The Palestine Talk

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Dear Olin, 

You are about to read the all-student email I sent at the end of my senior year in 2022. Today I believe that email is more important than it ever was. There have not been many Palestinians at Olin – to my knowledge, the only two were in my class of 2022. By the time we both graduated, we had left our marks on our classmates by engaging them in our family histories and our culture. As anyone who attended Olin at that time could attest, I sent a lot of emails about Palestine, and you can still see some of the posters I hung up around campus. I tried to do my part to be an activist from Olin’s apolitical bubble, and I am still engaging in activism in my post-college life. The way I see it, I owe a lot to Olin – I learned so much about myself here. But Olin also owes a lot to me, and to the other students who fought for their rights here. My class began a lot of the work that you see happening today at Olin – we fought for better considerations for students who experienced sexual abuse, we fought for gender-neutral bathrooms, we fought for the climate, we fought for racial justice, and we fought for Palestine. I believe my class only had the ability to fight and only found success because we uplifted each other’s causes. There have only been two Palestinians at Olin, but the people who I studied with amplified the Palestinian voice and cause as if it were their own. I hope that you will read my words and feel what my classmates felt – that Palestine is your issue too. My people are facing genocide after decades of slow ethnic cleansing. We have been suffering in the diaspora and from the occupation. We need you to be the Palestinian voice at Olin. 

Email from 2022:

As my final semester at Olin comes to a close, I grow more and more worried about what will happen when I leave. I am one of the few Palestinian students to ever attend Olin, and in my time here I’ve been trying really hard not to let anyone forget it. Being Palestinian defines so much of my identity, both because it is my culture that I love and because it is the identity for which I am the most hated. Every friendship I have starts with “the Palestine talk”, a frankly exhausting endeavor in an attempt to make sure my friends know what they’re signing up for. But they’re mostly graduating, and I don’t want the Palestinian story at Olin to die, so here’s the Palestine talk, one last time, for all of you.

My dad’s parents grew up in a farming village outside of Haifa, called Al-Mansi, which no longer exists. In 1948, they were forced from their homes and into refugee camps. Because of the way the UN categorized names, my family name was changed from Bin Seidan to Al-Ahmad. My grandfather at the time was, we think, 7. His original records don’t exist anymore. The UN decided he was 5, which is the only reason he was able to start getting his education, and gave him the birthday of January 1, the birthday they assign to all refugees whose records are lost. My dad’s family is not unique – my grandfather was one of at least 750,000 people forcefully made refugees in 1948. My mother’s family is from Hebron, a city in the West Bank. After 1948, the economic opportunities for Palestinians in all occupied lands were scarce, and they were forced to move more and more into what is now Jordan (at the time all of the West Bank was occupied by Jordan). In 1967, Israel gained control of the West Bank and suddenly what was supposed to be a temporary move to find work meant they could no longer go back to their home in Hebron. This is what happened to another 280,000-325,000 Palestinians. I tell this story to new friends when we start to get close – 9 times out of 10 the conversation ends with them sobbing and me numb. 

Today, there are more than 7 million Palestinian refugees across the world – the same number resides in the Palestinian territories and Israel today. I am counted in that number. This month, Israeli forces raided a mosque during Ramadan and barred Palestinian Christians from entering their churches on Good Friday and Easter. They also bombed the Gaza Strip, which has been under blockade since 2006 and is widely considered to be an open-air prison. No one at Olin is talking about it. This is not unique or new – this kind of treatment of Palestinians has been ongoing for 74 years, and it has been more deadly than this in the past. No one at Olin is talking about it. The story of Palestinians is often not told, the humanity of my people ignored as we get slaughtered by a military that is funded by the US government. The story of Palestine is also not unique – it’s the same story of all indigenous people forced from their homelands or forced to live under their colonizers. The Israeli Defense Forces (the ridiculously named Israeli military) trains police forces in the United States – the same police we protest today in many movements for their horrifying treatment of black men and women. I bring this all up because I know that many do not engage with Palestinian activism because they believe they do not know enough, it’s too complicated, or it’s not their place. I invite you all to reconsider that. You know this story here in America – it’s the same story in a different language. By staying silent, you are allowing what exists today to continue.

This year, I started the BOW Students for Justice in Palestine. This organization isn’t my first form of activism for Palestine on campus, but it will be my last. When I graduate I will be passing the leadership on to a Babson student. Currently, we have very few active Olin students. I am begging you all – please don’t let the fight for my people on this campus die. Please don’t let Palestine be forgotten at Olin. All I want is for the next Palestinian girl who comes to Olin to not feel so isolated and alone and to not face as much racism and ignorance as I did. You all hold the power, now and always. Start talking about Palestine.

Here are some websites to check out if you want to learn more:

https://imeu.org/topic/category/palestine-101
https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/mission/
https://www.instagram.com/letstalkpalestine/?hl=en

And here is the BOW SJP Instagram – the link to join the WhatsApp is in the bio:

https://www.instagram.com/bow.sjp/?hl=en

Maya Laila Al-Ahmad 🇵🇸

I haven’t shared much of my family’s story to many in the Olin community in detail, but I want to share pieces now because it hurts to know that this community that supported me and I supported during my time at Olin can be silent while my family and people fight to live through a genocide. My dad grew up in Gaza City, most of which is now rubble. The church my family used to go to on Sundays in Gaza was bombed on October 20th killing 18 Palestinians, 3 of which were my cousins. The cemetery where my grandparents were buried has also been destroyed in bombings.  None of my family that had left Gaza was able to return for their funerals because you can’t simply visit Gaza as a Palestinian and not fear for your own life. The killing and destruction in Gaza has been happening for years. When my dad was a kid going to school in Gaza in the 1980s, 6 of the students in the class he entered with didn’t make it to graduation and were killed by bombs or the Israeli Defense Force. If he were a kid in Gaza today only 6 would be considered lucky. My family chose to stay in Gaza from 1755 being the earliest documented up until my grandparents’ generation passed away in their home in Gaza that is likely now rubble as well. My dad and his brothers were lucky to be able to leave before it became a blockade where that choice is no longer a choice people in Gaza can make. I called it a choice, but it was never really a choice. Leaving Gaza is to leave your family’s home that you’ve stayed in for years and years and leave the family you grew up with, cousins, siblings, and know that you may never be able to peacefully return and for my dad that holds true 38 years later. And if he hadn’t left, who knows if he’d be alive today after over a month of genocide that this community had been silent about. I echo Maya’s plea to support Palestinians and keep our fight alive. 

