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Purpose of This Site: Rapidly ask questions raised by faculty, stimulate discussion on issues from benign to controversial, and share the pulse of those who respond. It is not a true survey, it is not social science, and it is not meant for immediate decision-making. Questions posed will not be changed or censored, except to avoid illegality and to adhere to Pulse community guidelines.

Who Runs Pulse? Mike Short and Peko Hosoi conceived of and maintain Pulse. It is not controlled or managed by the administration. It is not an official MIT survey, nor is it a part of MIT faculty governance.

Site Access: We use MIT Certificates to authenticate users, ensuring that (1) it's just MIT faculty, and (2) that each person can only vote once.

Mailing List: We use an opt-out mailing list to announce new Pulse questions. If you want to unsubscribe from the Pulse mailing list, please follow the directions here.

Privacy and Security - What Is Recorded, How, and for How Long? Only a non-reversible hash of your MIT email address, and what you vote for. No other data is recorded for privacy reasons. We automatically destroy these data two weeks after a question closes for additional privacy.

The Pulse website administrator could in principle reconstruct what a given person voted for within those two weeks, by passing their MIT email through the hash function and then finding matches in the voting record, but he pledges not to do this. It is very difficult for anyone without administrative access to the Pulse website and computer (including Pulse Keepers, who do not have access) to reconstruct who voted for what, and it becomes impossible two weeks after a question is asked.

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