[Channel Open]
[Incoming Transmission from Psi Phi, Office of Communications]

Minutes

(08/27/2003)

Call To Order: 10:06 pm

Attendance:

• Ryan Woodrow (Captain)
• David Henderson (Chief of Operations)
• Elizabeth Koprucki (Grand Nagus)
• Laura Zadrozny (Constable)
• Kristen Zidon (Communications Officer)
• Jeff Hibbard (Faculty Advisor)
• Marisa Bonomo
• Joel Fried
• Andrew Kalafut
• Andromeda McGregor
• Aaron Nevitt
• Meaghan Porter
• Monica Prorok
• Don Steiner
• Kevin Zepp
• Guest: Brother Nathan

There were 16 attendees.

Minutes:

We had a party and elected new people. It was fun.

Committee Reports:

• Thirty-eight people signed up at the activities fair. They are all now on the mailing list. [Hi there!]
  • Marisa apologized for having the Anime club share the table with Psi Phi.
• Robert Ray (Psi Phi alumni and originator of the "No Report") is currently teaching math in Florida.
• Lyz says "Hi!" from THE Ohio State University. She will be seeing Howard Shore (LotR score) in March with the Columbus Symphony Orchestra. "I couldn't believe it; my jaw dropped and I called them right then and there for tickets!"

• The old T-shirts are in the office, but will be given to Elizabeth for safekeeping.
• There is currently no T-shirt committee. It is suggested that we put it together in about three weeks (at which point we will have newbies we might be able to give the job to).
• A random stranger stopped by at this point, determined this was the wrong room, and left despite encouragement to stay.

• Ryan has Season 2 of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
• Ryan is too busy to head the Movie Committee this year. He asked if anyone else would be willing to take over, and the question was met with a resounding silence.
• The issue was tabled.

• Confusion occurred over Laura's stripper.
• The table will be stripped and will no longer be mint green (or as David put it, "Jabba-the-Hutt green", and he showed us his Jabba the Hutt LEGO, which was a pretty good match for the table.) Joel recommended we send Kenny a card of apology, or perhaps a paint chip from the table.
• We still need various items, such as a couch and a VCR.
• We also need a new leader for the ORC, as Ryan will be too busy.
• The issue is once again tabled.

• The ERC is dissolved.

• As this committee is the responsibility of the First Officer and we have none, it was delegated to the First Officer's chair.
• The chair said, "No report" (with a little help from the Constable).

Officers' Reports:

• Learned the power of booties and elbows at self-defense class.
• Showed off bumper sticker: "There's nothing more dangerous than a [item deleted for security reasons] off woman! www.girlsfightback.com"
• Elizabeth and Kristen went to this meeting from an MCS meeting, and Joel said that an MCS member commented that they needed to learn self-offense to counter the self-defense we would learn.

• A tale of heartache and woe was told about being kicked out of her old house.
• She is currently living fairly far away.
• Because of this issue, she was going insane over the summer, but otherwise she's good.
• She also saw Pirates of the Caribbean twice.
• Addendum: She now has a job at WaldenBooks.

• Regarding the computer: There's a search underway to see how much the old computer (which used to run the http://www.psiphi.org/ website) would sell for, to determine a price.
• The new site is going well. There are many books and items up already, and more are on the way.

• As befits her station, she has spent the summer finding ways to make money. Notable among these are gaining consignments to sell jewelry (including some experimental work, such as jewelry made with unpolished rocks), and selling jewelry wholesale.
• She now has the treasury, which had $342.32.
• To this, David added two one-hundred-dollar bills (prompting Ryan to note, "It's all about the Benjamins), one twenty, and twenty cents. He then took back $5.06 in change [the David giveth, and the David taketh away], making a total of $215.14, for a grand total of $557.46 in the treasury.
• Top sellers at Amazon were Strange New Worlds VI (25 sold) and Voyager Companion (21). There were seven copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix sold (including one deluxe edition) and one audiotape of the same. Top money-gainers were Deep Space Nine, seasons 1, 2, and 3, for a total of $25.60, and Babylon 5, season 2, with $22.50. [Evidently items with numbers in their titles make lots of money.]
• The earnings so far this quarter come to $306.83, and half of this gives us $153.415.
• Amazon is giving us growth bonuses. This means that if you plan to order something expensive, try to order it so that it will be shipped as late in September as possible, when you (of course) order it through the Psi Phi site.

