The summer after graduating, I even met my wife on an APO outing. APO unquestionably did something to me, as I still have a strong interest in it.

This only scratches the surface, but it can be a form of introduction and can open topics for discussion when I’m up at MIT. I look forward to getting to know more of you in the future. (I’m sorry that I was unable to make it to last month’s Steak Fry & Auction.)

The Blue Dragon (aka Avi Ornstein)

Looking Back

Having just read some of the pledge articles, and having reflected over the years in writing an article about myself, I felt that pledging might be an appropriate topic for this (infrequent) column.

The Blue Dragon

… there were 17 pledges at the first smoker, 9 at the second. Eleven have signed up. For the past two years, the fall pledge class has numbered between 35 and 40 at its inception.

Carl Mampaey, MVP (F’62) [XXII:4]

[Note: we now use “prospectives” where Carl used “pledges”. –Avi]

Today’s membership report has been cancelled due to the impending holiday [Thanksgiving]. Suffoce it to say that neither the last nor the next pledge meetings have been cancelled.

Abba Weinstein, MVP (F’63) [XXIII:4]

… Uncle Dave will shortly be sending you your private list of freshmen to contact, help and cherish. Answer any questions they ahve and leave your name, address, and phone number for their further use. Be friendly, helpful, Cookie Offer 21

Random Babbling from Gilbert 21

Just a Thought (or a few) 22

pftgoto from bridget 24

Christmas Stories with Kevin 24

Henning’s Random Ramblings “Good Times” 1+1=11 26

Project Report: National Braille Press 28

Project Report: Pledge Project 28

On nice breaks before finals 28

Maria’s Pledge Article 29

Avi’s article 30

Looking Back 31 respectively. Such great movies such as Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Weird Science, Cadillac Man, The Freshman, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Say Anything, Ghostbusters will be shown. If you are interested in being on the mailing lists announcing the finalized schedules, drop a line to 80s-films-request and/or ny-films-request.

The following appeared in the International Herald Tribune in 1919, 75 years ago on December 8:

Fancy schools

LONDON - Great controversy is raging over the anti-snobbery campaign of the great public schools of England [Henning’s note: UK public school = US private school]. Eton and Harrow seem the chief victims, because smartness in dress, including the proverbial top-hat, signify snobbery to the �plebs� who are incapable of judging the difference between manners and re�nement on the one hand and conceipt and pose on the other.

Quite. :) They don’t write ’em as they used to.

Two questions to keep you thinking (or not) until the next publication:

1. When did the NYSE Dow Jones index first close above 1000? (FYI, it’s around 3750 now.)

2. What year did the MIT Lightweight Crew team win the Thames Challenge Cup at Henley, England? (Hint: The answer can be found on the inbound platform of the Kendall Square T stop.)

If you know one or both answers, email it to trivia@mit.edu!

And yet another term’s end quickly approaches. Good luck on finals and enjoy your winter break.

(There was a slight error in the URL mentioned last week. Here is the new, shorter URL:

http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/henning/trivia.html)

Not Keeping the PCs Happy In trying to plan ahead for the term, I sometimes lost sight of the problems of the current week. As a result I was slow to respond to (when I even noticed) problems with the project of the week.

Not Achieving all my Lofty Goals I had Big Ideas (tm) of how to make the SVP’s job easier; I also had No Time (tm) to implement them. Well, at least not all of them. But they still exist; I’ll be attempting to implement them over IAP. Chief among them is to revamp the SVP files: check them, update them, and generate an online database of the places we go. I am thinking of something like the general brotherhood listings; something that can be printed to stickers and stuck on cards to provide a physical reference.

Not Finding more People Projects Well, I’m not a huge fan of people projects. Sorry, folks. If you feel really badly about this, please, please, please let the next SVP know.

Of course, some things went well, too:

Projects Happened Yay. =) And in many cases, they happened with a minimum of my effort. Notable among these were Welmet (thanks Gilbert and Andy!), the VA Hospital (thanks Jennifer!), and Chapter Weekend II (thanks Charley!). These projects were found and arranged by the people PC’ing them, which made my job much easier. Future SVPs should note, however, that occasionally checking on things generally makes the PC and the chapter much happier.

Find a Project Study Break Despite some minor glitches (hablas espanol, richard? neither do I…), this was a great way to make the first round of phone calls to sites and enjoy some fellowship as well. Next time, get Bridget to provide cheesecake. =)

New Contacts We worked with some people we have never worked with before, such as the VA hospital. Others have been contacted and are eager to have us come next term. It’s nice to have some new places to go.

