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Feel strongly about scheme? At MIT?



Folks,
I am absolutely not trying to start a flamewar, I swear.

For those of you at or near MIT, you might be interested to know that
Professor Sussman is a candidate in this year's Big Screw contest for
his work on Scheme.

Big Screw is an annual charity fundraiser run by Alpha Phi Omega, a
service fraternity. Basically, people vote for which professor screwed
over the students/MIT community the most that year. You vote with money,
by putting cash in the jar corresponding to your chosen candidate. At
the end of the contest (it runs until this friday), all the money
collected gets donated to the charity chosen by the winner.

If you feel strongly about Scheme (love it or hate it), you are welcome
to come to Lobbey 10 of MIT between the hours of 9am and 5pm to vote
this wednesday, thursday, and friday. 

The contest is all done in good fun and is a lot less mean spirited than
it may appear. While some winners have done really bad things to the
community, often times people are nominated because students really like
them and because it is something of an honor here to win the award.
Winners get to keep a giant 36-inch long wood screw for the next year as
a trophy (the screw is really cool actually; you can see it at the
booth). For example, last year's winner, Professor Steven Leeb is quite
simply the best teacher I've ever seen and is universally admired by his
students. He was absolutely thrilled to win, and was delighted that he
was able to give a few thousand dollars to his favourite charity.

Professor Sussman has won the award once or twice in the mid 80s, and
would like to win it again, in part to help his chosen charity. If you
despise scheme, you should certainly vote. If you love it and want to
say thank you to someone who did a lot of early work on it, you should
also vote. In general, voting is done with cash, although we will take
checks drawn from MIT funds. If you are desparate to donate a large
chunk of money, contact me privately (I'm APO's treasurer). If you're
near MIT but don't know where to go, this might help
http://whereis.mit.edu/bin/map?locate=bldg_10


-Mike Salib