David Tarazi 🇵🇸

Some groups to follow to stay updated on upcoming Free Palestine actions:

Student organizations: MIT Coalition Against Apartheid (@mit_caa), Wellesley for Palestine (@wellesleyforpalestine), Harvard Palestinian Solidarity Committee (@harvardpsc), Tufts SJP (@sjptufts), Northeastern SJP (@nuslsjp and @nusjp)

Boston organizations: Jewish Voices for Peace Boston (@jvpboston), Boston South Asian Coalition (@bsac_boston), If Not Now Boston (@ifnotnowboston), Boston Liberation Center (@bostonliberationcenter), Massachusetts Peace Action (@masspeaceaction), Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions Boston (@bdsboston)

Engineering for (Literal) Impact

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More than fifty years ago, Vietnam War student protests resulted in many universities severing
their relationships with the military-industrial complex. Many universities separated themselves
from on-campus labs that conducted substantial weapons manufacturing-related research,
including Stanford (Stanford Research Institute, now SRI International), Cornell (Cornell
Aeronautical Laboratory, now Calspan), and MIT (MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, now Draper
Labs).
The ongoing genocide in Palestine has prompted universities across the country—including
nearby MIT, BU, Tufts, Northeastern, Harvard, UMass Amherst, and Brandeis—to reckon with
institutional complicity with those enabling Israel’s war crimes. I would hope that we do the
same.
The following excerpted Frankly Speaking article was published in April 2016. Since then, Olin
has rebranded around a Strategic Plan that explicitly names equity and justice as core
institutional values (“Engineering for Everyone” and “Engineering for Impact”).
And yet Olin’s current military and weapons manufacturer ties include SCOPE and research
projects, recruitment through career fairs and newsletters, endowment investments, and our
president’s position on the Department of Defense Innovation Board.
I republish this article excerpt as neither a critique nor absolvement of individual careers, as
incessant focus on individual responsibility prevents broader structural analysis of the ways
universities perpetuate US militarism. Instead, it is a call to recognize how Olin funnels students
into what Bue Rübner Hansen calls “batshit jobs”, or jobs that are inherently deathmaking.
As Hansen writes, “to call this work mad does not mean that workers are crazy to make a living,
but rather to point out that a crazy contradiction arises when making a living is also a part of
unmaking life on many scales […]. Some workers could leave their jobs fairly easily, and others
are deeply dependent on the next paycheck. These workers have an interest in habitable
environments, but are caught in a maddening contradiction, asked by their employers to destroy
the conditions of life in order to make a living. We are habituated to think of this as normal, even
rational, but it’s time to say openly that it is madness, and to start from there.”
Letter to the Olin Community (2016)
At the most recent Town Meeting I asked President Miller if he thought there was a contradiction
between our talk of teaching students how to have a positive impact on the world and our
participation in systems of violence. I specifically brought up our collaboration with military
contractors in project work, but also that I think we would find violence in more than just the
military-industrial complex if we took a critical look. He did not answer my question, but said that
he thought it is a conversation that our community should have. I would like to use this forum to
continue that conversation and express some thoughts that I have about values and purpose.
I want to be clear about a few things. I do not intend this article as an attack on any member of
the Olin community, either explicitly or implicitly. While I have very conflicted feelings about this
institution, and certainly some criticism of individual actions, I feel a lot love for the people who
are part of this place and have found my relationships here as both a student and an instructor
to be very meaningful. I also want to be clear that this is not an article about the presence of
militarism on campus. I have my own set of values, and I am happy to discuss them, but I am
not going to make the argument that my values should be your values, or that they should be
our community’s values. My argument is that we, as an institution, should decide on and publicly
declare meaningful values and act to embody them.
Our “core institutional values” are all self-centered and neither stake out our position nor offer us
guidance in our engagement with the world. At a recent meeting a faculty member declared that
“Olin’s brand is that students build cool stuff.” The quote above the library, that “Engineers
envision what has never been, and do whatever it takes to make it happen,” is apolitical and
amoral about both ends and means, accepting any vision of “what has never been” and any
tactics used to get there. This is problematic: we could all think of examples of people trying to
realize “what has never been” that we would find abhorrent. Why not qualify that statement with
values that speak to how we want the world to be?
I see a few potential reasons for our lack of commitment to values that speak about how to act
in the world. The first reason is that it is difficult. Such a commitment would compel us to
navigate gray areas, be deeply self-critical, and make hard compromises. It would hold back our
“bias towards action” and likely lead us to restraint, a concept that goes against the instincts of
engineering and of our culture. A declaration of values would necessitate conversations about
whether our institution’s actions realize those values, and these are not easy conversations.
Resistance to these difficult conversations can find validation in the assumption that technology
is neutral, that engineers create tools and don’t have to concern themselves with how those
tools get used. Technologies are not neutral. Technologies reflect the goals of their creators,
have effects on the world that are not neutrally distributed, and re-arrange power structures in
society. We cannot hide behind the idea that technologies are neutral and that their effects,
whether positive or negative, are the sole responsibility of the user.
The second reason lies deeper. It is often implicit, as it is in that quote above the library. It is the
assumption that engineering cannot help but make the world a better place. It is a deep faith in
technological invention and innovation. This faith is problematic; it is ignorant of the lopsided
effects that engineering has, both within humanity and between humanity and the non-human
world (see the surveillance state, drone strikes, climate change, etc.). It also displaces the social
in favor of the technical, and we ought to consider the possibility that what the world needs is
not the stuff of science fiction but of “social fiction.”
There is a third possible reason, and that is that we do not care about figuring out how to leave
the world a better place than we found it. From my experiences here, the conversations I’ve
had, the wonderful and beautiful work that I’ve seen students, faculty, and staff pursue, I don’t
think this is true. I am sure that there are people here that truly don’t care, but I do not see
evidence of this as a general truth.
So I am not trying to claim that we are a community of sociopaths. My argument is more along
the lines that Olin is institutionally sociopathic. Many members of our community want to figure
out how to do good in the world and yet we have an institution that offers little support and is
content with evaluating its success by the starting salaries of its graduates.
I think that if we’re serious about leading a revolution in engineering education, a sense of
purpose around why and how we practice engineering is important. And I strongly believe that
we should codify that purpose. As practicing engineers, and indeed as some of the most
privileged people on the planet (the average Olin starting salary puts one in the top 1% of
income earners in the world), we have incredible power. Using that power for good is not easy. I
think it is quite difficult to leave things better than we found them when we’re explicitly trying
very hard at it, and impossible when we’re not. I am arguing that we should go for it, and we
should go for it explicitly.
What do you think? What do you think the purpose of Olin College is, or should be? What would
you like to see in the list of core institutional values? My idea of amending the core institutional
values is just that, an idea. It is a potential first step, with a lot of hard work to follow.
If this is near and dear to you, get organized. Host discussions, draft proposals, try and build a
consensus among the student body. Look for faculty support, but understand that the lack of
tenure at Olin makes it difficult for faculty to speak critically about the institution. Bring ideas to
the administration and to the Board of Trustees, and expect resistance. Recognize that there is
a lot of comfort with the status quo. But also recognize that this is your college and that you
have power to transform it.
I also want to point out here that I think the scholarship is fundamentally tied into this (fun fact,
the scholarship is the only founding precept that the Board of Trustees has been willing to
revise, even before the grossly misguided commitments to capitalism and no tenure for faculty).
When I graduated from Olin I had no debt and a lot of freedom to take risks, and I know that this
is a freedom that many students do not have. An unequivocal commitment by Olin College to
direct engineering education towards bettering the world would demand a commitment to
students graduating without debt as well as strong support of students taking risks, both during
and after Olin.
[…]
For additional context on the history of military contractors at Olin, see these Frankly Speakings:
● Is Our Empowerment Zero-Sum? (2011)
● The Meaning of Empowerment (2011)
● A Few Thoughts (2011)
See also:
● Abrams, R. M. (1989). The U.S. Military and Higher Education: A Brief History. The
ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 502(1), 15-28.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716289502001002
● Smart, B. (2016). Military-industrial complexities, university research and neoliberal
economy. Journal of Sociology, 52(3), 455-481.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1440783316654258
● Wilson, D. A. (1989). Consequential Controversies. The ANNALS of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science, 502(1), 40-57.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716289502001004
● Tufts: Students, community members protest military industrial recruitment at career fair The Tufts Daily
● UMass Amherst: Update on UMass Dissenters protest efforts against Raytheon and
subsidiary company – Massachusetts Daily Collegian
● Boston University: Students protest Engineering Career Fair for inviting companies that
‘cause harm’ – The Daily Free Press
● Harvard: O’Sullivan: Resign Out of Shame, Not Pressure | Opinion | The Harvard
Crimson
● Northeastern: Activists, students protest Raytheon at NU career fair – The Huntington
News

