest at gunpoint in their decision to lower the charge.

During the time between her arrest and the June 2 hearing, Simpson was banned from Massport property, including Logan Airport, and had to fly out of other New England airports. “It also meant I couldn’t attend the international symposium on wearable computing, as it was held at the Hyatt at Logan Airport,” Simpson said in an e-mail to The Tech.

It is unclear who issued the ban. Wark said the district attorney’s office had not requested this restriction. Dwyer could not be reached by press time.

According to Simpson, her lawyers worked pro bono. She paid court fees.

One Laptop Per Child unveiled the next generation of its XO laptop last month. The new machine is smaller, cheaper, and will open like a book to reveal two touch-sensitive displays.

According to Nicholas P. Negroponte ’66, chairman of OLPC, production of the computer is expected to start in 2010. V. Michael Bove ’83, Media Lab professor and former Tech chairman, is leading technical development.

The announcement was made at an event OLPC called a Country Workshop, where lab staff talked with representatives of numerous countries and members of the press.

The laptop will have no physical keyboard. Instead, users will type on one of the displays using an on-screen keyboard. The displays themselves are being developed by Pixel Qi, a spinoff of OLPC by Mary Lou Jepsen SM ’89.

The organization is also aiming for a bold price point: $75. The current model was popularized as “the $100 laptop” while it was in development. Actually, it ended up costing around $200 when it was finally released.

But Negroponte and Bove are confident that a number of factors will make the second laptop cheaper. Component manufacturers were wary to deal with OLPC during the development of the first XO, Bove said, because sales prospects were uncertain. OLPC now has “a very different relationship with the industry at large,” said Bove.

The OLPC can “piggyback” on the popularity of portable DVD players, Negroponte said, because they have driven down the cost of small widescreen displays like those used in the new laptop. Displays are among the laptop’s most expensive components.

Negroponte plans to market the new laptop as an e-book reader to developing countries. The new machine will acting as a “trojan horse,” he said: People will buy it to act as an e-book reader, but it will also including other educational software.

Negroponte also announced that there would be another iteration of the Give 1 Get 1 program, in which people can pay for two laptops and receive one, with the cost of the other going to send a laptop to a developing country. The program is likely to happen in August or September, he said.

OLPC has had an eventful few months. A number of its early employees, including Ivan Krstic and Pixel Qi’s founder Jepsen, quit the operation.

Most recently, Walter Bender SM ’80, who served as president of software and content, left the non-profit because of philosophical disagreements. Bender told The New York Times that “OLPC has become implicitly agnostic about learning” and has focused on getting laptops to children. “It’s a great goal, but it’s not my goal,” he said.

But Negroponte says that nothing has changed. During the Country Workshop presentation, he revisited OLPC’s mission statement and said the organization’s goals are the same.

Bender has recently established Sugar Labs, a non-profit organization developing the Sugar educational user interface system that was key to the first OLPC.

Sugar Labs is working to expand the reach of the software beyond just the XO, Bender said in an interview with The Tech. Sugar is already available as an alternative desktop environment for Linux distributions like Ubuntu and Fedora Core. Bender is in informal talks with other laptop manufacturers, he said.

OLPC is still doing development work on Sugar, Bender said, but Sugar Labs will not focus on one particular hardware platform like the OLPC laptop.

OLPC also announced in May a partnership with Microsoft. For an additional $3 licensing fee per computer, OLPC XO laptops will come installed with Windows. Explaining the partnership, Negroponte told The New York Times that “[t]he people who buy the machines are not the children who use them, but government officials in most cases.” “And those people are much more comfortable with Windows,” he said.

A dual-boot system was in development, Negroponte said during his Country Workshop presentation. This system would let Windows run alongside another operating system such as Linux. Windows laptops are being rolled out as pilots in four countries, Negroponte said. “It’s going to give you more choice,” he said.

Charles Kane, the former CFO, was announced in early May to be OLPC’s president, a position intended to improve OLPC’s day-to-day management. “I’m the vision department,” Negroponte said during his Country Workshop presentation. But “[w]hen it comes to running something, that’s not my strength,” he said.

The mission may not be over after all for the Biodiesel@MIT team, which three weeks ago was prepared to abandon its two-year project in the face of insurmountably high costs.

MIT says it may have found an affordable place for the team to install its biodiesel processor, which would convert used grease from around the campus into fuel.

