After a week of campaigning by the 2016 Class Council candidates, the UA announced the results of the election last Saturday. The freshman class elected Anish D. Punjabi ’16 as president and Pratyush “Priya” Kalluri ’16 as vice president. Of the 1140 freshmen, 40.5 percent voted this year, up from 33.5 percent last year. In previous years, senate elections were held concurrently with the freshman class council elections in the fall, but the Undergraduate Association (UA) disbanded the senate at the end of last year.

If all goes well, students studying in the Barker Reading Room will be able to see the light of day through an amethyst-colored skylight on the Great Dome by next January.

After the festivities of L. Rafael Reif’s presidential inauguration subsided, Chris A. Kaiser PhD ’87, who succeeded Reif as provost, had a chance to sit down with The Tech and share his thoughts on his new position. The provost is MIT’s senior academic and budget officer who holds overall responsibility for the school’s education programs; he also oversees recruitment and promotion of faculty. Kaiser has been a member of the faculty since 1991, and the department head of Biology (Course 7) since 2004. Although offered a job as the director of National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) last fall, Kaiser decided to stay with the MIT community instead. He officially became provost on July 2.