This Week at College: Harvard Gets a Mom Away from Mom

Introducing our weekly round-up of the news of note from Boston’s college campuses. Each Friday, we’ll be bringing you a collection of quirky tales from our many fine institutions of higher learning, because, hey, it’s the greatest four years of somebody’s life right now. Might as well find out what’s making it so great. First up, Harvard’s mom away from mom, BU’s food truck endeavor, and a new buzzword from Jack Dorsey.

Harvard gets a Mom-away-from-home vending machine A Harvard alum’s company is supplying the school with vending machines that dispense college kid essentials like feminine products and condoms, in an effort to keep the kids from taking late-night walks to CVS. They’re calling it the Momba, to suggest that it provides instant care packages as would a mom, which sort of has us thinking of Rosie, the Jetsons robot. No word yet on whether the vending machines will call the police to file a missing persons report after you forgot to return its calls for 24 hours because you had other things to do. Sigh. [Crimson]

BU gets a food truck. Boston University is looking to be on trend by opening its own food truck. Dining Services Director Barbara Laverdiere tells The Daily Free Press, “Obviously food trucks are very popular now across the country. Hopefully students will be happy to have another venue at which they can use convenience points.” We’d think they would be, if ever the school gets the permitting. Plus, perhaps it’ll boost the neighborhood in the Forbes hipster ratings, which take food trucks into account. Now there’s a goal. [Daily Free Press]

In sadder BU news, former longtime BU President John Sibler died this week at age 86. The Globe had a detailed obituary. [Boston.com]

Jack Dorsey hits up MIT Twitter and Square cofounder and all around nerd-celebrity Jack Dorsey spoke at MIT this week while on the hunt for new talent. He seems to have spoken a lot about “revolution” (bad news for those of us who cringe at tech-entrepreneur buzzwords but good news for those of us who want to wordlessly pay for Starbucks.) [BostInno]