“It’s a big scam,” one student wrote of MIT dining in response to a survey The Tech sent out to undergraduates. Is it?

The Cambridge City Council voted 7-2 last night to pass MIT’s Kendall rezoning petition, permitting taller, denser development on the east side of MIT’s campus. The rezoning is the first step toward realizing plans to bring new retail to Kendall Square and to replace parking lots along Main Street with three new commercial buildings and a residential tower called “Innovation Landing.”

MIT “failed abysmally” in promptly notifying the community after receiving a false Feb. 23 report of a gunman on campus, MIT Chief of Police John DiFava said at the last faculty meeting, following an internal review of the events on the day of the scare. But the police response on the scene was “superb,” DiFava said.

Loose bricks on Random Hall’s exterior were discovered in a recent inspection of the dormitory, raising safety concerns.

MIT’s Kendall upzoning petition to Cambridge, which would allow for the construction of new commercial and residential towers on the east side of campus, expires on April 15. As that deadline nears, executives of MIT and the MIT Investment Management Company (MITIMCo) have been eager to see the City Council approve the petition, even as the conversation within MIT has exposed a rift between the proposal’s supporters and opponents.

On Monday, President Obama nominated MIT’s Ernest J. Moniz as the next secretary of energy. He will replace Steven Chu, who announced last month that he would resign. Only in the past decade have scientists occupied the position. If confirmed by the Senate, Moniz, a physicist, would continue that pattern.

Mixed-use towers rivaling the Green Building in height may be on the horizon for MIT’s east campus after members of the Cambridge Planning Board commended MIT’s Kendall rezoning petition at a meeting Tuesday evening. The board is expected to formally recommend the petition to the City Council early next month.

MIT’s latest rezoning petition, which would bring commercial and residential developments as well as new academic buildings to east campus, prompted concern from students and drew criticism from faculty and staff at a forum about Kendall Square plans on Wednesday. The topics discussed included the future of graduate housing and the broader question of how the petition would serve MIT’s interests.

They’re called MOOCs, and it was the M for Massive that really started turning heads.

“In what sense, if any, did you deserve to be admitted to Harvard College?”