Indian Beyond This

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Byline: This article is specifically about Indians, but that’s mainly because I happen to be one. I hope that this is an invitation for more Frankly writing about identity, so we can better live, work, and laugh with each other. I don’t claim that the experiences I talk about below apply only to Indians, nor do I claim to speak for all Indians. Here’s what I’ve learned:

It’s been a long time coming.

All around the world, the discourse is growing. The country with the most people, with the world’s largest and most influential diaspora. CEOs of big tech companies, the prime minister of the UK. From students to indentured laborers, millions working hard from the UAE to Ukraine, sending billions of dollars, and a promise of a better future, back home. We’ve surely shaken up something.

We have been a significant presence at Olin for many years. A group that is celebrating its presence with increasing confidence, holding some of the largest events on campus. Yet it isn’t a group that we have explicitly thought or talked about.

So let’s do that. Let’s talk about us.

A few months ago, I interviewed six Olin students who consider being Indian at least a part of their identity. Unsurprisingly, I heard six completely different stories. Trying to weave together these stories, find a common narrative, a well-packaged identity has been next to impossible. I’ve raised more questions than answers, but that’s why we start here, beyond this.

What is Indian beyond culture? Every single American-born Indian spoke about the struggle of connection with their culture, in a community that often predicates your Indianness as colorbar depending on how “cultured” you are. Do you watch Bollywood movies? Check. Do you follow cricket? Check. Do you speak your parents’ first language fluently? No? Oof that’s too bad, you’re a coconut – brown outside, white on the inside. Claiming your identity becomes an Olympics of cultural connection – an Olympics in which some come out first in, but being on the podium isn’t enough. It never is.