There’s much more to say, but if I don’t get some food soon, I may have to eat my words (REALLY BAD PUN ALERT! READ AT OWN RISK! –ed, which is me anyway, but…)[Naah. Seen worse. –ed., which is not me]. And of course I am hosed. But in closing, I would just like to say that being SVP has been one of the more

4 ments/suggestions (that I remember. I think I might have more that I forgot…) to make as this might be my last issue of Apoc while I’m still active.

Open and Close I always thought that the “open” in open meetings and open projects sound pretty fascist. It implies that the other meetings and projects we have are “closed” to outsiders while we do welcome prospectives who don’t even plan to have any affiliation with apo whatsoever to go to these events and explore APO. Couldn’t we just change them to “Info Meetings” and “Service Projects” and make it clear that people plan to pledge are required to go to 1 of the first X Info meetings and 1 of the first Y service projects?

Membership Recruitment I might be too sensitive but it seems that the percentage of pledges getting initiated seems to have dropped. And more are on the borderline case in terms of making the requirements. Are we pushing people too hard into pledging? Are we not letting prospectives know what the pledgeship entails? I think it helps the chapter’s morale to concentrate on bringing the pledges up to brotherhood. Dave’s big brother meeting was a good one but it should probably be done a little earlier in the term and emphasize on the solutions to problems.

Membership Retention/Fellowship Dave sharply pointed out that there is a difference between “fellowship” and “social”. We are in fact losing a number of brothers. While it is true that they could be hosed, I’m not convinced that they don’t spend any time with their friends. if they would feel comfortable enough about the chapter and are friends with the brothers, they would hang out around APO anyway. The problem is that we are probably not very close to achieving this. We could take a low-key approach and let whoever gets along with the chapter be around. But if we have a goal of expanding the chapter, we should put an effort into becoming friends with the people different from us, people who might be harder to know because they are quieter, etc. I heard that the fellowship event at Chapter Weekend II went really well: people sat in a circle and talked about their experience (mostly positive) with APO. This is a great start as it reinforces people’s stay at APO. Except that it didn’t include the brothers who are already inactive. Membership retention is a hard problem about which I have little ideas. But, for each inactive brother/pledge, which I’ll (Although I do find LaTEX useful as a formatting tool anyway, besides the nice fonts.) If future AVP feels like, they are welcome to use my template and my perl script for converting

                                                                          .tex file to .txt.

• I made a new on-line minutes browser. The point is not just to impress people with nice formatting, but rather to encourage people to find out about the meetings they missed without roaming through the directory structure of the apo locker. Now you could just do add apo, minutes. This is useful only if people not subscribing to the apo-minutes mailing list know and access the browser. I’ll let the future AVP’s lead this to wherever they want.

• Did some cleaning up for the apo locker, but I’m by no chance done. There’s just too much information in the locker and maintaining it takes a lot of time and also some UNIX proficiency.

Other:

• Henning suggested sending Week at a Glance to apo-news instead of sending mail per event. It is a good idea but a little difficult to implement. From experience, a lot of details of the events don’t get finalized until the last minute and additional mail sent to apo-news may be required to clarify things in addtion to that Week at a Glance. It is, however, possible to “blow up” the current week of the on-line WUAPO to indicate the details of the current events. Of course, you need to let people know about this on-line WUAPO first, and really put an effort into keeping it updated.

• Henning also suggested upgrading the signup sheets to include new columns such as “vege” or “wakeup calls?”. I find this a very good suggestion which Richard has already volunteered to help out. (just a reminder, Richard :).

I think that’s all I can think of for now. (after all, this is not a 40-page thesis :)

Gilbert

8

Fellowship Rambling #2

Aren’t you all proud of me. This is my second article in ONE APOc and the third one I’ve ever written! (I’m proud! -ed) (The other one was my pledge article - I’ve just been lame about writing articles, I guess.) This one should be titled “Reflections of a Fellowship Chair.” Here goes.

So, what is the relationshop between leadership, fellowship, and service in APO? We separate them into 3 parts, but they are really so intertwined that we must remember that there can’t be one without the other two.

What is service but to be a friend? Fundamentally, they are about the same. We merely differentiate between being of service to others (outside of APO - our service program) and being of service to each other (which is what the fellowship program is all about.)

Where does leadership fit in? Well, someone needs to take the initiative and be of service FIRST - either without waiting to be asked or being ready and willing WHEN asked. Being a leader does not mean taking the initiative and persuading others to friends to you first. