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Letter to the community regarding President Barack Obama's visit

President will deliver address on America's leadership on clean energy
President Barack Obama
Caption:
President Barack Obama
Credits:
flickr, via creative commons

President Barack Obama will visit MIT on Friday, Oct. 23. Details of the event were described in an e-mail sent this evening to the MIT community from Kirk Kolenbrander, MIT's Vice President for Institute Affairs and Secretary of the Corporation. The letter follows.



It is my great pleasure to announce that on Friday, October 23, President Barack Obama will be visiting MIT, where he will deliver an address in Kresge Auditorium on clean energy after meeting some of the MIT faculty and students whose work centers on energy. The President will be joined by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick.
 
President Obama’s decision to speak about energy from our campus is a high honor — and one that can truly be shared by the entire MIT community. Students, faculty and staff at the Institute are helping to frame the national policy debate on energy, push the frontiers of energy research, and revitalize energy education. With our flagship energy initiative — MITEI — MIT is bringing real-world solutions to the most challenging problems in energy.
 
President Obama and President Hockfield both believe that the leading minds in science and technology must bring their talent squarely to bear on creating transformational energy solutions. We are thrilled to see MIT recognized as central to that historic effort.
 
Logistics of the Visit
A great number of us would love the opportunity to see the President speak in person. However, as is common with Presidential visits, seating for the address will be extraordinarily limited and will be by invitation only. The tickets MIT has for the event will be allocated in such a way as to be broadly representative of the Institute — and weighted to favor students. I am working with the deans of our five schools to extend invitations to a small number of students, faculty and staff. In order to allow as much of the community to share in this visit as possible, we will webcast the address live to various locations around campus.
 
Details on the locations of the webcasts, as well as any further information about the day of the visit, will be made available tomorrow at http://web.mit.edu/events/presidentialvisit.
 
The visit will begin in the late morning on Friday and end in the early afternoon. Of course, any Presidential visit to MIT involves security measures that may cause significant interruptions to the ordinary life of the campus. On Friday morning, please expect vehicle and pedestrian traffic to be disrupted on various parts of our campus. Those who are likely to be directly affected (as with the temporary closing of a parking lot or a part of a building) will be notified as soon as possible. Once President Obama has departed our campus, we will swiftly restore normal operations.
 
Friday’s visit will be a great source of pride at MIT for years to come. We look forward to sharing that special day with you all.

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