 |
|
wJun 12, 2007 | |
|
 |
I win at life. Dear Ryan, Kristy, and Chad, Are you coming to Madison at any point this weekend? I NEED TO PLAN MY LIFE, KTHX. I thought that this article was amazing. EMBRACE THE FAT. Although, I should talk, always reaching for skim milk and low-fat stuff. And a lot of good it does me! Oh, well. At least I'm walking a lot now that it's summer. Today, I had what was sort of the last meeting for planning the rules for the campus aspect of this fall's Halloween celebration, which falls on the same weekend as Homecoming. Some of you are new to my blog/LJ, so if you don't already know, on the Saturday night of Halloween in Madison, college kids from out of town come, the kids get drunk, and go mill around State Street. To get them to leave around 1-3am, the cops have had to use pepper spray in the past. I am the president of Anime Club, which meets on Saturday nights. Last Halloween, one week before Halloween, I received a list of nonsensical rules that we had to conform to, on our most important night of the year. Clearly, I was pissed - I sent off angry emails and angry voice mails, but didn't really hear back except that, "yeah but other people decided that, not us!" A few months ago, Louise and I went to a "listening session" about Halloween, at which the mayor's office, police department, etc. spoke. It was all on the city-aspect of Halloween, and how the city went about controlling State Street. The only students present at this meeting were Louise and I, and two reporters from the two daily campus newspapers. At the end, we had chairs in a circle, and eventually I nit-picked what somebody said and erupted into a speech about how stupid it was that we weren't allowed to provide an alternative event to the drunkenness of State Street. No one was really impressed, except for a few fellow students (okay, there were a couple more, I guess) who were on the Wisconsin Union Directorate. I told them to let me know if any more meetings happened. And one did. At which nothing happened. But I made my concerns known once more, learned more about how the decisions were made last year (poorly), and finally I got an email about a meeting that involved the Dean of Students, Chancellor's Office, UW police, Wisconsin Union, ASM and other various people who were going to get together and formulate rules as a group for this year, 2007. I went to the meeting, and about 5 follow-up meetings. In the end, the rules that my club will have to conform to are no different than usual, except that I'll have a sign-in sheet at the door so that I know who's in the room and whether or not they're affiliated with our student org, etc. I am confident that, had I not gone to this meetings, we would have been overlooked again. Sometimes, you just have to beat the door down until you get what you want. Bureaucracy sucks, but playing the game is pretty easy if you're willing to put the time into it, and can be blunt enough to make people very much aware of precisely what you need. I don't know if anyone else in Anime Club has realized how much time I've put into it, but in the end, I'm satisfied because I dug my heels in and refused to give in because I knew I was right. I wish I could do that more often, in every area of my life. Anyway! Tonight was nice. I went out with a few friends to celebrate Jaci's birthday, and brought Antoine. The bar Mickey's has a really nice atmosphere, and it was a nice day out today (except that I almost died walking from the Capitol to Bascom Hall, holy crap). Labels: anime club, friends scribbled mystickeeper at 10:15 PM 
4 comments 4 Comments:
Homecoming plus Halloween probably means they figure the student body will get trashed to the max either way, why not get it over with in one blow-out night?
By Mostly what I gathered it meant was that they want to curtail alcohol sales in the Union because of Halloween, but don't want to upset their precious alumni who want to come and drink beer because it's Homecoming.
By campus politics are funny. I'm glad you came out to Mickey's!!! It is my favorite bar- they also have darts and pool, both of which I totally suck at. Le sad.
By I can't go down that weekend. Plan your life. Lol See yah.
By |
|
|
|
|
|
