Blue tape
Sun Sep 13, 2009 11:08 (UTC -5)During my freshman year, I was hanging out with some members of Gator Freethought after a meeting, and I mentioned my plan to start an Esperanto club. The president of Gator Freethought offered me a word of caution.
It’s a lot of work to start a club, he said. “There’s a lot of red tape.”
One thing that student organization presidents have to do is attend a training session at the beginning of each year. They mostly just go over the rules that you had to go over yourself to renew your club’s registration a week or two ago. But, in any case, there are a few morsels of new information.
As I found out at a training session on Wednesday, one of the new rules for this year is that organizations can bring “outside” food into meetings as long as it doesn’t have to be temperature controlled. Previously, clubs had to rely on the student union’s catering service for all their food needs. (Their pizza is the worst I’ve ever had, so that’s a welcome change.)
The woman explaining the new rules mentioned as an afterthought that we couldn’t bring non-Pepsi products to meetings.
Wait, what? Yeah. You should have heard the uproar in the room.
Apparently, since UF has a deal to sell Pepsi everywhere on campus and tout it as the official soft drink of the Gator Nation or whatever, student organizations—which, as the presenter stressed in another part of the program, are not part of the university—are bound by that sponsorship deal as well. Capitalism rears its ugly head, stifling consumer choice and common sense.
Where does it end? Are Coca-Cola’s Hi-C juice boxes out of the question? If I want to bring oatmeal to a meeting, does it have to be made by PepsiCo’s Quaker Oats? How much money is the university getting from this stupid deal, and could it be had without making personae non gratae out of those who have the good sense to spit in the face of its stifling provisions?
Since then, I’ve noticed that the ubiquitous Pepsi machines around campus say “Thanks for Choosing Pepsi.” Some choice we have, all right.
So, the university gives everybody some free web space. Not many people know about or take advantage of the offer because it’s not 1996 anymore, but I thought I’d put my own space to good use.
As viewed from a campus IP address (and forwarded to my screen by SSH tunneling):
And from off-campus:
A real ’50s instructional film: Dating: Do’s and Don’ts. It’s in color, too! (Part of the film is missing, hence the lack of an introduction.)
Famous films edited down to (about) five seconds: 5 Second Movies.
And finally, I know this site isn’t new, but I’ve never linked to it here before: Will It Blend?
2 comments
#1 by Luke: Sun Sep 13, 2009 12:01 (UTC -5)
Only you would use your webspace to such a purpose. I am impressed. I’m thinking about using mine to provide a weekly commentary on Bill O’Reilly, who I admire as one of the greatest in-the-closet comedians. That’s not to say I think O’Reilly is in the closet, though I have no way to know. I usually hide my bookmarks toolbar when I take screenshots, but since you didn’t, may I ask what Doomsday is? It sounds awesome.
#2 by Jordon Kalilich: Sun Sep 13, 2009 14:33 (UTC -5)
Hopefully I’d be the only one to use my web space!
The Doomsday bookmark is to a local copy of my Doomsday Date Calculator. As you can see, I bookmarked it a while ago, hence the old favicon.