• No report. No First Officer, either.
• We miss you, Kenny!

• "Letters" was sung.
• Mail:
  • A pamphlet from the Smith Career Center [Learn to Shine Like a Star in Your Job Search!]
  • We actually received a piece of relevant mail (!) in the form of a magazine titled Alien Alerts. It calls itself "An Independent Forum For The New Voices in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Alternate History." Ryan, having looked through it, described it as a "glorified catalog," full of excerpts from a number of science fiction books.
• We have an office, AND it is in fact the one we painted last year!
• We also have a room for the meeting tonight. We can reserve rooms one at a time, but we won't be able to reserve them for a block of time until we're actually officially a club, which requires the signatures of four officers who are also Bradley students, which we won't have until we have a First Officer.
• Groups are not supposed to bring in food that hasn't been bought from the Student Center, which could affect the free food promised at the meeting next week. Because of this, we will be doing this as a potluck, with everyone bringing in an item such as a bag of chips, pocky, cookies, pretzels, candy, etc. So consider this a friendly reminder, current members: PLEASE BRING FOOD TO NEXT WEEK'S MEETING. Psi Phi will pay for pop [not soda], and will be sure to bring Pepsi for David, as well as some sort of blue beverage.
• Brother Nathan had to leave at this point. He complimented us, and Ryan mentioned the phrase Brother Nathan had coined earlier: "Jedis for Jesus".
• Ryan brought up his campaign promises to make the club grow and become better-known on campus.
• It was noted that, since Landon and Kenny had left, the apathy level had gone down. (Mention was also made of cj.) It was also noted that Joel was keeping the apathy level high.
  • Joel: "Hey!"
  • David [doing Joel impression]: "I would respond to that, but I don't care enough."
• Ryan continued, stating that "we all have friends" (later amended to "most of us have friends), and encouraged us to bring them to the meetings.
• Ryan suggested having a get-together for the season premiere of Enterprise and advertising it around campus. This idea met with approval, and plans were made to have this get-together in Neumiller on September 10 at 7:00 p.m. Don, Elizabeth, and Laura volunteered to make fliers for the event, and David suggested using the art for the cover of the novelization of the premiere for the poster, noting that it could be found from the Psi Phi website.
• Ryan also encouraged us to get more involved (for instance, being in events like the Shack-A-Thon or Homecoming). It was noted that this year's Homecoming theme was Bradleywood (a reference to Hollywood), which was ideally suited to Psi Phi.

Old Business:

• We need a new First Officer.
• Joel brought up the idea of creating a Constitution Reform Committee, or CRC (pronounced "Kirk"). This was tabled for two weeks, as there are already many things to be done at the next meeting.

New Business:

• We will have a pre-meeting party starting at 9:00 (with refreshments provided by current members), so we can spend some time socializing (*gasp* the s-word!) before the meeting and perhaps will be less likely to scare off new members.
• Marisa wondered why, since MCS, the Anime Club, and Psi Phi are so interwoven in many ways, they don't have some sort of interaction wherein they get together and have collective geek events. This would not be a merging of the clubs (because Marisa likes having power!), but perhaps would involve having the officers getting together to plan events. This might also involve getting together with clubs such as Quiz Bowl, Chess Club, the DDR group, and the astronomy club.
• Joel suggests an Annual Geek Day. The possibility of Geek Week is also considered, as is the thought of having it right after Greek Week, doing geeky equivalents of the Greek Week events, and using their advertising by erasing or crossing out the R. However, it is considered a good idea to perhaps start with Geek Day and build our way up to Geek Week.

Other Organizations' Announcements:

• There will be an Anime Club meeting on September 5 at 6:30, somewhere in Baker (exact room TBA--contact Marisa if curious). This is also Marisa's birthday, so bring pocky for her!
• The first MCS meeting occurred earlier on Wednesday and had about 23 members, which is more than showed up for the first Psi Phi meeting (conveniently ignoring the fact that the first Psi Phi meeting was for current members, whereas the first MCS meeting was for anyone interested). The next MCS meeting will take place next Friday.