What is Indian beyond food? Someone pointed out a line from an American children’s show where the sole Indian character says – I kid you not – “Sweet Ganesh, I’m a human samosa!” That’s what you’re known as – the spice, the channa masala, bursting with flavor. But that’s not it, is it? Another interviewee said, “Food has so much attached to it – it’s not just the food itself. It has so many feelings attached.” Food is a culture. Food is taking care. It’s an indication of presence, warmth, home. Indian is (undeniably) the best cuisine because food for you is, well, important.

What is Indian beyond a person of color? “Engineering for Everyone”. Most interviewees candidly described the justice-aligned mission as a “nice to have”, but not something they think about everyday and certainly not why they came to Olin. You don’t struggle with representation or access. Your parents are engineers. Your families expect it of us, and often are willing to scrape together the resources to send you to this top-ranked, 10%-acceptance-rate, engineering school. What should that privilege mean to you? Do you know where you fall within this hegemony, or its challenge?

What is Indian beyond jokes about brownness? Every identity group has their story of reckoning with the fabric of the communities that they live in. How do you reckon with yours? Your dad’s sexism, that one Indian friend who thinks it’s funny to say the N-word, the Islamophobic comments your relatives make. What does that mean? An interviewee pointed out that “Western media is quick to poke holes in Indian society with a level of skepticism they don’t have for their own country. They’re quick to present us as backwards, so growing up I believed that India is a messed up place.” Often, the progressive path is to denounce and renounce Indianness – staying progressive despite your culture. But the same interviewee challenged this by arguing that it’s important to be proud that you are Indian and also say that sexism, colorism, racism have no place.  Reframing the conversion from “I’m Indian but progressive” to “I’m Indian and progressive”?

What is Indian beyond here? The Indian story is always of migration – you are and always will be an outsider. One day, you showed up to school, with the baggage of your “ethnic background”. Maybe American legally, but really from India. Your skin, your height, your food, your religion, your festivals, your movies, your oh-so-colorful clothes. Your name. Your major. Your purported resiliency. You lug it around everyday, but you don’t want to unpack that sack in front of everyone because it sure isn’t the biggest sack – why should you get a chance? Why shouldn’t you get a chance?

I’m asking these questions because an interviewee remarked that their attempts to discuss Indian identity with their peers had been “killed with kindness”. Everyone is an active listener- and then no one talks further. Another interviewee pointed out that “to have conversations is a privilege”, especially in family. By no measure have I reasonably covered all the topics people brought up in response to the same questions. I haven’t spoken about the diversity within India, how Bollywood movies are not musicals, or what ABCD stands for. But I’m going to stop now, hoping this has helped. To reduce the dance of politeness just a little bit so that we’re a little less scared to be more honest and engaged with each other. 

Now, it’s your turn.

Drunk Horoscopes

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♈ Aries: March 21–April 19

  • You will start a club and make a group chat. It’s Facebook Messenger. You will cry. Your club will cry. Facebook Messenger will cry.

♉ Taurus: April 20–May 20

  • You’ll start vibrating, then you’ll start bouncing, and then you won’t be able to stop. You’ll start doing a kickline. Country roads, take me home.

♊ Gemini: May 21–June 21

  • You wake up. You have one Croc on. Where is the other Croc? It’s not in the Shop, because Crocs are not Shop-safe. (Even if they’re filled with jibbitz.)

♋ Cancer: June 22–July 22

  • Touch some dirt. It doesn’t have to be outside. In fact, maybe grow a tree in your toilet. Remember, the Olin dorm dirt limit is ten gallons.

♌ Leo: July 23–August 22

  • IT’S REUBEN, I KNOW IT IS. IT’S REUBEN!!

♍ Virgo: August 23–September 22

  • You will get a computer virus. You will click on the big green download button. Microsoft says you don’t have one, but you do.

♎ Libra: September 23–October 23

  • You will die slowly, like the grass under the Family Weekend tent. Your parents will come see you. They love the tent. They don’t realize you’re dying.

♏ Scorpio: October 24–November 21

  • Carve a pumpkin in a church. Carve a church in a pumpkin. Steal a pumpkin from a church, no one will stop you. Steal a church from a pumpkin, even.

♐ Sagittarius: November 22–December 21

  • You will get lost in Parcel B this week. You will befriend a bug, though. It might hop. You might hop.

♑ Capricorn: December 22–January 19

  • You will find a mosquito bite on your body. You don’t know where it came from. You didn’t even go outside. Maybe you should go outside.

♒ Aquarius: January 20–February 18

  • You’re probably sober. You can still feel your teeth.

♓ Pisces: February 19–March 20

  • There are so many questions! Where I go? Who I know? Will I be alone on Saturday night???

OPEN Review: An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

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Cover Art Credit: https://www.kaitlinkall.com/ 

Okay, if you like sci-fi commentaries on humanity and our unique place in the universe, and you haven’t read this book, please go out and borrow it from a library right now. 

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing is a novel written by the science nerd and face of Crash Course himself, Hank Green, in 2017. It tackles issues of social relations, fame, and media, making meaning in a world that’s constantly changing faster than any of us can keep up with. 

Summary: April May is a young artist trying to pay off her student loans and make it in New York City. When she happens upon a beautiful statue that catches her creative eye, April makes a decision that will change her life forever. hijinks ensue, April faces death, unfathomable dreams, and most frighteningly of all, SOCIAL MEDIA. She wants to make a difference in the world, but she’s desperately balancing between enacting change for better or for worse. 

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing is a deep dive into what makes humanity special: what motivates us, what brings out our best, and what brings out our worst. Hank Green has such a beautiful take on us and all our weird ticks. He picks apart many of the people who are found in our modern society: internet haters, fear mongers, scientists passionate about making a positive difference, political figures, newscasters, rural sheep farmers, and everyone in between, and he does it through the lens of a witty, dramatic 20-something-year-old woman. I love this man so much. 

