Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Admission Film (1976 Version)

[Music] [Applause] Hello, I'm Rick Bennett, majoring in chemistry. And even though I spend a lot of time in lab, I've found time to work for instructional media as a film production assistant. One of the most interesting films we've been working on lately is one designed to show prospective students like yourselves just what Renolier is all about. This film centers on people at RPI and specifically undergraduate students and the various activities that they become involved with. We shot a lot of footage. I'd like you to take a look at some of it with me. Radio is an important feature of life for students. The Albany area forecast. Periods of rain today with thunderstorms possible. Highs in the 50s. Precipitation probability decreasing to 60% tonight and to 40% tomorrow. You're listening to WRPI in Troy, New York. My name is Moren Rean and I'm a senior chemical engineer at RPI. The rest of the time I spend being program director here at WRPI, the studentr run radio station, affectionately known as WPY. And we're located down in the basement of the communication center. Right now, I'm standing here amongst our album collection of about 18,000 albums. We play everything from rock to jazz, classical, soul, and a category that we call other. You can do many activities down here ranging from announcing to engineering to fixing things when they break or even when they don't. And then there's always little things that have to be done like typing and artwork. Some of our technological efforts are geared toward the automobile. [Applause] Basically, the autocross is a safety related type of thing. Everybody gets out there and has a good time. Sure. And they get to see how fast their cars will go around little tight corners. But, uh, it's biggest aspect, I feel, is the fact that it gets people to be better drivers and to know how their cars handle in the extremes. Uh, a lot of people just drive around day after day, year after year, and never find out what their car does when it's really pushed to the limit. Uh, things break at autocrosses. Uh, some people found that out today. I'm Keith Borman. I'm senior in mechanical engineering here at RPI. This garage I'm working in is run by the Winsler Sports Car Association, which is one of the student organizations on campus. Uh, contrary to the way the name sounds, you don't need a sports car to belong. We have everything from VWs to uh Porsches. I've seen people here that came in as freshmen who were very poor drivers, competed in our autocrosses for several years now, and uh are much safer highway drivers. It's also uh it's also good for the car and sort of a a reverse way in that uh you go out and you use up a little of the rubber on your tires and possibly overheat your engine a little rough on your gearbox, but you find out what things in your car are not up to the way they should be. Hockeyy's the big sport on campus. [Applause] [Music] But there are also club sports such as ultimate frisbee. [Music] There are plenty of tennis courts and open spaces to throw or kick a ball around. Some of us are designing a vehicle of the type that may one day survey the Martian landscape. [Music] We gather obstacle data from a laser system on the front of the vehicle and transmit it to a computer where we process the information and try to determine a good path for the vehicle to go on. My name is Dave Robbins and I'm a senior electrical engineer. I've been working on the Mars project for about a year now. What I've been doing is computer programming. I think the Mars projects allow a lot of people to give uh to get hands-on experience which you can't really get in the classroom. It's rather unique and I've uh benefited from it quite a bit I think. Hi, my name is Harold Herzig and I'm the one willed wonder here at RPI. You're the science major, class of 79. girls for the greatest time of your life. 9146348182. The student union is the center of campus social activity. My name is Doug Darren. I'm a senior here in civil engineering. When I'm not going to school, I'm involved in UPUPAC, the union programs and activities committee. Most of our events revolve around the union, which is really kind of the living room of the campus. We have a bookstore downstairs where you can buy all your textbooks. [Music] and all kinds of laundry, detergent, anything you need at the last second. There's a post office to mail an occasional letter if you ever write home for money. They have a barber shop where you can get your haircut right before you go home so you look presentable. [Music] Besides having this these services, the union has all kinds of other things it offers to us. There's a wrap galler downstairs where you can get something to eat or drink almost all day long and an art gallery. We have a games room where you can ball, waste all your money, have lots of fun late at night, coffee houses, concerts, and all kinds of events for students to relax when they're not going to school. Were you ever so in love you couldn't wait to get to sleep and dream about the one you wish there beside you? In the past few days, I've grown to love the giggles on the phone and how we hug so you [Music] saw I known you better. That's Lynette Santoro and I'm Tom Fogle and uh we're both RPI students or expi students. We're now attending Alb Medical College. We're in the biomed program and uh for the last three years we've been playing guitar together. Uh we played at RPI before and we played in Albany at different places and it's meant a lot to us and it's uh kept us you know sane I guess. Yeah, I enjoy playing here. You know, I've played here about three times. This is going to be the third. This this seems to be very a the nicest audience around really very receptive and you people just kind of come in and sit down and it's not like a bar or anything like that. It's it's a nice audience to play too. [Applause] In the imaging devices lab, some of us play chess with computers. My name is Kevin Gross. I'm a senior studying computer and systems engineering. I decided to get involved with this because I felt get really getting involved, getting my hands on something would be really valuable as opposed to just studying textbooks. What we have is u an interactive type system which means that you can work in real time with the uh machine. You can sit there and interact with it. One sort of thing we're working on right now is a hidden line program and what it does is takes a nice geometrical object and if you draw it out on the machine, you can ask this program to then remove any of those lines which you wouldn't normally see. There are a lot of fun things you can do uh with a computer that has a nice big uh TV tube on it. For example, a lot of those games you might see in a bar, uh, pingpong, airplanes, things like that, you can play, you can play here. And the nice thing with these games is that you don't have to put a quarter into play. The traditional right of spring at Renelier is the grand marshall week. My name is Annette Robinson. I'm a senior psych major at RPI, but I get involved in other activities on campus. For the past six months, 12 other people and I acting as chairman have been working on GM week. And this is it. This is Grand Marshall week. [Music] [Applause] Doo doo When it's all right and it's coming, we got to get right back to where we started. Love is good. Love will be strong. We got to get right back to where we started. Do you remember that day when you first came my way? I said no. Oh, my name is Ira Tel and I'm running for grand marshal at RPI. I think a lot of the festivities are fun and games and I think it's very important the fun and games part because it shows that the tooth student is not uh just a machine and he really is human but I think the the GM and PU elections as well as all senator and representative elections are the real uh well not force but the real talks behind GM week and that this is the individual students chance to really get out and voice their views on issues vote for the candidates that they feel are competent and I I think this year, perhaps more than before, at least what we're trying to do is communicate with the students so that they can make an intelligent decision. Yes, I do want this individual and no, I don't, but not go to the polls and say, well, I don't know either of them, so I'll put a check here. The next grand marshal is Ira Tequal 1,172 to 742. [Applause] Uh, cover up your balls. [Applause] Well, uh, it's nice to be up here and, uh, I just want to thank everybody that turned out at the polls today. You really did well with the 58% and, uh, it shows a lot of concern on the part of the students. And, um, I don't know what else to say except thank you very much. Well, we've shown you a lot of places and different activities, but what really makes RPI tick is people. We hope that somewhere in this film you've seen someone just like you. [Applause] [Music] [Music]