[225] in APO News
convention experience
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (vogler@Athena.MIT.EDU)
Mon Jan 4 11:27:50 1993
From: vogler@Athena.MIT.EDU
To: apo-news@Athena.MIT.EDU, apocrypha@Athena.MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 04 Jan 93 11:25:17 EST
APO National Convention or How I spent my Christmas vacation
This is an attempt to relate my time at Nationals. I think I had a rather
unique experience among AX brothers, so it might prove interesting, though
probably not very useful. As some of you know, my undergraduate chapter was ZB
at Virginia Tech. I spent most of convention with them. Counting alumni such
as myself, ZB had about 60 brothers there, so there were lots of old friends to
see.
I didn't go to any workshops: I couldn't seem to get motivated (or get up).
I helped a little with packet stuffing the first day, and on Sunday I spent
a couple of hours in a subway station on Dave Cho's project to guide brothers
to the hotel. I also didn't eat at either of the banquets. From what I
hear, I didn't miss much.
A lot of things went very well with convention. I joined ZB for the roll call
on Sunday, but AX's song was way too complicated for my feeble abilities, so I
just took pictures. The dance on Monday DJ'ed by BU was awesome too, though
I didn't make it all the way until 4 am. I met a lot of brothers from other
chapters, especially UVa, Maryland, and Penn State.
There were a couple of flops too. The Karaoke Night sucked bigtime as far as
I was concerned. Rap or elevator music would have been better in most cases.
The other snaffu was parties, or rather the hotel's response. What kind of
drugs were they on when they brought 2000 college kids to a convention and then
didn't do everything possible to protect the normal guest from us. Problems
were inevitable. The earliest the party ended in the ZB suite was sometime
after 3. Even though we tried to keep the noise down, I know we disturbed at
least one person who believed 11:30 to be a reasonable hour to quite down.
Another major offender was Nu Mu of Duluth who came prepared with 180 cases of
Pigs Eye beer. I have no idea how they got them into the hotel. On Wed., it
looked like they might address the problem by opening the conference rooms on
fourth floor to Duluth, Auburn, LSU, and Texas (and their Rho Zone punch).
This lasted for a while, but after about an hour and a half, they shut them
down too. It's obvious that many people, myself included, came with the goal
of having a good time. Even if that wasn't your main goal, there was still
plenty of time for most people to enjoy themselves.
The highlights for me are pretty easy to pick out. Seeing my friends at Tech
for the first time since August was the greatest of the them. ZB winning
the service award for the second time in a row was also very satisfying. The
Toast Song after the awards banquet was an incredible event. Finally, ringing
in the new year with my brothers was the best way to begin 1993.
I hope that all of you got something worthwhile out of Convention. Thanks to
Crystal and Malinda for visiting the ZB suite, though I'm not sure you saw us
at our best. I don't know if I'll be in San Antonio in 1994, but I'm sure it
will be a great convention.
In brotherhood
Tracy Vogler
AX historian
ZB alumnus
