GSC External Affairs Board (EAB)

grad

To get involved, email gsc-eab@mit.edu or contact the group through their website. If you don’t want the full commitment of EAB but would like to participate in one-off events, you can sign up for their policy newsletter. The GSC EAB is always looking for new members, especially international students - you are still able to advocate at all levels of government!

The Graduate Student Council is mostly made up of PhD students from across MIT’s departments, though all graduate students are more than welcome to join. No experience is necessary; EAB will give you all of the training you need to be an effective policy advocate.

The mission of the Graduate Student Council External Affairs Board is to advocate on behalf of graduate students at all levels of government. This includes immigration policy and science funding, but also anything else relevant to graduate students. For instance, the EAB helped successfully halt a proposal to tax tuition waivers in 2017 by visiting Republican offices on the Hill. 

According to `21 EAB Chair Jordan Harrod, representatives across the political spectrum are excited to work with MIT graduate students, especially on science policy issues. Some of the group’s current issues are police reform and the formation of a Cambridge Student Association - a subcommittee of the City Council that will focus on policies affecting students of higher education. EAB also works on science communication and outreach to K-12 students in the area. Post-pandemic, members have opportunities to travel free of charge to Washington DC and the Massachusetts Statehouse to talk to elected officials. 

UA Sustain

undergrad

The Undergraduate Association (UA) runs an application cycle each year at the beginning of the fall semester, and sometimes the spring. An advertisement will be sent out to all undergrads. You can apply for UA Sustain through that process, or email ua-sustainability-chairs@mit.edu during other parts of the school year.

UA Sustain’s mission is to be a leading force in sustainability, spread environmental awareness, and inspire community action. They hope to foster green habits, drive policy reform, provide resources, and build connections between environmental and global issues. UA Sustain is a group of around 60 undergraduates organized into working groups that tackle projects in specific areas like Trash2Treasure and a food waste audit, with an exec that works on more long-term goals for the committee while supporting working group leads in specific topic areas. 

UA Sustain is shifting their focus towards more policy work with the goal of having a longstanding, institute-wide impact. In Spring 2021, UA Sustain distributed materials about the pros and cons of fossil fuel divestment to inform the UA’s vote to endorse MIT’s divestment. UA Sustain members also convened with other student sustainability organizations to write a student proposal for the MIT Climate Action Plan.

MITVote

Undergrad and Grad

You can get help registering to vote on their website, or you can email vote-exec@mit.edu to become a member. Membership involves a 1-2 hour/week time commitment. You can also join their mailing list at mitvote-all@mit.edu to receive updates about volunteer opportunities.

MITVote is a nonpartisan group that seeks to foster civic engagement at MIT. Their primary goal is to register students to vote. They often hold pop-up voter registration events outside flu shot clinics, at club fairs, and during Campus Preview Weekend. The club also hosts voter education events, like a panel where they invited all of the City Council candidates to MIT in 2019.

MIT Divest

Undergrad and Grad

If you’d like to join or learn more, you can email mit-divest-leads@mit.edu. The time commitment for participants is super flexible - you can show up to meetings and pick up action items as you want to get more involved.

MITDivest is an activist organization; their mission is to advance climate action at MIT by pressuring the MIT administration into divesting the endowment from fossil fuels. MIT is an influential institution, and its public divestment would send a powerful signal to its peers about the necessity of climate action. MITDivest is structured into three teams - activism, outreach, and publications. 

According to `21 Outreach Coordinator Peter Scott (‘23), his committee communicates with staff, faculty, and alumni to garner their support for the initiative. Last fall, the outreach team sent a survey to MIT faculty and found that 54% of faculty support divestment. The activism team so far has sent out a petition, organized social media campaigns, held teach-ins, and hosted an alternate climate symposium. The publications team writes articles to publish in The Tech and other news sources.

MIT Data-Based Policy Club

Undergrad and grad

If you would like to get involved or join the mailing list, email policydiscussions@mit.edu.

The MIT Data-Based Policy Club is a new student group that aims to have better policy discussions by focusing on facts. Starting in Spring 2021, the club will host seminars about policy topics from health care to education. Their goal is to bring in academics who have studied the issues from different perspectives to engage in an evidence-based discussion. Exec members of the group focus on coordinating the seminars and finding speakers. The club began out of EECS senior and MEng Soumya Ram’s observation that people on two sides of political issues often talk past each other because their arguments are based on different facts.

MIT Ethical Technology Initiative

Undergrad and Grad

ETI’s current membership is mostly undergrads, though grad students are welcome. If you want to get involved, you can fill out the contact form on the ETI website, or find them on Instagram! The club is advised by Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC) directors Dave Kaiser and Julie Shah.

The MIT Ethical Technology Initiative (ETI) is a new club, founded by undergraduate Zach Johnson in the fall of 2020. Their mission is to tackle ethical dilemmas in technology, from targeted ads to mental health issues, via three streams of action - education, engagement, and activism. 

If you want to learn more about ethical tech, the ETI website is a hub of resources, articles, and archived meeting notes about these issues, all available to the public. The club wants to continue educating the community through meetings and presentations this year. They are also planning on hosting events to engage students’ interest, including a screening of The Social Dilemma accompanied by a talk with one of its documentarians. Activism is tough in a virtual semester, so ETI leadership is using these months online to gear up for future in-person action once the pandemic subsides. 

Zach’s vision is for an MIT student body that thinks more about ethics. Some of his ideas include incorporating practical ethical questions into computer science problem sets and embedding ethical discussions into engineering curricula. MIT could be a role model for other institutions by making this a priority. 

MIT Democrats

Undergrad and Grad

If you want to hear about MIT Dems events, find volunteer and job opportunities, or get in touch with exec, you can join the mailing list on the MIT Dems website.

MIT Dems is a meeting place for left-leaning students on campus. During election seasons, the group organizes canvassing trips, hosts phone banking, and endorses candidates. Even after endorsing candidates, the club will send out opportunities to help with other campaigns because they just want to help MIT students get involved in politics. The club mailing list serves as a hub to connect people to volunteer, research, or work opportunities. Dems also hosts social events with political themes like Political Jeopardy, debate watch parties, and events to discuss primaries.

MIT Dems has a core group with their exec team and a loose network of affiliates. Their event-goers come from all over MIT - undergraduates and graduate students in all majors.

MIT Republicans

Undergrad and grad

Contact the MIT Republicans at mitgopexec@mit.edu or on their Facebook page.

The MIT Republicans club provides a voice for conservatives and libertarians on campus and advocates the Republican Party mission at the grassroots level. Through issue-oriented
discourse, they strive to correct misconceptions, counterbalance left-wing biases in academia, and explain their principles to the community. MIT Republicans was active as recently as 2018 based on their Facebook page. If you are a current member, please reach out to update the information on this page!

Transportation Club

Undergrad and grad

If you want to join the transportation conversation and get involved, you can sign up here.

The MIT Transportation Club—or T-Club—aims to bring together the transportation community for education, networking, and research collaboration. Transportation Club’s capstone event is a huge annual showcase and career fair which is expected to return post-COVID. In this event, employers recruit students for jobs, MIT community members present transportation research, and everyone has opportunities to network. The club also hosts coffee chats and panels with alumni where current students have a chance to ask for career advice.

In pandemic times, the club has served as a hub for transportation conversation, sending out a newsletter with transportation jobs and policy news and facilitating a WhatsApp group for members. The club is taking on an equity focus, and they hope to establish a transit equity course in the future. Once one of the largest clubs at MIT, T-Club is revamping to reach its pre-pandemic heights next year.