Upsilon Pi Epsilon at Illinois Tech (UPE-IIT) welcomed its members back for the start of the Fall 2018 semester on September 5, 2018. Phil Hossu, President of UPE-IIT, presented new executive board members, including Vice President Mahmoud Kahack, Treasurer Saikiran Yerraguntla, and Secretary Anna Benson.

Being at an internationally recognized university, it may surprise some students that Illinois Tech does not offer foreign language classes. For one such group of students, this fact led them to find a different way to cultivate language during their time in college, and thus, the Global Languages Organization (GLO) was founded.

At a general body meeting on the evening of Friday, September 7, Illinois Tech Robotics (ITR) announced the beginning of an internal competition named Roombotics 2018: Iron-Giant Chef. In this competition, teams of five members each will use a modified Roomba autonomous robotic vacuum cleaner to complete a series of activities in a themed competition setting, competing in a number of categories.

In their 2018 student support rankings guides, education research publisher SR Education Group has announced that Illinois Tech has ranked among the top schools in two out of five categories based on supporting five student populations: LGBTQ+ friendly, disability-friendly, women in STEM, Christian, and economic mobility. Of those categories, Illinois Tech qualified for the Best and Most Affordable Online Colleges for Economic Mobility category as well as for the Best and Most Affordable Online Colleges for Women in STEM.

National Women’s Equality Day in the U.S. was on Sunday, August 26, so in celebration of this day, the Illinois Tech Office of Campus Life (OCL) and Student Health and Wellness Center (SHWC) hosted an afternoon of free food, information, and networking on the afternoon of the following Monday, August 27 in the Bog’s recreation area.

September 6, 2018 marked the first general body meeting of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) for the fall of 2018. The presentation began with a quick review of the facts that caused UNICEF to form and their values and aims. 17,000 people die every day, and most of these deaths are preventable and unnecessary. The organization hopes to help as many children and people in need as possible and counter the 3 million deaths happening across the globe every year due to easily preventable diseases and problems.

After the publication of a critical article in TechNews’s last issue and a subsequent meeting between the Illinois Tech Public Safety Department and newspaper staff, the campus security organization expressed a desire to alter some of its practices in response to the concerns raised in TechNews. Andy Yocum, the new Director of Public Safety, stated that Public Safety will no longer draw strict lines past which students are told not to travel

Illinois Tech’s Association for Computing Machinery - Women (ACM-W) had their first general body meeting on Tuesday, September 4, 2018 in their new ACM-W Lounge space located in the IIT Tower on the 10th floor. They introduced the 2018 executive board and discussed upcoming events, which includes a Women in Cybersecurity general body meeting on September 11 in Siegel Hall room 118 during the lunch hour.

Illinois Tech’s Muslim Students Association held its first general body meeting on Wednesday, August 29th. At the meeting, they connected with new first years, introduced the MSA shura (exec board), and talked about upcoming events. IIT MSA is the student organization that maintains the mosque in Farr Hall, near MSV, among many other things. 

In a very remarkable case of an Illinois Tech student organization gaining enough traction and administrative support to claim a permanent physical space on campus, Illinois Tech E-Sports (ITE), a student organization revolving around video game competitions, has collaborated with several key campus administrative bodies