The team’s project, first brainstormed in January 2006, received a major funding boost in March 2007 with a $25,000 prize from the mtvU/General Electric Ecomagination Challenge. Because of administrative delays, the prize was not received for six months, and the team missed its original goal of getting a fuel processor running by the 2007 school year.

But the team faced another, harder problem: where to put the processor. Over the course of a yearlong planning phase, estimated costs for preparing a site ranged from a $3,000 safety budget to a $35,000 estimate from Facilities to a $137,000 quote. MIT’s Committee for the Review of Space Planning was willing to pick up some — but not all — the cost of the required changes.

In a May 8 meeting, CRSP and Facilities told Biodiesel@MIT that the project might be feasible if the team could raise another $20,000, facing a total cost of $80,000. The team decided that the costs didn’t justify the potential environmental and economic benefits and considered giving up the project, The Tech reported on May 13.

Since then, MIT has searched for more options and has found a possible location in the Francis Bitter Magnet Lab.

“We’re looking into it, to see if the space will work,” said Associate Provost Lorna J. Gibson, CRSP chair.

Joseph D. Roy-Mayhew ’08, the team’s founder, said that the team said “nothing has been confirmed.”

The team has known about the space in NW14 for years, but it “wasn’t put back on the table until early May or so,” Roy-Mayhew ’08 said. The space is currently occupied by a graduate student in Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, who is expected to finish his thesis this month, Roy-Mayhew said.

If the team decides to move into the space, it won’t do so before September, Roy-Mayhew said.

Gibson said that they looked at other spaces that “ended up costing too much” but are yet to get an estimate of cost of preparing the space for Biodiesel@MIT from the contractor they are working with. She said that they will get the estimate in the next few weeks. The space has to meet safety requirements and the fire code.

On a Sunday afternoon in April, Brendon Edwards plunges a blow pipe into a furnace hot enough to burn flesh from bone. Edwards, an advanced glassblower and instructor, is trying to make a glass bulb at the end of his pipe by rolling the pipe through the pool of clear molten glass.

When the amount of glass is just right, he swivels on his heels and cries “To your left!” as he bears down on the smooth metal tabletop — a marver — that had been directly behind him moments before.

Rolling the glowing glass ball over the marver, Edwards shapes the ball to the proportions necessary to begin the process of making a pumpkin. Edwards is one of six Glass Lab members who together produce about four dozen pumpkins in about four hours.

According to the popular stereotype, MIT people are geeky, artistically disinclined science nerds. But the Glass Lab, where Edwards teaches, is located just below the heart of the Institute, in the basement of the Infinite Corridor in Building 4.

MIT’s Glass Lab was first established in the early 1970s by J. Kim Vandiver PhD ’75, then a graduate student and now a research dean at the Institute. The Department of Materials Science and Engineering originally used the lab for hands-on teaching. In 1986, Professor Michael J. Cima assumed control of the lab and decided to remove its classes from the Course III curriculum.

Artist Page Hazlegrove ran the lab as director from the mid-1980s until 1997, when she unexpectedly passed away. Her assistant at the time, Peter B. Houk, took over the responsibility of running the lab and is the current director.

Houk emphasizes that the sense of discovery is the best part of glass blowing. By teaching outside of the MIT curriculum, students get a pure “desire to explore the material in a hands-on way,” he said in an e-mail.

The lab, currently supervised by DMSE, is completely self-sufficient, with its revenue provided by fundraisers held throughout the year.

On the Sunday afternoon in April, Edwards’s “crew” is preparing for one such fundraiser: October’s Great Glass Pumpkin Patch sale. More than a thousand glass-blown pumpkins will be taken to Kresge Oval and sold off one Saturday. The annual event is a big regional draw, and almost every pumpkin is claimed within the first four hours of the sale’s opening. The proceeds go toward the lab’s maintenance.

After Edwards has made his glass ball, he returns to one of the side furnaces, also known as a “glory hole,” to reheat the still glowing glass that hardened while being rolled over the marver.

Seconds later, he brings the ball back to the marver and into aluminum tins of glass shards, called “frit.” Edwards rolls the clear glass through the purple and green frit.

After more reheating, rolling along the marver, and reheating, the glass is ready to enter the “optic mold.” The mold’s round cavity has jagged edges that will give the pumpkin ridges.

Edwards drops the glass-covered tip of his blow pipe into the mold and delivers a short, powerful burst of air through the upper end of the pipe into the inner domain of the glass ball. The outward pressure forces the pliant glass to fit the ridges of the mold. Edwards again plunges the glass into the glory hole.

