MIT prank no joke to authorities

Equipped with metal tools and engineering know-how, they crept into the MIT Faculty Club late one night. They pried open a wall panel, gaining access to crawl spaces in the ceiling and walls. And then the alarm sounded.

The intruders that October night were actually three students at the tech-savvy university participating, they say, in a time-honored tradition of elaborate pranks.

In most contexts, such pranks could be considered criminal, but at MIT they are called hacks and are cause for celebrating student ingenuity. Offending students have rarely received any punishment sterner than small fines or community service.

But in this case, the three students face up to 20 years in prison if they are convicted of felony charges of breaking and entering and trespassing.

Charged on Oct. 23, Kristina Brown, 19; David Nawi, 29; and Matthew Peterson, 19, are due back in court on Feb. 28, when they will seek to have the charges dismissed.

The students contend there is a tacit understanding at MIT that hacks -- the most adventurous of which are memorialized on the school's official website -- are tolerated as acts of brainy irreverence on a campus where pushing scientific boundaries and defying conventional wisdom are held up as ideals.

An MIT spokeswoman declined to comment last night, saying the case was a criminal matter. MIT Police refused to comment.

Regarding the students' efforts to have the charges dismissed, Corey Welford, a spokesman for the Middlesex district attorney's office, which is prosecuting the case, said yesterday: "We will respond to them in court."

Prosecutors often take victims' views into account when deciding how to proceed with cases, but Welford would not comment on whether prosecutors had discussed the case with MIT officials.

The three students have admitted that they were in the faculty club building that night, but said they believed that student pranks were generally allowed.

"To my knowledge, MIT does not prohibit or restrict hacking, other than to restrict access to certain locations, such as rooftops or elevator shafts," Nawi, a student in the Advanced Study Program who also has an engineering degree from Princeton, said in an affidavit attached to the dismissal motion. "I have been told that MIT recognizes hacking as an integral part of student culture."

Over the years, MIT has been the site of some far more elaborate hacks involving a firetruck, a cannon, and a giant balloon, with many of the stunts proudly documented at hacks.mit.edu.

Though the late-night invasion in question was lower profile than the greatest hits documented on the website, lawyers for the defendants say it was still a bona fide hack, MIT style.

"On the night in question, they were engaged in a longstanding tradition among MIT students of after-hours exploration of the university campus," said a statement issued yesterday by the three lawyers representing the MIT students. "They had absolutely no intent to do any harm.

"They hope and expect that after conducting a thorough review of the facts, MIT will reach this same conclusion," the statement said.

According to a police report, two MIT campus police officers responded to a burglar alarm set off at 1:50 a.m. Oct. 22 on the sixth floor of the faculty club. The officers searched room by room, floor by floor, until reaching the sixth-floor kitchen. There, they saw one of the intruders, the report said.

"I asked what he was doing in that area, and he stated he was looking around," wrote MIT Police Officer Sean Munnelly. "Then two other people came out from behind him."

After frisking Peterson, police found a sharp metal object, the report said. "He proudly identified the metal object as a slide, to slide doors open," said the police report. He also had a multiple-use tool on his belt.

"None of them could give me a legitimate reason for being in the Faculty Club Kitchen," Munnelly wrote.

Police said that Brown had been caught trespassing in restricted areas twice before and had been referred to MIT's disciplinary dean for punishment, but no criminal charges had been filed, the report said. The report did not detail the prior episodes.

In addition to the two charges facing his compatriots, Peterson was charged with possession of burglary tools.

In the motion to dismiss the case, the students say that nothing was damaged or stolen from the faculty club. And they suggest they were following understood hacking rules.

"[T]he students were found in the Faculty Club kitchen at a time when hacking commonly takes place, after midnight Saturday night," says the motion. "This coincidence cannot have escaped the notice of MIT police."

Nawi, in his affidavit, said the building was not locked that night, nor were there any signs indicating restricted access. He said the three simply took the elevator to the sixth floor.

But the MIT officers said that elevator service to the sixth floor had been stopped, as is the case when the faculty club is closed. The officers had to take the stairs from the fifth floor, according to the police report.

Raja Mishra can be reached at rmishra@globe.com.