- Carl Peaslee on Summer Stories Series: "The form is fixed now. It is at the bottom of the post...."
- Kelsey Brown on Letters to Freshmen: The High School Sweetheart: "I believe what she meant was that if you are consumed by your relation..."
- missed the point on Letters to Freshmen: The High School Sweetheart: "I think my name says it..."
- in a relationship on Letters to Freshmen: The High School Sweetheart: "why can't someone feel satisfied with their relationship and be happy ..."
- Jillian on Pimp My Campus: "oooh, new walkway! so excited to see it when I get back!!..."
Should We Fund 5C Parties?
This past weekend many CMCers were stuck between a wedding and a hard place.The Wedding Party, ASCMC’s “flagship” party of the year, was this past weekend in North Quad from 7:30 PM to 1 AM. It was our most expensive, most elaborate, and riskiest party of the year. ASCMC was trying something that had never before been attempted at CMC in our time here — a formal dress code at a Saturday night party, professional catering, a wedding band, a balloon guy, and John Faranda all under the same tent roof.* We even had a couple mock weddings. (Meanwhile, the CMS Basketball team was busy shaming Pomona while winning the SCIAC Championship in Ducey Gym.)
The same night, the Pitzer Student Senate was throwing their biggest party of the year up on their campus. They brought in a great mash-up group, Super Mash Bros, which cost them $5,000. There were some other expenses and the whole party was probably close to $10,000. I’m sure it was a lot of fun. I wish I could have been there.
A few weeks before the Pitzer party, ASCMC got an e-mail from one of the organizers of the party. In the e-mail, the girl, a Pitzer freshman, asked ASCMC to help fund the party. After a few more e-mails, the same girl came to request money from the ASCMC Senate. The ASCMC Senate wound up giving $200 to the party (the Senate budget is ~$10k for the whole year and receives a few similar requests a week). Andrew Cosentino added another $300 from his SAC fund, bringing the total contributed from ASCMC to Pitzer to $500.
To put this in perspective, $500 is a substantial amount for ASCMC to contribute to Pitzer for a party that relatively few CMCers would actually attend. Pitzer has given ASCMC less than $1,000 this year and we gave them $750-1,000 for Kohoutek alone.The Super Mash Bros contribution of $500 was given based on the premise that CMC students would not be charged or turned away from the event. We didn’t anticipate many students going to the Pitzer party over the Wedding Party, but we wanted to make sure students had another option anyway.
The day of the party, some organizers of the party at Pitzer contacted ASCMC again. They wanted more money — the party had gone over budget and they would be in debt by over $2,000. They asked for another $500 from multiple people within ASCMC.
When they unexpectedly called me, I was changing into my suit before hurrying back to help set up the Wedding Party an hour before the dinner started. I was rushed, stressed, and wearing 48 hours of Las Vegas (what a week). The conversation went something like this:
Pitzer Girl: Hey, this is *****, we need $500 more for the Pitzer party tonight.
Me (confused): Uh, who told you to call me?
Pitzer Girl: Andrew said he couldn’t give any more money from his fund so we’re calling you for $500 more.
Me: …but we gave you $500 total. The party is tonight. It’s not reasonable for us to make a split judgment for $500 more right now, I’m sorry.
Pitzer Girl: If we don’t get $500 more from ASCMC, we won’t let CMCers in. Or we’ll charge them at the door.
Pause.
Me: …Oh?
Pitzer Girl: Yeah sorry, that’s the way it is.
Me: Alright then.
Pitzer Girl: ?
Me: We don’t negotiate with terrorists.
Epilogue: We took back the initial $500 commitment and married some people instead. Pitzer charged CMC students $5 each. Few CMCers showed up. Definitely not 100. They would have been better off with our $500 had they cooperated. (And I’m reminded of my Game Theory midterm…)
This account of the story is obviously supposed to make me and ASCMC sound cooler than we really are, but let’s ignore that. The real point is, Pitzer really tried to extort ASCMC. Not cool, Pitzer. If we weren’t like the America of the Claremont Colleges Consortium (or like Rome when Romans were super chill and running the world) and sly econ wizards (interesting fact: 11/18 of ASCMC’s Board are econ majors), we might have just given into Pitzer’s demands. But not on our wedding day. Not in America.
*Props to Andrew Cosentino ’11 for coming up with the idea for the Wedding Party and executing it beautifully. Also credit to Ben Kraus ’11 and the rest of ASCMC for help with planning and execution. I sincerely hope ASCMC’s next Board of Directors makes even bigger moves.