At this point, the rest of the pumpkin’s shaping is transferred to the care of Michelle M. McGuire, another crew member. McGuire uses a special rubber tube to fit the end of the pipe so that she may continue to blow through it as she rolls the base of the pumpkin within the glory hole.

As the pumpkin reaches its final size, it is removed from the glory hole to be rolled along the raised side bars of one of the two benches in the lab.

McGuire uses the sharp prongs of a pair of “jacks,” a tool shaped like long tweezers with a rounded top, to thin the layer of glass connecting the bottom of the pumpkin to the excess glass around the tip of the blow pipe. The rounded top of the jacks smooths some of the chunkier frit on the surface of the pumpkin.

While the finishing touches are put on the base of the pumpkin, Edwards is busy constructing the stem. An elongated version of the clear glass used for the base is rolled over the marver and then in yellow, green frit. After a quick trip to the glory hole and a dunk in a smaller optic mold, the stem is ready to be attached to the pumpkin’s base.

When McGuire requests a stem, one seems to materialize at her side ready to go. She guides the stem to the top of the pumpkin using the jacks, and Edwards pulls back on his blow pipe as McGuire rolls her blow pipe to stretch the glass an appreciable distance while also twisting the ridges in the stem.

Then Edwards wraps the stretched glass around a copper pipe held by McGuire. Diamond shears are used to cut away the glass connected to Edwards’s blow pipe. McGuire pulls the copper pipe through the glass coils while simultaneously spinning the blow pipe attached to her pumpkin, allowing the stem to nest prettily around the top.

A blow torch is then used to adhere the rapidly cooling coils to the base of the pumpkin. After yet another trip to the glory hole to prevent the pumpkin from cooling too rapidly and cracking, it’s off to a bed of cotton, where the pumpkin nests as it is tapped from the blow pipe.

A second blow torch is used around the small opening where the pumpkin had been attached to the blow pipe to melt any sharp edges. A simple metal spoon smooths over those sharp protrusions.

The pumpkin is quickly transferred to the annealer. It will stay there for about a day as it slowly cools to room temperature. This slow cooling helps to prevent cracking.

Not every pumpkin makes it to the sale in October. Some nearly complete pumpkins are deemed inferior and quickly sentenced to the trash bin. Glassblowers are perfectionists: Even a small crack, or too-thin walls, may doom a pumpkin.

Each semester, about 16 students take beginner glassblowing classes at the lab. Admission is by lottery: The lecture hall 6-120, which seats about 150, is nearly filled to capacity each semester. Many joke that the Glass Lab is harder to get into than MIT.

Brendon Edwards and Katina I. Edwards, instructors of the beginner classes, start one session by demonstrating how to make a paperweight.

Like most things in the lab, the paperweight begins as a clear glass blob at the end of a blow pipe. From there, the students use their creativity to create the interior of the paperweight, which is then covered by a layer of clear glass. Further manipulations create a rounded shape. Only then is the paperweight ready to be released from the pipe.

In another session, students learn to make punties. A punty isn’t much — just a small glass piece at the end of a blow pipe. But the punty is an indispensable tool for a glass blower because it can be used to transfer larger glass pieces between pipes. Proper punty proficiency will greatly reduce the scarring sustained by cups and other items that will be made in later classes.

As each student approaches the marver and begins manipulating a punty, Brendon and Katina offer suggestions: “Bend your knees more.” “Tip the pipe up.”

The instructors can tell the students whether their punty is good by eyeballing the glass. If a punty is not made quite right, students are expected to repeat the process until they could consistently make good punties.

Edwards then creates a glass ball for the students to practice their punty transferring ability. If a student’s punty is too cool, it won’t affix to Edwards’s pipe, and the glass ball will drop to the floor, where it will roll away or shatter on impact with the cement.

Students who have completed the beginner class often continue at an intermediate level, where they may teach beginners and may learn from advanced students or professionals in the field. Intermediate students learn to make more sophisticated items, like bowls.

But the lab instills more than a sense of technical proficiency: For many, it creates a community, too. The lab is a “strong and lasting community of active participants,” Houk said in an e-mail. At any time, about 50 people affiliate themselves with the lab, about 40 students and 10 instructors.

Martin L. Demaine, an advanced glassblower who is an artist-in-residence and visiting scientist at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, drops by during his lunch breaks and watches beginner classes.

