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January 25, 2006
Crusty Punks and the Age of Consent Pt 1
I think it was 1998; my friends and I decided that it was time for us to start milking our school for activity funds.
See, the school charged every student about $50 a semester for "activities." They then gave that money to student organizations to spend when they organized activities. You know, like a homecoming parade through our 2 block-long campus before a volleyball game, since didn't have a football team. Or snacks for the meetings when concerned (read: grade grubbing) students got together to talk about whether the school should start giving +/- grades instead of the (potentially GPA damaging!) traditional A B C D F system. Or bringing De La Soul to the campus home to students more familiar with Hu Qin than turn-tables.
After De La Soul made its largely ignored appearance rumors swept the mostly parking lot covered campus that the activity fund was low and the school was considering raising the fee the upcoming semester.
"Activity fee? Who cares. I don't pay that."
"Yeah you do, it's included in your tuition." Some know it all frat boy in my calculus class said. "That stupid De La Soul concert sucked up the fund and now we might have enough for a formal this semester."
"Formal?"
Mistaking my shock that there were people so unhappy with life they felt they needed to have a "formal" coupled with the realization that I was paying for it the frat boy continued as if I was a kindred spirit. "Yeah. That concert cost over $35,000. And Union council is planning another concert for next semester."
"Who?"
The frat boy went on to explain the inner workings of the student organization finance system. It was then a light went on.
I'd start my own student organization.
My roommate burst my bubble later on that day, "You need other people in your student organization. Otherwise it's just you. And you're not even organized."
"Well you'd join, right?"
"Ok. So two of us."
"Dude, it'll be so punk rock." Everything was "punk rock" that year. It all started when, in the first week I, making fun of my roommate's use of the word, wrote it in huge letters on our dorm room ceiling. Ok, I was a little drunk, too. "We'll get the school to give us money and we'll give it to our friends and stuff."
"How would we do that? We can't just give away money."
"We'll have concerts. With punk bands, you know. We'll get our friends bands to play and pay them for it."
"I don't think so. No one here is into punk rock."
"We can get Stef, and Dan is always singing Descendants songs. That's already four of us."
"And there's that one Christian punk rocker guy. That's five."
"Four. I don't like that guy."
"I thought we're going for numbers. We don't have to like them."
Soon we decided members of our organization didn't even have to like punk rock. First, there were some people that lived in our dorm that would join. They were Creed fans, but they would never stand in the way on our path to world domination. Then things slowly started evolving. We decided our membership could be any students' names we could get our hand on.
"We'll have a meeting and if people show up and sign their names they're members -- All we need are names."
We held a meeting, offered FREE PIZZA! And watched our membership rise.
Posted by calculatoronfire at January 25, 2006 09:39 PM
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send me your address and I'll send you a Valentine. I promise that's all that will happen.
Posted by: molly at January 27, 2006 08:11 PM