More posts by Josh »
Josh Siegel
In late 2007, Josh started the website CMCForum.com. It has since grown into this fine publication today. He is a senior at CMC and is not looking forward to graduating, after which he will move back to NYC and take over.
Recent
27 Comments
2010-03-05
10:46:40
Good job, Josh, for not succumbing to those......people.
2010-03-05
10:58:46
I am sure you had a lot to say here, Josh. I could barely get past that picture of what is a clearly Elmo doing something naughty. Maybe he plans on doing that to Pitzer.
2010-03-05
11:54:47
When I was about 3 years old I was on "Sesame Street" and Elmo spilling his seed is a decidedly traumatizing image/impressive showcase of balloon craftsmanship
2010-03-05
12:58:46
Hahhahaha oh god that hat... That image is now branded in my head.
2010-03-05
14:09:52
Haha. You should have told her that freshman should be seen and not heard.
2010-03-05
15:55:51
Well said, Josh. I've never seen Senate like it was the night they asked for more money.
Any chance they need someone to finance their debt at a nice interest rate? ;)
2010-03-05
16:24:56
I distinctly remember someone motioning for 1 cent.
2010-03-05
17:42:49
First of all, Pitzer College and its student body didn't try to extort you. I despise generalizations. Pitzer Student Senate didn't even try to extort you. This event was put together primarily by the one freshman that you speak of. ONE PERSON did the majority of planning, booking, and fundraising.
So although I agree that the circumstances were questionable and going back on one's commitments to not charge is not good policy, there are various reasons that could be considered for why this happened.
I think it's much more accurate to say that the situation came out of a freshman organizer in distress rather than a "terrorist" like plot to extort money.
Freshman students are just as important as any other students in the consortium, and I question the purpose of this article making generalizations about the funding process or the situation being written of.
Freshman are the future of each respective College. They are not to simply be seen and not heard; rather, they should be commended for attempting anything in this daunting community.
It was messy, but the event is over. This piece doesn't seem to be about the question of "Should We Fund 5C Parties?" but instead seems to take a bad situation and make one of the parties involved in the situation look even worse.
2010-03-06
02:44:50
What is Pitzer?
2010-03-06
03:40:41
@Jon Rice PZ,
"ONE PERSON did the majority of planning, booking, and fundraising."
I thought that party cost quite a bit of money, which of course must come with some serious responsibilities.
That said, are you saying that the freshman girl did most of the work AND the rest of your pitzer group were pretty ignorant about what was going on behind the scenes, including her attempt to *extort* money from ASCMC? There was no communication whatsoever among the organizers?
2010-03-06
18:48:02
I am not going to speculate on what happened within this situation, and cannot answer the questions you have posed.
However, given the last minute nature of the requests, I would make the assumption that there was limited communication between the various organizers at the last minute. What I can say from what I know is that the freshman in question DID do a large amount of the planning for the event. This does not make the others ignorant.
I don't know what happened past my assumptions, and I do not claim to. However, no one has addressed the point that this was not PITZER extorting money. Furthermore, you state that "your" (implying my) pitzer group was ignorant.
I did not plan the event. It is not my Pitzer group. I am simply speaking at a Pitzer student, who also happens to sit on Student Senate.
I emphasize that this article is slanderous agains the student body of Pitzer and the Pitzer Student Senate. I believe that before posting an article like this, conversations about such allegations should have been had with the accused. I also stand that the title of this piece does not accurately reflect its substantive content.
2010-03-06
19:17:55
I realize that "Pitzer" didn't do anything; student representatives of the school did. ASCMC reps spoke to more than one person throughout the process.
A significant purpose of this post was to show how a party should not be organized, especially in relation to 5C communications. Your point that a freshman did the majority of the work and planning just furthers that argument. The rhetoric about freshmen being the future of the world is amusing, but irrelevant. A smart organization (that isn't also falling apart) would never put that much responsibility in the hands of someone with no experience without enough help and oversight.
2010-03-06
19:16:30
To get this on topic:
No. 5C parties shouldn't be funded by CMC. CMC should only fund CMC and Mudd parties.
End of discussion.
2010-03-06
20:46:29
Makes sense, seeing as CMC and Mudd are competent to host parties that are 1) free for all attending and 2) well-budgeted.
2010-03-06
19:33:56
I agree. I've never been to a well organized Pitzer party. Parties at CMC can suck, especially in the auditorium, but they generally are better than the rest of the 5Cs, the exception being Mudd. However Mudd doesn't throw enough parties for how good they are at it.