Kaitlyn P. Becker ’09 has been blowing glass for a few years. She hangs around the Lab, doing homework and occasionally glancing up to see what is going on over at the work benches.

For Michael L. Stern ’09, a mechanical engineering student and an intermediate glassblower, one of the best parts about glass blowing is “the people.”

Counterpoint, the monthly magazine which aimed to chronicle campus life at MIT and Wellesley College, will resume publication in September as a Wellesley-only publication, the publication’s co-editor announced in May’s issue.

“We will be temporarily abandoning the partnership that was forged 16 years ago between our two institutions of higher interest due to dwindling MIT interest and participation and, more pressingly, because our long-serving MIT co-Editor-in-Chief is graduating, with no one standing to take his place,” wrote co-editor Kristina Costa, a Wellesley junior, in the May column “One is the Loneliest Number.”

In the past few years, Counterpoint has had money troubles. A December 2006 column, “Welcome to our Nightmare: Why Counterpoint Has Been MIA,” also written by Costa, outlined difficulties including unpaid invoices and a failure to ask Wellesley’s student group funding board for money.

To cut costs, recent issues of Counterpoint switched from a glossy color cover to a black-and-white cover on thinner paper stock.

The organization also faces issues remaining an MIT student group because it has few MIT members. Any MIT student group must, under Association of Student Activities rules, require in its constitution at least five members from MIT. Half of the group’s membership must also come from MIT. But only a few of Counterpoint’s staff were MIT students in 2008, and only a handful of the contributions in 2008 issues of Counterpoint were attributed to MIT students.

In February 2004, the ASA revoked Counterpoint’s status as an MIT student group because of MIT/Wellesley balance issues: 14 staff members were MIT students and 28 were Wellesley students. The organization was later re-recognized in April after the group changed its constitution to state that it had separate MIT and Wellesley chapters, The Tech reported.

The magazine, which is currently distributed at MIT and Wellesley, will only be distributed in Wellesley starting with its September issue, Costa wrote in the column. Its Web site, currently accessible at http://counterpoint.mit.edu/, will move to a Wellesley server, Costa wrote, although it is not yet clear where. Editors will be able to be reached at counterpointmail@firstclass.wellesley.edu. Counterpoint will also leave its office space in the MIT Student Center, Costa wrote.

Although Counterpoint was not always the MIT-Wellesley Journal of Campus Life, it has always sought to cover news at both institutions.

In its earliest incarnation, in November 1991, it was an MIT publication of “Rational Discourse and Campus Life.” Publisher Avik S. Roy ’93 wrote in the journal’s first issue that he hoped to oppose “sensationalism” in the press and to provide an “open forum for rational debate and casual reading.” The journal hoped to take on “controversial issues such as multiculturalism, harassment, and affirmative action,” he wrote. The first issue included columns opposing and supporting MIT’s harassment policy, which was then new; it also included fiction, an events calendar and discussion of local news.

But the journal has always tried to include Wellesley, too — an ad in its first issue said “Attention Wellesley students! We want you to help us cover Wellesley Campus Life.” In its third issue, published in February 1992, Counterpoint was subtitled “The MIT-Wellesley Journal of Rational Discourse and Campus Life.”

The rational discourse departed about a decade later: February 2000’s issue was “The MIT-Wellesley Journal.” After that issue, Counterpoint was again “The MIT-Wellesley Journal of Campus Life.”

Among the magazine’s numerous lasting contributions to the public discourse at MIT and Wellesley are a survey, published in November 2001, that laid bare the sex lives of more than 500 MIT and Wellesley students; and a yearly assessment of fraternities at MIT, most notably the August 1995 “Wherever You May Roam: A Frank Guide to ILGs at MIT.”

Copies of that August 1995 issue were dumped in garbage cans in Lobby 7 and the Student Center soon after distribution.

In recent years, the magazine has focused more on Wellesley life and less on politics or on MIT news. The April 2008 “Mental Health Issue” contained several stories covering the challenges facing mental health care at Wellesley, but only one article about mental health at MIT. (That article described the late-night talk service Nightline.)

Costa and graduating co-editor in chief Edward K. Summers ’08 did not respond to requests for an interview. Summers told a Tech photographer on May 11 that he did not want to comment and that things were not finalized.

“I and my fellow 2008–2009 editorial board will remain dedicated to bringing Counterpoint back to MIT and exploring collaborative options with other area colleges,” Costa wrote in the column.