Nicolas E. Del Castillo ’14 was found dead on Sunday in his East Campus (floor 4th West) dormitory room.

Applause erupted in the standing-room-only 6-120 yesterday at 3:58 p.m. as Zachary A. Weiner, creator of popular webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (SMBC), entered the room for a Q&A session packed with questions touching on topics from fellow web comic artists to the merits of Star Wars vs. Star Trek (for the record, Weiner prefers Star Wars). The free event, sponsored by the MIT Lecture Series Committee, concluded with a signing session of the new SMBC compilation, Save Yourself, Mammal!: A Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal Collection, and went an hour over its anticipated 4–6 p.m. runtime.

Tens of thousands of the public are expected to descend upon MIT’s campus tomorrow for the Institute’s first open house in over 30 years.

After a week of deliberation, the Undergraduate Association Ad-Hoc Committee on Restructuring presented several changes to bill 42 UAS 14.2, UA President Vrajesh Y. Modi ’11’s proposed overhaul of the UA governing structure. The most significant change is the expansion of the proposed Council of Representatives — which would replace the UA Senate should 14.2 be approved — from 16 to 20 members, adding three additional representatives from the Interfraternity Council (IFC) and one additional representative from the Panhellenic Association (Panhel). According to Committee Chair Timothy R. Jenks ’13, current senator of fraternities, the additional members were added in response to Committee concerns of underrepresentation of affiliated Greek students on the Council.

Dozens of undergraduates comprised a passionate audience at yesterday evening’s emergency UA meeting, called in response to the proposed shortening of Orientation by the Office of Undergraduate Advising and Academic Programming. Elizabeth C. Young and Julie B. Norman, associate dean and director, respectively, of the UAAP, discussed the planned changes to Orientation, including the re-scheduling of Advanced Standing Exams (ASEs) and the extension of Freshman Pre-Orientation Programs (FPOPs), but most discussion centered around the proposed reduction of Residence Exploration (REX) from three days to one.

Where are MIT’s Campus Republicans and Campus Democrats? Two well-known groups are missing from MIT’s tremendous array of campus organizations, political or otherwise — College Democrats and College Republicans. Both organizations founded chapters in the late 1990s, but in only a little over a decade later, both are defunct. The website for MIT College Democrats carries a copyright of 2004, and the listed co-presidents of the club graduated in 2007. MIT College Republicans’ website has suffered a similar fate, last updated in February 2003.

Under a new pilot system between the MIT Libraries and the Harvard College Library (HCL), MIT undergraduates may now borrow from select Harvard libraries. Undergraduates were able to begin signing up for HCL Special Borrower cards yesterday. The cards grant access to several of Harvard’s 70-plus libraries.

The software architecture behind Stellar, MIT’s course management system, is likely to change within the next year, while user interface will mostly stay the same. Pilot changes to the system may be implemented over the summer, said Eric Klopfer, Chair of the Faculty Advisory Committee on Learning Management Systems, which is tasked with developing the next version of Stellar, called Stellar Next Generation.

Who ever said that engineers can’t communicate? MIT Debate Team members and Course VI majors Adam Goldstein ’10 and Bill Magnuson ’09 took top honors at the North American Debating Championships  — regarded as the most prestigious debate tournament in North America — held January 29-31 at York University in Toronto, Ontario, by finishing ahead of 79 other two-person teams from around the continent. Goldstein also earned honors as an individual performer in the preliminary rounds of the tournament, ranking as the top United States speaker and fourth overall speaker for his performance.

MIT’s chapter of Alpha Tau Omega had a trying year in 2009. After losing its housing license in summer 2008, the fraternity was granted a housing license for six occupants in June by the Cambridge Licensing Commission (CLC), only to be expelled from the Interfraternity Council (IFC) — and from MIT — in September. An incident in May 2009 involving “underage consumption” and a “failure to provide emergency medical assistance” was the incident responsible for the expulsion, according to minutes of a September 2 IFC meeting.