Some 5C party algebra:
5C party awesomeness = (party Quality x party Frequency) / (number of students that care about Pitzer related things + distance from Collins dining hall)
CMCpartiesAwesomeness > partyAwesomeness (Pomona + Pitzer + Scripps)
MuddpartiesAwesomeness > partyAwesomeness (Scripps + Pomona + Pitzer)
CMCpartyAwesomeness = MuddpartyAwesomeness
2010-03-08
22:44:47
I would have to say that Quality> Quantity.
2010-03-07
08:26:53
Given that this is CMC and all, it's hard to tell if that last post is a real "make lots of money" scheme or a scam! lol
2010-03-08
13:33:23
ben kraus should have won president; he would have actually walked the talked and gotten shit done.
next year is going to be disaster with tammy phan.
2010-03-08
14:23:25
What's with the hate? Tammy was an excellent Junior Class President if I can say so myself. Monte Carlo rocked, and regardless of whether one thinks it was better at the Tennis Courts than in Collins, she put a lot of time and hard work into it. She is at minimum a very dedicated person. Plus, there were those Junior Class events and parties. Again, even if you did not particularly enjoy them, it shows her dedication and commitment to hearing out other students. I don't know Ben well, and his speech was great, but it is one thing to say Ben would have been a good president, and it is quite another thing to say that Tammy will be a bad president. I think both would have been good. I'm excited to see what she does.
2010-03-08
15:26:30
The way I see it, the person with the most votes should have won the election. And that's exactly what happened.
2010-03-08
18:03:05
any doubt that this is ben?? wrong thread sweetheart.
2010-03-08
23:39:28
ben kraus got the 14 meal plan & he was working on getting cable in the dorms. tammy was assigned to put on monte carlo, it's not like she thought of something herself. (props to cos on the wedding party).
also if you listened to her speech carefully you would have heard how she falsely stated that the "cmc sunglasses were sold out in one night." from what i recall she was still selling them from her room. how can we trust someone and hope they will do well when they have to alter the facts in order to make themselves look good?
and i agree with you "im excited to see what she does" as well.
2010-03-08
23:57:55
Yeah and I want to see her birth certificate.
But really, I don't think we should fund 5C parties except for Mudd parties and the rare Scripps parking garage party.
2010-03-09
00:12:12
Tammy was assigned to put on AN event. She took the responsibility to do much more than she needed and completely switched Monte Carlo around. And she planned other Junior class events, mostly through feedback.
I don't know Ben and I don't want to come off as critiquing him, but getting a 14 meal plan isn't a major accomplishment, nor is cable in the dorms. A major accomplishment would be cutting the huge cost of the meal plan, or planning a major CMC event at a completely new location. Ben did a lot of good, and he had nowhere near the opportunity to accomplish what Tammy has done, but both candidates were very qualified and very electable. Whats with the hate towards Tammy ?
2010-03-09
00:42:33
I don't I think either was a fine candidate, but okay--Tammy has helped plan Monte Carlo in a new location, and Junior class drinking events. Big whoop?
Planning a CMC event at a new location...idk if I'd call that an accomplishment. It'll happen, then boom. Over. Monte Carlo counts because it's now moved to a decidedly better locaction.
What, just another party that will blend into the sea of parties that happen here.
Getting cable in the dorms would actually be a pretty big accomplishment.
What do you define as an accomplishment??
-->And how did we get on this topic anyways?
2010-03-09
21:24:26
"completely switching monte carlo around?" all she did was move it to the tennis courts. the casino type atmosphere stayed the same except just a little chillier. yes weather is not her fault, but having just 4-5 heat lamps wasn't the ideal number either. also, the organization once at the event was completely chaotic. so many people snuck into the thing and the way the wristbands and money were dealt was ridiculous.
in reference to the meals & cable, where the heck have you been? obviously not listening to your peers. getting the 14 meal plan is a HUGE deal. everyone has been complaining about 16 being too much and 12 being too few.
also i too am curious what do you define as an accomplishment?
---> this topic came about from josh siegel's last sentence of his article "I sincerely hope ASCMC’s next Board of Directors makes even bigger moves."
2010-03-11
15:34:16
@ a theory: don't count your chickens before they hatch with cable. DOS is always willing to discuss it, but always pull out at the last minute once they have to fork over the $$$. In regards to the 14 meal plan, it will cost the same as the 12 plan but have no flex which means they are the same b/c you could have bought the extra 2 meals a week with the $120 flex you get on the 12 plan. (This was actually the original intent for the flex dollars with this plan).