Oh, and this book is Gay. I guess I should mention that in an OPEN media review. April May is canonically Bisexual and there are other characters that are in our community as well. Hank Green himself is Bi, and I’m all here for the support. The great part about An Absolutely Remarkable Thing is that all the LGBT+ people in this series are deep, fleshed-out characters. They are not “The Gaytm ” best friend, or “The Gaytm ” parents, nah. They are people, who happen to be gay. There is also a character in the sequel (yes there is a sequel, if you read this one, PLEASE read that one too) that is canonically Agender, which warms my AroAceAge heart. 

So if you’re looking for a great read, looking to have a good laugh, solve a few puzzles, and have an existential crisis or two, then I highly suggest that you give this book a glance.

The Crucial Role of Project Teams in Engineering Education at Olin

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Hello, Olin community! For those who may not know me, my name is Ishaan, and I’m currently a senior. Many of you might recognize me as the previous project manager for Olin Electric Motorsports and a passionate advocate for project teams on our campus. As I near the end of my college journey, I’d like to share my thoughts on the significant role of project teams as someone who has led one.

Olin’s unique approach to engineering education is why I’m here. The first two years of coursework focus on leveling the playing field and providing students with essential technical knowledge used in real-world engineering through a project based curriculum.

However, there are some challenges. Course budgets often constrain the depth of project-based learning we initially came to Olin for. In an effort to simplify the curriculum, some course content gets cut, resulting in limited opportunities for in-depth exploration. This situation becomes even more pronounced in the junior and senior years, where there’s a shortage of advanced engineering courses. While I understood that Olin’s project-based philosophy might mean sacrificing certain depth, I didn’t expect course cutbacks and budget constraints.

Furthermore, most classes at Olin are just one semester long, which leaves little time to dive deeply into project details beyond the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) stage. This constraint often prevents students from diving into the details of a project.

The shortcomings of our classes have prompted many students to turn to project teams as a valuable learning opportunity. Project teams offer extended timelines that allow us to move beyond the MVP phase, providing the resources to undertake significant engineering projects and fill in the gaps missed by classes.

While the prototyping and MVP skills gained from coursework are invaluable for early-stage design, creating a product often demands a level of detail that goes beyond what is typically covered in a classroom setting at Olin. The current semester structure doesn’t allow students ample time to practice this detail-oriented engineering.

My involvement in project teams has been instrumental in securing internships. The skills I’ve acquired in these teams have proven indispensable in real-world engineering environments. In interviews, I find that I talk more about my project team experiences, as these projects offer a level of detail that surpasses most class projects.

Project teams, such as Olin Electric Motorsports, have a clear goal in mind. In our case, we aim to create an inclusive learning environment by building a formula-style electric race car. The complexity of this endeavor is both challenging and exciting due to how integrated it is. 

These systems present a complex engineering challenge. The integrated nature means that one system’s failure can result in missed learning opportunities for others. This is why our team may not always take extreme technical risks or engage in groundbreaking innovations. Balancing innovation with technical risk mitigation, such as having backups from previous years, is an invaluable lesson to carry forward.

One of the biggest learning opportunities from project teams is the leadership and teamwork skills you gain. Most projects in Olin classes are teams of 5 people. On Olin Electric Motorsports last year, we had 62 students, and this year 81. The leadership team learns how to manage all these students to ensure that both their goals and the team’s goals are achieved. They learn about motivating others, teaching others, and managing the resources of the team. It’s an experience unlike anything else. 

Many of the decisions we make as a team may seem corporate from the outside, but there’s a reason why so many members stay on our team. The leadership team every year has to figure out how to provide the best learning opportunities to its members. Sometimes that means remaking a project so everyone can learn from it. Competition is a large motivator for students as well, even when we didn’t drive our car at competition, members were excited to work on the next car based on what they learned from going to competition. 

While project teams offer incredible learning opportunities, they can also demand a significant investment of time and energy, sometimes taking a toll on students’ mental health. Last year, I dedicated 10-30 hours per week to Olin Electric Motorsports on top of a 16-credit workload for both semesters. This strain led me to work on making project team involvement more sustainable by collaborating with the Academic Review Board and other stakeholders.

In summary, project teams are a vital component of engineering education at Olin College. They fill the gaps left by traditional coursework and provide students with invaluable hands-on experience, enabling them to excel in real-world engineering environments. The incredible challenge they pose makes them a rewarding experience for their members. We need to continue redefining the project team experience so that it is fulfilling but also sustainable.

Breaking the 7th wall (how the suite walls changed Olin)

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A suitemate is sitting in the common area, eating some snacks and working on their laptop. Another suite member enters, looking to recharge their social battery. Other suitemates in their room hear the camaraderie and sit alongside everyone else to work, relax, or play. As a group, they decide to visit a suite down the hall that’s hosting a coffee shop later that night. The shared space created a sense of responsibility for ourselves and each other. This was the safe space where Olin culture was born, where Olin ideas were cultivated.

The classroom is where the seed is planted – our collective first year at Olin taught us about the importance of failure, and not to be ashamed of it. The classroom planted the seed about codesign and setting our own goals. These were things we had not been exposed to before, and it was our first time holding these ideas in our hands and molding them into our own lives. 

However, where the classroom was the seed, the idea had to have a place to grow. The idea needs to exist not only inside the classroom, but also needs a place to exist outside of the classroom where a student can try it for themselves in the real world. And what better place to apply these skills in the small town of Needham than our own dorms? Our own tiny test run of fostering a large community relationship.

The dorms were a catalyst for change. The spaces that allowed for gathering generated crazy new ideas and brought together niche passions and exploded into something that defined Olin today. It was the place where students could take power into their own hands and become the creators of a community; a community born from the principles taught to us. 

