Update: A commenter let us know that MIT is paying $6,000 to help clean up the boat.

Pretty much everyone and their mom knows that MIT has a yearly tradition of dropping sodium off the Longfellow Bridge into the Charles. It was only logical that, when some volunteers cleaning up the Charles got burned by sodium, someone would put two and two together and look at MIT.

But a recent article in The Tech argues that it's only the media drumming up the connection and that "the well-known East Campus drop may not be responsible for the incident." Students say that the drop happened six days before the volunteers were burned, which is a long time for the sodium to go without reacting to anything. One student said that the drop was closer to the Cambridge side than to the Boston side, where the incident happened.

That doesn't mean MIT is totally in the clear. Fraternity Tau Epsilon Phi also drops sodium into the Charles, and their drop might have happened closer to the date when the volunteers were burned.

No wonder the Charles got so dirty if the frats and any old student can heave sodium in it! Is there anything that MIT students haven't thrown off a bridge? (Uh, don't answer that.) MIT is working "all charges alleged" hard and is saying that L'Affaire Sodium is now a state "police matter."

Screengrab of the sodium drop from Google Video.