From jgoldie @ sccs.swarthmore.edu Tue Nov 29 16:48:19 2005 Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 16:44:21 -0500 (EST) From: Jillian G. Waldman Reply-To: presidents @ swil.org To: SWILnews Subject: Of Movies and Luggage and SWILnews #9 == General Summmaryishness == * Movie Nominations happened. Watch for the Movie Voting email. * Presidential nominations, with platforms, are this Saturday at meeting. * To vote in the election on Dec 10th, you should be * enrolled at tri-co * a non-member at or by SWILmeeting on Dec 10th * We made an attempt at election reform (see below, if you care) * Rebecca Goldman is sentient. Also, she fits in Luggage. * SWILmovie on Monday, December 5th is Robin Hood: Men in Tights * Jillian is collecting money for Inauguration as of now. $3/person. == SWIL Business == Meeting was called to disorder at 12:10 pm. Jackie proposed a Saturday Night SWIL of Parlour games, as opposed to board games in Parlours. There was general approval. However, on looking at the schedule for the rest of the year, it was determined that there aren't really any free Saturday nights left in this semester, so it was modified to a "Saturday" Night SWIL, to take place on a Friday, Sunday, or sometime during Reading Week. Watch the fun list for more details. Mai needs to get her shirt from Lauren. If you haven't paid for/picked up your SWILshirt from last year, you should do that by the end of the semester, or else bad things will happen (to your SWILshirt). Andrew did something really weird which was supposed to be a rat impression. It is unclear why. Then he died and laughed evilly. "There are only two presidents left! Bwahaha!" People should submit to BEM. Jillian exhorted people to submit random things they had drawn, as she is pretty much out of artwork. Then followed movie nominations. Many movies were nominated. Jeff wrote them up on the board with a conveniently discovered piece of chalk. Forty-nine movies were nominated, unless I've miscounted. (Watch this list for the movie voting email.) When we'd finally run out of ideas, we held the long-put-off discussion of the procedure for SWIL presidential elections. Consensus was reached among those present. The idea of electing candidates individually and having the top n serve as president was proposed, but it was decided that this was too likely to lead to incompatible teams. We discussed the logistics of adding a "no confidence" mechanic to the election, whereby IN ADDITION to one's three regular votes, one could also vote "no confidence", indicating that one doesn't think ANY of the eligible tickets running should serve as SWIL president. These votes will serve as a referendum on whether the rest of the votes matter. If a simple majority of the voters votes "no confidence", we'll make the top joke candidate regent or something, and hold a second election by email over break. The tickets in this second election will be permutations of the serious candidates who ran in the first election. Any candidate has the right to choose not to run on any of the permutation tickets, however, which will eliminate that ticket from the running before the election. This is all somewhat written up on http://wiki.swil.org/index.php/SWIL_election. We also discussed the perennial problem of it being "too early to talk about the presidency", which makes it difficult to coordinate forming tickets in an informed way. The proposed solution is for the presidents to hold a meeting in September, to which all eligible parties are invited, and which all people interested in running should attend. All of these measures passed by vote. I don't believe there was any opposition, though that could have been apathy. We then voted that the frosh were not all one person, and ought to each, individually, attend three consecutive meetings. And that Jackie's computer Loki, while sentient, isn't a current student at Trico, and therefore can't vote. And that being netregged is equivalent to a funny feeling in your navel, but not equivalent to being sentient. Then we prepared ourselves for the Lottery and Non-SWIL Business, at which point Susan triumphantly entered the room, wielding a rather large piece of Luggage, to everyone's confusion. == Sentience Proof == Susan stated that, according to Discworld, Luggage, being made of sapient pearwood, is sentient. However, it can contain nonsentient things, as evidenced by the fact that none of Rincewind's articles of dubious clothing become sentient merely by sitting inside his Luggage. If sentient luggage contains nonsentient things, Susan asked, does that mean that nonsentient luggage must contain sentient things? There was hopeful, if somewhat mystified, silence. The Luggage's full name was Rebecca Mildred Goldman, and she was revealed to be unharmed by the hour or so she'd apparently spent inside of it. We asked "Do you feel sufficiently traumatized?" and challenged her to "Prove it!" She also claimed to be sentient, if that wasn't already clear. After some discussion of whether Rebecca was in fact River from Firefly, whether she could read Mai's mind (Mai was thinking of the number 7), and how much Andrew wanted to kill her for knowing his dirty secrets, we voted for trees. Trees passed, by an overwhelming majority. Then we voted on whether she was sentient because she's psychic sapient pearwood that Andrew wants to kill. Everyone raised their hands and made like trees -- this was taken to indicate assent. We dismembered her, taking a limb. == Lottery == Revan chose the bowl with lottery number "1", and won some kind of orange hoppy frog thing. == Non SWIL Business == Rocky Horror picture show was Saturday night, at Bryn Mawr. December 2nd is the Choir concert, singing Handel's Messiah in Lang. December 3rd and 5th is Jamboree, at which you can see the nearly-entirely-SWIL incarnation of Cantatrix. December 4th at 3pm in LPAC is the semesterly gamelan concert. We wished everyone a happy Thanksgiving, and we hope it was. Meeting was called to order at about 1:30 pm. == Attendance List of Cube^(n) == Chris "Long time no sea" Jager Emmanuelle "Orgo will not eat me" Wambach Mike "Living in |R^n" Karcher Malcolm "Fred the Llama is my God" Augat Revan "Danger" Williams David "Unspeakable Acts" Pupkin's proxy Meggie " " Ladlow Margaret "sinister figure" Cosgriff Jeff "[four? chinese? characters?]" Kaufman George "George 'George < George [George {George Dahl} Dahl] Dahl > Dahl' Dahl" Dahl Allison "not uninfallible" Barlow Katie "absent, and dead." Bates Jackie "Holy crap, the attendance list just attacked me!" Werner Eliza "Mark Handler, Ben Newman + a lot of alcohol" Blair Alex "Mark Handler, Ben Newman + a roomful of puppies" Pshenichkin Alex "... also, David Hasselhoff and a robot on something" Pshenichkin Rebecca "Think of the puppies!" Goldman Sarah "Bunny! Bunny!" Hartman Empty "third" Place Michael "Suddenly, you are run over by a grue" Noda finlay "boo hiss" logan Jerome "I'm finally at SWILmeeting!" Fung ~ Iron Curtain, on behalf of the Ironic Presidency