Scifi News:

• Voyager will be coming out on DVD next year. TOS boxed sets are possible (but not confirmed) for 2005.
• Activision sued Viacom for failing to exploit Star Trek enough.
• MTV's Spider-Man has many sci-fi voices (e.g. Michael Dorn, Jeffrey Combs [who has played Weyoun, Brunt and other characters]).
• The Dead Zone has renewed for a third season. Filming begins later this year.
• Robert Picardo (the doctor from Voyager) has a recurring role on The Lyons Den on NBC.
• Alexander Siddig (Dr. Bashir from DS9) was a guest on MI-5 (on A&E) in September; Anthony Stewart Head (Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) was on the same show recently.
• Saturn Awards for 2002 went to The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (best fantasy film), Minority Report (best sci-fi film), The Ring (best horror film), Star Trek: The Next Generation (best TV DVD release), ET: The Extra-Terrestrial (best DVD classic release), The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: Extended Edition (best special edition DVD), and more.
• Former Trek producer Herb Wright has obtained the rights to Gene Roddenberry's The Questor Tapes, which was made into a TV movie in the 70's and was also part of the inspiration for the character of Data. Wright is looking to start a new series based on it (ideally not like Gene Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict or Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, though).
• Jeremiah season 2 begins Friday, October 10 on Showtime. It will also be the last season, as J. Michael Straczynski had problems with MGM (though the Showtime folks have been fine).
• Game Over, a computer-animated series, will have six episodes on UPN as a midseason replacement when one of the shows on UPN gets cancelled.
• The Harry Potter kids (or at least Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson) have said they will play the parts in the fourth movie.
• Mars is the closest to Earth it's been in a very, very long time. Longer even than Dick Clark has been alive.
  [Note: after the meeting there was an unofficial Psi Phi away team trip to the observatory, where we were able to see Mars through a telescope. The line to the main telescope rivaled those at Disney World, but fortunately there were other telescopes set up, through which we observed the red planet.]
• David has many nifty books and things to show off!
  • Do Comets Dream?, a ST:TNG novel
  • The Woad to Wuin and Tong Lashing by Peter David, the second and third books in a series starring Sir Apropos of Nothing.
  • The Farther Shore, a Voyager novel.
  • The Sundered, a novel staring Captain Sulu. This is part of The Lost Era, series of novels set between the first part of Star Trek Generations and the start of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
  • Star Trek Crosswords, a book with 50 ST-themed puzzles. David was unable to fully complete any of them so far without using reference materials, but has come quite close--for instance, one of them has only ten blank squares left. Since the book sold well, there will be a second one coming out in December.
  • Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, both the hardcover and audio versions.
  • As Stephen King is finishing up the Dark Tower books, the first four in the series are being re-released in both hardcover and paperback, and David has the first book in hardcover.
  • Daredevil and season four of DS9 on DVD (which you can order online at psiphi.org/dvd).
  • Genesis Force, another ST:TNG novel.
  • The final issue of Fray, a series of comic books by Buffy's Joss Whedon.
• David also has news on items coming soon:
  • Daedalus, an Enterprise novel, will be coming out in December.
  • New Frontier: Stone and Anvil will be coming out, along with a CD-ROM that contains all the previous books in the series in eBook form.
  • The DS9 anthology Prophecy and Change is coming out as well.
  • The novelization of the Enterprise's last season finale and upcoming season premiere, The Expanse, will be coming out in September.
  • A series of four Star Trek "signature editions" will be coming out. Pantheon, which combines The Valiant and Reunion, will be arriving in September. The Q Continuum will be coming out in October, Worlds in Collision in November, and Imzadi Forever in December. Each of these books will compile two or three original books.
• There is a game similar to the Choose Your Own Adventure books out now about D&D.
• Marisa brought up [item deleted for security reasons], and warns people not to say it. David agrees, saying that if we're going to scare people away, it should be for our geekiness and not for other reasons.
• Alien will be re-released at the end of October with additional footage.
• David has fliers from the activities fair that have information about sci-fi television shows and movies. You can get one from him if you're interested.

Adjournment: 11:05pm