A Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer was shot and killed late Thursday night on the university's campus, The MIT Tech reported. At 12:01 a.m., the emergency alert system reported that students should remain indoors and that police were still sweeping the grounds. The weapon used to shoot the officer was recovered, but no arrest has been made as of press time, and the search for a suspect or suspects continues. The shooting occurred at 10:30 p.m.
Aiming to help its admissions office cope with an increased number of applications, Columbia University has expanded its student interviewing program to allow juniors and seniors to interview applicants, the Columbia Daily Spectator reported. The decision to increase eligible student interviewers comes after years of testing the program with a small number of students. This year, students interviewed 1,300 of the 34,000 total Columbia applicants. Only students on Columbia's three recruitment committees are eligible to interview applicants. Junior Kai Schultz told the Spectator that because students are "more in tune" with college-bound peers, their interviews may be ultimately more effective than those conducted by alumni.
While the national movement urging colleges to withdraw investment from fossil fuel companies has seen success at colleges with small endowments, larger institutions are less willing to commit, Inside Higher Ed reported. Brown University President Christina Paxton recently submitted a recommendation to Brown's governing board to divest in 15 fossil fuel companies, but administrators at Harvard University and Cornell University have released statements saying that they do not plan to divest. In a recent column in The Cornell Daily Sun, Cornell President David Skorton wrote that the university cannot afford to divest from fossil fuels because energy is expected to perform well in the future and hedges inflation. Skorton added that several fossil fuel companies invest significantly in alternative energy. Even if enacted, divestment initiatives may prove ineffective. A 1999 paper that looked at college divestment from South African companies to protest apartheid found that markets avoided the "brunt of the sanctions."
