Seems like there is a missing component: Frowning. When the lowest mood available is "calm," it feel like it's missing half the picture...
That's exactly what I thought. I stood there for half a minute looking incredibly silly trying to make it frown. My guess would be that frowns are more subtle and harder to detect.
Cute idea... but really this isn't measuring MIT's mood, but it's sociability. When people are alone, they tend to have a neutral expression regardless of their mood. This is also true in public but non-social situations like sitting on a bus or subway. Conversely, in North American culture anyway (and probably others, especially many European cultures), people tend to smile when they're talking with one another -- again, regardless of mood.
Theres another one in the stata center. Seeing it alone made me smile :)
I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend to be one of those deaf-mutes
I assumed that this was going to be gathered from twitter and facebook statuses, then shown as an overall average of the current mood.