during my time at swat, and for quite some time past, i believe, swil meetings have been held on saturdays at noon in sharples room 4, which is the one by the cold cereal. this room is reserved on a yearly basis by talking to the people in the office in upstairs sharples. also, the people in the office at sharples need a list of people who are allowed to attend the meeting without paying. you should try to cover all bases with this list: local alums, quasi-local alums, alums who come down occasionally for dance events, and so on. anyone getting into sharples free will probably be required to have a bag lunch in evidence. and, obviously, anyone who's planning to eat needs to pay to get in. the people in the office also want a list of current students who attend meetings, and their meal numbers. we don't know why they want this, but they haven't done anything terribly evil with it in the past, so we just give it to them.
lots of things happen at meetings. first and foremost, we eat lunch. before, during, and after that, we discuss swilbusiness and non-swilbusiness.
needless to say, the people in charge of discussing swilbusiness and non-swilbusiness are the presidents. this means that presidents should plan to attend every single meeting, and should coordinate with each other so that there's always at least one president at every meeting. if there can't be, arrangements can be made, but they will probably involve somebody throwing a coup -- people do things like that.1 also, someone needs to take notes, so if there are two presidents, one can talk and one can take notes. if there is only one president, recruit someone else to take notes for the meeting.
i don't have any particularly good advice for how to run meetings so that they're efficient and fun. if anyone does, they should add it here. but, basically, meetings should be efficient and fun. in order to accomplish this, there should probably be no more than one big item of swilbusiness discussed at any one meeting. big things typically include voting on or discussing things that people care about, such as movies, t-shirts, and next year's presidents.
in order to make sure that this happens, the presidents need to have a good idea of how many weeks and how many big items of swilbusiness are left in the semester. this is particularly a problem in the fall, since movie voting and presidential nominations and elections have to be done, there's not a meeting thanksgiving weekend, and philcon weekend is usually right before then, and a lot of people don't attend the meeting philcon weekend. presidential elections really should be done the last week in the semester that everyone will reasonably be there. (note the use of the word ``reasonably'' -- there will probably be a saturday during finals week when many people will have left, and it is not reasonable to have a meeting at which stuff happens.) no really good reason that i can think of, but they always have been. it may have something to do with making sure all the frosh are dismembered so they can vote. movies should be done late in the semester, too, since, if they're not, people will keep thinking of suggestions for movies long after the deadline, and will be disappointed. so i've found the best way to do this is simply to count weeks.
spring semester is problematic because you have to do movies again, and you have to do the two major deadline-less spring items: bem and t-shirts. fortunately, bem doesn't really need an entire meeting for itself at any point. t-shirts do need a meeting, and it should be earlier than you think it should be. also, frosh stuffing and fall activities fair should be discussed briefly in the spring, if only to the extent of making sure someone will be around during frosh week who's willing to take charge of the former. and people like to set a tentative date for ren faire. the important item of late spring semester is senior remembrances, though. they should happen on the last week that non-seniors will definitely be around. (this probably means early during exam period.) nothing else should happen at this meeting. i can't stress this enough. senior remembrances take forever (as well they should - that's the point), and the college has gotten into the nasty habit of scheduling saturday afternoon exams.
things brings up another point: it is okay to subvert the natural order of meetings. for most meetings, especially early in the semester, it's good to structure things as usual: swilbusiness, dismemberments at the end of swilbusiness, then non-swilbusiness. but if there's going to be a long meeting, especially if it's going to be discussing something for which not everyone will want to stay, it's okay to shift things a little bit. specifically, a brief foray into non-swilbusiness for things of immediate import (usually activities taking place that weekend) is often a good idea. also, if important voting and dismemberments are slated for the same meeting, let people be dismembered first so they can vote. currently, people tend to count on meeting being over at 1. it seldom is, but it's good to keep in mind that people may expect it.
also, if it's at all possible to start the meeting at noon, do so. it won't be possible - don't kid yourself - but give it a try. at the least, the presidents should be in the room, with their food, by noon.
much of the business that gets discussed is the same from week to week, and many of the things that need to be told to frosh are the same from year to year. this means that people at the meeting will get bored. to combat this: first of all, the presidents should not do all the talking. people who are running events should discuss them, and other people can participate in discussion, but the presidents should moderate.
also, it is possible to include planned silly activities in meeting. we tried (with moderate success) bringing toothpicks and marshmallows for people to construct into sculptures. meeting attendees were not significantly quieter, but the sculptures were cool. jim moskowitz '88 suggests:
``At one meeting we passed a blank piece of paper around and had those present write a fold-a-story (sometimes called an Exquisite Corpse): each person would fold the paper so they couldn't read anything about the story other than the line of text immediately above, and would add one more line onto the bottom. At the end of the meeting we had a dramatic reading of the work, which eventually made it into BEM (as, I believe, ``Spaceship to Zone X'')
Another time we mandated that everyone at the meeting had to speak in rhyme (and we pulled it off for almost five minutes)
Still another time we handed out slips of paper to everyone at the meeting (around 25 people) and explained that everyone had been given a secret word, and that exactly one other person had the same word as they did. Everyone was to try to find their partner without others learning their secret word. The game would last for 48 hours, at which time everyone would hand in a sheet naming their partner and as many other names as they'd found. The game would be scored, 1 point for each other name found, minus one for everyone other than your partner who knew your word, and fifteen points for finding your partner. The team with the highest score would win a prize. The only rules for asking questions were: anyone could ask you a question about your word; you could choose whether to answer it or not; if you chose to answer it you had to answer truthfully, and the other person had to truthfully answer the same question about their word.
I believe we opened our first meeting with a reading of The Standard Disclaimer (now featured as Disclaimer #2 on my web page, http://kith.org/jimmosk)''