The students were the ones who took the honor code and decided to give it power. To us, it meant something important when we left a five dollar bill right where we found it instead of taking it. It was important that we were the ones watching out for each other and taking care of people who got too drunk. It was meaningful that we were lifting each other up.

Adding a seventh room into the originally six person suites was a solution created to address the admission of an unexpectedly large number of incoming freshmen. The idea was to split the suite common area in half and turn the other half into a new room. It was said to be a temporary solution that would be taken down in around 4 years, but recently it seems like the walls are here to stay.

For the administration and staff making these decisions, it may have presented as a clever solution, where perhaps students may grow accustomed to the seventh room and allow for the school to enroll more students. 

Was it a financial decision? Most definitely, as any organization would have to consider the financial impact of an investment like this. Perhaps this solution was the best financial investment that would ultimately benefit the state of our school. 

The administration rarely ever steps into the dorms. The higher ups don’t know the complex inner workings of the Olin dorms and the culture we’ve cultivated, not only to have fun but to hold each other accountable. There is no way for the administration to fully understand what this seemingly small change in the suites would have on an entire school. 

Now, when a student seeks social interaction, they will opt to enter another suitemate’s room, rather than sit in the lounge. Because of this, communication gets stifled or passed around in potentially harmful ways. Oftentimes, it is not out of bad intention, but it happens naturally due to the configuration of the space – it is hard to communicate openly when everything is so closed off. It’s too easy to go straight to your room without running into any of your suitemates, therefore making it easier to isolate yourself from them. 

Living in the suite no longer feels like a mini community working together. It just feels like 7 single rooms with an awkward hallway in between. 

Due to the reduced area, it’s almost impossible to have all (now) seven members in the common area at one time. Some people might have to stand or sit on the floor. It was organic to see all members of the suite in the common area before, and now it’s rare to see any people at all. 

Another side effect of the reduced area is that items start migrating outside of the suite space into the hallways. It’s too crowded and cramped to fit all of the furniture in the common space, along with a shoe rack and 3 trash cans. Naturally, it made sense for some suites to start moving a shoe rack or a couple of trash cans or a bike outside. It opened up the space meant for community and reduced the clutter. 

As a result, the residential hall assistants, cleaning staff, and others immediately brought attention to the items in the hallway, stating that it was not up to fire code, or that spaces were harder to navigate or clean. Warnings would be put on items that were in the hallways, stating that if it is not cleared out then it will be taken. These warnings existed for a short period of time, but eventually, items would be simply removed by the hallways without further notice. Staff and students had been given permission to remove or take any belongings that were in the hallway. 

Under Respect Others in Olin’s Honor code, it states as follows: “I will be patient with and understanding of fellow community members, and considerate of their inherent dignity and personal property.” This is something that Oliners have been proud to uphold for years, as we have created a culture of trust. If someone had forgotten their laptop or dropped a five dollar bill, it would not disappear. It would remain right where they last saw it, or someone would send an email stating that they have it. 

Almost overnight, this culture of trust vanished. It was no longer safe to leave your things out for even a second. This was an unintended consequence of the seventh room. 

As one of the few students remaining who has lived in both a six room suite and a seventh room suite, I can say through first hand experience that this seventh room has made a lasting negative impact on the Olin experience. 

….On the recent events

I wrote this piece last year to talk about the consequences of what happens when people in power change the spaces they do not reside in. I aimed to commemorate Olin culture and share some of my favorite memories while highlighting what a huge difference a small change can make. I have also seen Olin students take matters into their own hands and mold the spaces in the dorms to fit their needs with every coming challenge. This section is now an expression of my feelings and frustrations of the changes that are being made, and the trust that has been broken. 

I have learned from my professors at Olin that changes to a space should be initiated by those who occupy it. “Nothing about us without us.” Making a decision of bringing in Babson students into the dorms should involve the students who occupy the dorms, no matter how wonderful the Babson students are, no matter how careful we are about the process, no matter how much we want to improve our relationship with them. I applaud the staff and faculty who have developed a fully thought out plan to make this integration as smooth as possible. I am disappointed and frustrated with the decision to exclude students from the conversation. Just like the 7th suite wall, (which was supposed to be temporary) we have been left out of the conversation. Ever since COVID, we have been struggling with a lack of housing in the fall semester, and now we are blindsided with the introduction of Babson students into our dorms in the spring, forcing students to move and rearrange to accommodate.

I have also noticed that Oliners also are starting to feel unsafe and uncomfortable with what feels like the administration’s blatant disregard to the students’ wellbeing. Especially when we had a conversation about this a year ago and the majority of the student population communicated their strong disapproval of this decision. At this point, this is no longer an issue about the changing of dorm culture, it’s also about breaking trust and being misleading with the guise of a false partnership between administration and students.

I wonder how this continuous dismissal of students’ wellbeing will affect the future of this institution. “In 2020-21, the Olin Fund represented 46% percent of the total philanthropic dollars raised for the College” and I have noticed recent talks of alumni who are hesitant to donate in light of these critical changes that are being made without student voices at the discussion tables.

I want to highlight all the intricacies of how dismissing the student body will impact the future of this institution. It’s hard to put a number on how much student relations with their administration correlates with the “success” of a college, but at the end of the day, I truly believe that cultivating communication and transparency is essential for the health and wellbeing of Olin College. 

If financial stability is the administration’s goal, then I would like for students to have a seat at the table to help achieve that goal while preserving the parts of what makes Olin unique. It would go both ways, as the students would be better informed on the administration’s decisions. I can suggest that we start looking for data that proves these decisions will be detrimental in the long run. We can pitch alternatives. We can prove that the Olin student body is an asset, not a liability. We can practice what Olin preaches: community mindedness, problem solving, and teamwork.

