[3558] in APO News
UMOC Project Report
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Just_plain_lost)
Fri Nov 6 17:53:34 1998
To: apocrypha@MIT.EDU
Cc: apo-news@MIT.EDU
Date: Fri, 06 Nov 1998 17:49:11 EST
From: Just_plain_lost <ajw@MIT.EDU>
UMOC raised about $1700 this term. With the $500 we were giving,
that went to CASA (court apointed special advocates) who were kind
enough to send someone to receive it at the awards ceremony.
First off, some thanks are in order. I'm afraid I won't hit everyone
I should, because as I shall go into in a monment, I delegated a lot
more then is usual, and so I didn't see every detail of what went on.
But the ones I happened to notice:
First, to everyone who worked the booth, couting, setup, or takedown and our
manpower sub-PC, Sam. I didn't plan this long in advance, on the
general assumption that the chapter would realize that
we're all responsible for making our high profile projects work and
that the committee had things to do besides pestering people to sign
up. I'm very happy to report that people were extremely responsible, Sam
did a marvelous job, and the few times we had glitches in the lineup,
brothers and pledges filled in the gap without me ever having to get
involved. Thank you.
Melissa Dullea: Opaque Horizons. What more can I say? If nothing else,
she made sure we were notice. Also, chair of the publicity subcomittee.
Also to Melissa and Michael for counting $171 in change on the last
night of the contest.
Katie Calef: The drop poster needed to be done, so it got done- I don't
even want to think about how late she was up. Likewise with the LSC
slide. Thanks for coming through. Sorry you didn't have more help.
Publicity is a big job, and I hadn't counted on Opaque horizons when I
allocated people.
Anne-Marie: For being there to get things started everyday, for always
being on call, and, as President, for giving us the freedom to try new things.
Carolyn Jones: The heavy guns of the candidates sub-committee :) The one
to page me from across the city to tell me she was off to bash people
about the heads to get them to sign up. Kerb 5, our second placer, was
solely do to her initiative. Transparent horizons, while putting in a
fairly poor showing, needed to be there so she made sure it was. When
everyone insisted we NEEDED a human candidate, she got me one. Thanks.
Sara Picket: Also on the candidates sub-committee. We knew from the
start it would be hard going without a 'seed candidate' and she came
through with one. And somehow even made sure the milk postered the
first day of the contest. Thanks, little bro.
Brad Lichtenstein: We'd been after someone to sign the forms for the housing
decision for weeks. We finally tracked someone down willing to put
their name on the form half way through the contest and there was noone
left on the committee to handle it. Step in Brad. Dietrich's
campaign made close to half the money from the whole contest. Thanks.
Cathy Coury: Also on the candidate's committee. For dealing with kerb5
so Carolyn could keep bashing, and for always being there to lend a hand
with whatever the disaster of the moment was.
Chris Falling: For not killing me when I realized I'd forgot to mention
I needed him to do treasury two days before the contest started ;) Thanks.
Emily Marcus: Can't even begin to list the help she was. Officially,
she chaired the candidates subcommittee- a new position, and IMHO the
hardest job in the whole process. Her help in coordinating the search
for candidates, coordinating several individual candidates personally,
and generally holding things together was invaluable.
And of course thanks to Susama, Matt, Jill, and everyone else who
showed up to yell in front of the booth.
Now- how did it go?
The major new idea this time was that we would spend most of our
energy going out and trying to recruit candidates one on one (a
seperate subcomittee). With the odd exception (Steve Jens, Jen
Murphy, a couple others) we haven't had really psyched candidates for
years. It is a forgone conclusion that active campaigning is what
brought in the huge returns UMOC used to get. Our incentives: a) A
candidate committee who were willing to directly help people plan
campaigns. b) Money put aside for any candidate who wanted to buy
props, posters, or whatnot c) a $500 added 'seed' for whichever
charity won.
Did it work? I don't know. I was baragged through most of the week
with booth workers saying that people weren't giving because either there
was noone actively campaigning or because there were no human candidates.
The second assertion I find no proof of. I watched 'the milk of doom'
as represented by a person do an incredible job a few years back. I
watched Sherri picking up money for the UA this year by being a aggresive in
the hall- neither were representing themselves. On the other hand,
the two human candidates we did have came in last. Would a human running
for themselves actively beat a human running for something else actively?
I really don't think we have enough data to know. But the fact is that
the candidate's committee was trying from beginning to end to get a psyched
human candidate, and it just wasn't happening. Likewise with the seed money
from APO. I don't have any real reason to think it ended up making a
difference. No loss to us, that money was earmarked for charity anyway.
But if I had it to do over, I would hold out the money as a prize to
some sort of mid-contest ugliness pageant, so that it would directly
cause candidates to show up and campaign.
My analysis: The top two placers were, for all intents and purposes,
big screw candidates running big screw style campaigns. Nothing wrong
with that, but we might want to reconsider whether UMOC, as a concept,
is going to work rather then automatically doing it next fall. If we
do do it again, and if we want to do it the 'old fashioned' way (i.e.
human candidates dressing up) then I suggest that for one year we
suspend the rule that brothers can't run. People these days just
don't know how to do it anymore, and as anyone who's actually worked
in lobby 10 actively trying to stop people going by and get money from
them knows, it is VERY HARD. I think that having even a couple of brothers
out there looking hideous and showing people how it's done could make
all the difference. Conflict of interest you say? Sure. It's a
problem. But hacking rules is easy. There are half a million ways we
can insure they don't get preferential treatment because they're in
APO. It's no harder then what sorrorities do every rush when some of
their members need to disasociate so as to be impartial advisors.
Overall: We got the campus's attention. I know this if only because
of emails telling me that people were sick of hearing about UMOC left
and right :) Whatever we're going to do, next year is the time to do it.
I've made my suggestions, I leave it to the chapter's discretion.
Ari Wilkenfeld
UMOC '98 PC
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Ari Wilkenfeld
Department of Bioelectrical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
ajw@mit.edu, ajw4@po.cwru.edu
Home: 617-437-1043, Work:617-253-2475, Pager: 781-896-3166
Legged Locomotion Laboratory (AI building)
