M is now the chair being apparently she seems to favour greater
separation between students and non-students.
Oh dear, cue another 'is this an attempt to restart the society
without us oldies' thread like last September.. Did M give any reason
It honestly isn't important. No matter how little or how much anyone
tries to help,
IFIS is doomed to repeat itself every 1 or 2 years. "Us
oldies" (including current 3rd years) would seriously do better to just
sit back and grin knowingly.
As part of the separation process M wants to set a new web site and
mailing list.
That's nice for her. Let me know where, and I'll point
www.ifis.org.uk
at it for her...
... but only if she wants me to, of course.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Advice for the new committee (not that they want advice from the evil
overlords anyway so I don't know why I'm wasting keystrokes):
* Change the name.
IFIS is a silly 30-yr old name and the union will
find it far less confusing if you call yourself "The Science Fiction
Society" anyway.
* Change the pub night again, after all, last year's committee are now
"oldies" too! In fact, why not break with tradition totally, and don't
even HAVE a pub night?
* If you DO have a pub night, change the pub. How about that pub right
across the A30? Or how about that pub on the actual green in englefield
green? Would be original, would make a change from the "founders coffee
bar" and would make sure the oldies don't know where to go to interfere
with the freshers.
* Change everything you can think of. The oldies are afraid of change
and the students will never notice. You need to shrug off those old
traditions.
* Tear up the constitution and start with a brand new one. The current
IFIS constitution is well over 10 years old, for goodness sake! It's
about time you got some fresh ideas in there, and the SU Clubs and Socs
officer will love you for it, so much that they may even double your
theoric this year (what's twice F-all, by the way?). Make a few
fundamental "deliberate mistakes" in your new one to see if anyone's
actually paying any attention. Vote it in really quickly without
consultation with the current members, just to make sure you get what
you wanted.
* LOADS of video nights, hey, why not 3 or 4 a week? Anything popular -
they don't even have to be sci-fi, as long as you get the paying student
members in, right? Your worth as committee should be measured not by the
quality of sci-fi you promote, but by your sheer volume of members.
That's where the money comes from too, so this one's really important.
* Don't worry about fresher's fayre this year, wait until next term. You
can always come in early next year - 2 days is plenty of time to prepare
absolutely everything you need.
* Put lots of really scary people on your stand at Fresher's Fayre, to
keep away the weirdos. You'll find most freshers, in their first week
away from home in this big new university, are not the slightest bit
nervous about this.
* Remember to ignore those wild speculative rumours that several people
every year have got jobs through their older
IFIS contacts. You'll be
quite capable of getting a job without that sort of help once you've got
your degree. It's not WHO you know, it's WHAT you know that matters.
* Any offers of free stuff (printing, websites, books, videos, DVDs,
CDs, comics, mailing-lists, equipment, light sabres, popular authors to
chat to, contacts, shelves, convention-organisation, jobs, funding,
storage, time, anything) from ex-members are to be ignored at all costs
- they're just an attempt to manipulate the society to their evil
intents. There is no such thing as philanthropy. RHUL itself does not
rely on philanthropic donations to survive from year to year, so why
should the Science Fiction Society? You can do it all better yourself
with your own budget anyway, particularly as you're going to get enough
theoric to invite J. K. Rowling, Terry Pratchett, and The Wachowski
brothers this year, just like Oxford, Cambridge, and even Imperial
College Sci-Fi Socs do.
* As soon as you have some freshers in, select next year's committee and
start training them up, because next year you won't be around to defend
the society against non-students, because you yourself will be a non-,
er, hang on.
* Better still, make sure that next year's committee are all in the 2nd
year when you vote for them, so they'll be in their final year when
they're on the committee. You know them better that way. I'm sure they
won't have considerably higher workloads than previous years. I'm sure
they'll still be able to fulfil the responsibilities of their posts.
* Make your AGMs as secret as possible. Hold some secret EGMs too if you
like. This may break several important SU rules and regulations, but
it'll let you hold meetings without any smelly old people turning up and
voting you out of power, even though they have no voting rights
whatsoever anyway. They're a totally disruptive bunch and it's better if
you just don't invite them. They'll never find out, and even if they
did, they wouldn't mind at all - you'd probably get the quiet, kind,
helpful ones turning up still, but the disruptive few would take the
hint that they're not wanted.
* In fact, make sure you've read the SU Clubs and Socs constitution.
Rules are generally there to be broken, but you may find something
invented by this year's temporary SU exec which you can use as
ammunition against whoever it is you're trying to fight.
* Start a revolution. Pass votes of no-confidence in "any other
business" for example. It's the only way to get anything done and the SU
will probably even respect you more for it and leave you to your own
devices.
* The democracy is over - they voted for you, now no more votes are
needed, you make all the decisions. Don't bother voting on things like
pub nights, video nights, let alone the videos themselves - just pick
your favourites. These votes would just be a complete waste of your
time, and the member's time, and people would end up voting for crap
films you've never heard of like "The Princess Bride" anyway.
* (Tip borrowed from gamesoc, ish): Sell the
library. No, honestly, you
want to do something different this year, right? It is by far your
biggest, possibly your only real asset, but it was all collected by the
oldies, after all. There's tens of thousands of pounds worth of books in
there, many stuffy old "collector's items", but I'm sure you could sell
them for, say, 20p per book and make enough money for an end-of-year
barbecue for a small clique of you. Keep the best books yourselves if
you like - they're yours! If there's any money left over, you can use it
to start a new
library of books/comics/videos/dvds/cds of this year's
latest hot fad.
* If you can't sell the
library, make sure you AT LEAST get the SU to
store it in boxes in the back of various damp, dusty SU cupboards where
nobody can read them - hopefully they'll slowly go mouldy, someone else
will find some of the boxes and dispose of them for you, because the SU
changes exec every year too, and next year's exec won't have a clue what
all these boxes of crap are for.
* Never, ever, ever, accept any advice whatsoever from anyone who's been
around longer than 1 year (including THIS advice). After all, they can't
possibly have seen it all happen before, let alone ten times. This year
is going to be DIFFERENT, right? Just like all the rest :-)
* Remember, M (james bond's boss, right?), Fred, Lizzie, and K will all
turn into aliens themselves in 12 - 24 months, and last year's committee
are about to mutate even sooner!
* Regardless what you learn this year, never pass on your helpful advice
to next year's commi... oh.
Nick... Who's probably just alienated himself from every other
ex-committee including his own ;-)
Nick Waterman, Alien, Cronie, Interfering old
IFIS Evil Overlord
nick-sig@
www.ifis.org.uk/
TWINS BORN! http://noseynick.net/twins/