If there’s one thing left for me to wish upon this school before I leave, I wish for the administration to hear our voices and help us rebuild this trust that has been broken.

Tragedy of the Project Team

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I tell people I hate all project teams — so they quizzically ask me why I am on two of them. The reality is I don’t hate them in the strongest sense of the word; rather, the argument is too long to explain, so I keep it short and life goes on. I’ve fleshed it out over time, conversation upon conversation I’ve reached an equilibrium where I feel like my beliefs are grounded enough to put into writing. And after so long, I’m writing this manifesto as a record of my current stance. In short, I think that Olin’s project teams do not do enough to benefit the student population and college at large because they are run like mature corporations, so we need to reflect on ways to return to a start-up mentality.
Project teams suffer from a value cap. What I mean by this is that beyond a certain time spent per week, the value that a member experiences from a project team diminishes greatly. I believe that value can be derived from happiness stemming from altruistic endeavors, pride in one’s work, pure academic learning, and many more. Beyond this cap, the member experiences no further benefits at the cost of time. You probably don’t realize that it exists — you work until your work has reached a good place and then you time out — it feels normal. Just like a 9-5, you put in the effort to reach the goal and then you’re done. At Olin, this cap is too low across the board on all project teams. During high school, I spent 18 hours a week on my school’s project team and not a moment of it felt like a chore. Now, the two project teams I am on combined barely scratch half that and I watch the clock like a hawk. Maybe you don’t feel it yet — a young, idealistic first-year with so much to learn and so many opportunities and obviously that FRC experience under your belt — but as your time at Olin progresses, this cap will get lower and lower. You wonder why all project teams are so youthful: first-years, sophomores, where are the upperclassmen? The fact that Olin project teams have become accustomed to the trickle-down of leadership to underclassmen is a symptom of the value cap leading to the disengagement of senior members. Upperclassmen realized a long time ago that the machine would keep churning with or without them, so they made their escape before being turned into soulless pulp.
The cap has a perfectly predictable lowering over the course of a student’s time at Olin. At some point, learning stagnates — an avionics programmer can only learn so much C++, a structures member can only perfect a composites layup so much, a drivetrain engineer can only engineer so many drivetrains, and an ECE who took ECE courses finds that their skills have surpassed any potential learnings of being on a project team (applies to any major). We are fighting against this natural process and we are losing. Olin’s project teams need to find a way to raise the cap so that any student with any time commitment can still find value in one more hour.
In terms of value, for the unnamed project teams I reference, altruism is not on the table. This leaves one thing. The only thing that Olin project teams hold on to. Pride. Yet, somehow, they managed to rot even pride from the inside. They asked first-years to redesign that part that had been redesigned the year before and the year before and the year before in the exact same way because that legacy design was fully functional to begin with. They actively pushed for this, laughing off the ones who wanted to attempt it for themselves first. They told them, this is how it was done before, this is how it is done, and this is how it will be done. And the impressionable first-year thought nothing of it. They are more experienced, having taken more classes and done the exact same thing the year before, they know exactly how to avoid failure. They took changing competition goals, requiring a completely reworked design to perform well at competition, and blurred the lines until a high-wing monoplane careened down the runway for the innumerable year in a row, because that’s all that they knew. When projects are underwhelming it is nigh on impossible to feel pride.
Failure. It’s a word often thrown around in idioms and half-assed wisdom from big tech CEOs on 30 Under 30. It’s painted as the Holy Grail of learning and ironically rightfully so, despite its cliché nature. Yet, Olin project teams wiped that line from their programming. There is no project team willing to try something unique or unproven on accounts of it increasing their failure chance. There is no attempt to experiment for the sake of learning. The forefathers had functional designs; replicate, replicate, replicate. In high school, I spent $2,000 of my own savings on my project team and the results were disastrous. I watched planes nosedive into the ground at terrifying speeds, planes disassemble midair and become lodged at the tops of 100 ft trees, landings that should’ve been classified as debris fields, and many more. I sacrificed my time, my savings, and my emotional health seeking the high of success. And on completing that goal the spring of my senior year, an autonomous search-and-rescue unmanned aerial vehicle, the future wasn’t as bright as I’d hoped. As the wheels touched down for landing after the maiden flight, I realized that the journey was over. All the things that I had learned had come before when the planes were not successful, when we tried new things for the sake of trying them, because we had nobody to teach us — but now we hadn’t crashed.
As my freshman year of college passed, I watched my highschool team fall into the project team trap. From when I was on it with eight active members, having built three massive planes my senior year to have two of them be destroyed, they had only regressed. They built no new planes the whole year, instead focusing on modifying the wing airfoil of the legacy I’d left and building PCBs to replace the spaghetti wiring. But they profited — none of them had to spend a dime of their money and recruitment pulled in swarms of new members, surpassing even Olin’s most crowded interest meetings. Everyone wanted a piece of that success. And next year with the same competition and the same general goals, it will repeat itself, climbing ever higher on the rankings towards the perfection they strive to achieve. They should be able to see that this isn’t the fate forced upon them — they build wings with plywood and laminating film, something that could be transitioned to carbon fiber composites, yet they haven’t innovated. There’s room to learn there and grow, but after that? There’s nothing in the book after a fixed-wing monoplane made of carbon fiber: only blank pages. And throughout this whole ordeal there will be no significant failure; learning is greatly diminished. I hope you see the parallels at Olin and the difference in value cap between when I was on my high school’s project team and after I left it. One was worth $2,000 and 18- hour weeks, and the other clearly not. They fell into a trap of hyperfixations, working on small improvements and holding on to past successes. This is the trap of success.
