MIT is a campus that has long been open to visitors. We depend on our interaction with visitors to fuel our energy, creativity, and community, while also recognizing the need to protect the physical safety of our community members.
This site—which is jointly sponsored by the Provost, the Chancellor, and the Executive Vice President and Treasurer—provides a series of guidelines and resources to assist those who invite visitors to campus, as well as those who wish to raise concerns. It also explains MIT’s prohibition on invitations to campus of Level 3 sex offenders, including the suggested process by which potential hosts screen visitors. These guidelines and resources were informed by a working group that engaged with the MIT community to develop its recommendations.
NOTE: For the purposes of this site, “visitors” is defined as those who are individually invited to come in person to the MIT campus and who are not currently enrolled as MIT students or hold current MIT appointments (whether staff, faculty, or visiting professors, researchers, scholars, or others). Invited visitors thus include a wide range of people, including but not limited to: alumni and retired faculty; donors and visiting committees; guests or collaborators of students, faculty, and staff; K-12 student groups; students from other colleges; speakers, performers, and artists; conference or event attendees; athletic facility members; and contractors, consultants, and vendors. It is not intended to cover those visitors who are not specifically identified but are implicitly invited to Institute events such as Commencement.
Furthermore, this site is focused on resources and guidelines aimed at protecting members of the MIT community as much as possible from an imminent threat of direct physical harm from a campus visitor. It is not intended to address other concerns about campus visitors, such as controversial speakers, performers, or protestors, or other forms of academic engagement, even those to which community members object or that might make them uncomfortable, except in instances where such a visitor poses an imminent threat of direct physical harm. Nevertheless, these tools may be useful in resolving other concerns about campus visitors that do not relate to threats of physical harm.