1) Saying Aaron had no affiliation to MIT does not reflect the reality of the situation. MIT, at the time, had an open door policy. There were a lot of people who hung out at MIT -- accepted, participating, contributing members of the MIT community (often actively participating in running MIT classes or doing MIT research), who just happened to not be in a formal role (student, faculty, etc.). MIT has clamped down on that since, but it's a lot of what made MIT awesome in its heyday. The reason the MIT community was so offended by the MIT administration is because it was an attack by the administration on a member of the community.
2) Saying MIT took a neutral role is also false. JSTOR took a neutral role. MIT actively pressed charges.
3) As unreasonable as Swartz' actions seem in 2020 mainstream culture, they were not out-of-line with MIT culture of the time. People were encouraged to actively pushed boundaries, and property was a bit more communal. As an undergrad, I might go into a lab I had no affiliation with, and use equipment to build something. I wouldn't do that if it was indicated that wasn't okay, but for the most part, there was an expectation that if the Institute had a classroom no one was using, you could use it to run a community activity. If there was a lab with equipment you needed, unless there was a sign posted to the contrary, then you should just made sure you left it better than when you found it (and if it was something like a bandsaw, had the safety training you needed). I was trained on equipment in a several labs I had no formal affiliation with, and regularly used them for personal projects. This was 100% okay and everyone knew about this.
4) I don't have any reason to believe Swartz hid a laptop in a closet. He left a laptop in a closet. There were some things he did -- like spoofing IPs -- which were less transparent. But there were plenty of times I'd left equipment connected to random places on the MIT network for long-running network operations, never nefariously. It's an unlocked closet with an ethernet drop. No one in the community would think twice about using it for e.g. a large download overnight.
A lot of these things would not be done in 2020 MIT. Not a million years. The administration's handling of Swartz was part of this culture change, and a lot of MIT's soul died in the process. It has had a continuing chilling effect on the culture of the MIT community. What's really evil is that the MIT administration continues to uses Swartz as an example to intimidate community members into compliance with what it wants them to toe the line.