You could say that my highschool team had moved from its start-up phase into the corporate world. Rather than having the ability to be nimble and allow failure, they had come to the harsh reality that they had expectations to uphold. Failure is hard to swallow in the eyes of project teams — not going to competition or not placing well means that members will foolishly leave and sponsors will too. I will let you young engineers in on a little corporate secret. Psst, failure is not permissible in the corporate world. A recall can lead to millions in losses, a mis-dimensioned part could cost millions for reconfiguring the assembly line, and negative customer perspectives mean millions lost in future sales. Welcome to Nissan, Boeing, Google, etc. Now is the time in a young engineer’s life to experience liberty and failure, and Olin project teams are failing the students at being that sandbox for creativity.
So far, I’ve outlined a circular problem, which I will reiterate here. Olin teams are run like corporations and as such fail the creative genius of young engineers at Olin. They do this to maintain a high level of security against failure and thereby protect member yields and sponsors. The more they have on the line to lose, the more aggressively they protect it. In this manner we arrive at a Catch-22, which I will break down further in a bit. I would first like to discuss two more factors of project teams that complicate things further: competitions and careers.
Competitions are parasitic. They pose one of the largest drains on project team budgets, are a huge waste of time since most of the competition is sitting around doing nothing, and are the only obvious way of staying relevant to sponsors and prospective members. In return, competitions provide rules and goals, both of which can be detrimental to project teams. Rules can stifle creativity and limit the freedom of project teams to do anything except churn out replica deliverables. Goals, which normally are stagnant (except in some rare cases of competitions changing goals each season), lead to the never-ending design cycle of rinse and repeat. Both of these downsides have been discussed in great depth previously regarding project teams, but it is important to note how they originate both from within the teams and outside them. In the end, it is up to the team to make the most of these constraints and be creative, but we don’t see any examples of that.
Finally, I believe that project teams are a necessary evil. Olin pumps out a high percentage of engineers that go straight into the workforce. These engineers wish to get internships and jobs and as a result feel compelled to do at least one project team for the infamous résumé. It’s on every job/internship listing, “project teams or real world experience required.” And honestly no wonder recruiters consider a project team real world experience; it’s f***ing corporate! This is the career dilemma.
Now, we reach the ineloquent point where I need to tie together loose ends, propose solutions, and write a call to action. I will admit that while these problems are apparent to me and indubitably, ubiquitously exist, the solutions are not so. I believe that the steps to remedy this require a rethinking of the role of project teams in Olin’s community, a reflection on the value of competitions, and a change in how Olin supports new teams.
A project team is truly only a valiant endeavor in its first 2-3 years after inception. This time period is marked by there being no legacy work to copy, many failures, and altogether a huge emphasis on experimentation and iteration. Beyond this time period, a project team’s future is at the hands of its leadership. Although a project team can try to sow liberty and freedom and promote failure as permissible, unless it parts from its legacy goals, it remains entrenched so deep that it succumbs to the chronic condition I’ve outlined. A well-managed project team, when reaching maturity, will pivot its goals greatly in order to start a novel project from the ground up. This could be one of three things: moving to a new competition bracket/goal, pursuing a new competition altogether, or abandoning competition entirely.
Those three aforementioned options are in order of difficulty. The first two maintain the grandiosity associated with competition and the sponsors and member recruitment opportunities. As a result, they also are the least likely to remedy the problem. A team with replicatory ideals will attempt to apply the same strategies to whatever new goals come their way unless it is a failing strategy. A rocket with a goal of 10,000 feet and a rocket that reaches 30,000 feet can be made using the same techniques — it’s only a question of scale. However, a liquid fuel rocket and a solid fuel rocket differ entirely. Shrewd leadership is a necessary corrective force for steering a project team away from copycat strategies.
A project team that gives up on competitions altogether will reap the greatest rewards, but face the toughest challenges. The most apparent is the pecuniary struggle in which the team finds itself. This can be remedied through proper fundraising, focusing on the value that the team brings, rather than competition rankings. The second, and arguably larger, hurdle is that of misdirection. A team without a competition is a team without a goal, unless a strong leadership steps in and inspires the team with one. This involves not only the goal itself, but rigid deadlines, and firm stakeholders that ensure that the team continues operating with some amount of direction and reasonable tempo.
And in the most extreme case, we must let the team perish. Pivot or perish — this is not corporate — we don’t aim to persist. Olin is founded on principles of adaptation and innovation; ingrained in our culture is the idea of avoiding the traps of stagnation. We preach to reevaluate everything and redesign our courses, our culture, and systems whenever and however necessary. Why should project teams escape this cycle? The project teams I envision, let’s call them neo-project teams, embody a start-up’s ephemerality, but unfortunately Olin is not prepared to handle these types of organizations. There are major roadblocks in securing space and money, barring new project teams from entering the arena.
In an ideal world, neo-project teams would be highly successful, dramatically raising the value cap, enthralling the attention of Oliners, and each delivering value surpassing that of all of today’s project teams combined. The composition of neo-project teams would become almost uniform, with each year making up a quarter of a project team’s membership and leadership being delegated to seniors at the higher level and juniors at the lower level. Oliners would find the time to be on only one project team and would pick that work over the alternative of 20-crediting or splitting their efforts across many. These are the signs of a thriving team. Neo-project teams would sow creativity, autonomy, confidence, and promote learning through failure.
I would like to end by breaking the fourth wall with you, the reader. I don’t believe that my analysis in this manifesto was exhaustive — you may have identified other problems or believe in different solutions. That is fine; what is important is that we talk about this, not suffer in silence. The responsibility now falls upon you to continue this discussion, ensure that your project teams don’t fall into complacency, and unite our community so that together we can prevent the Tragedy of the Project Team.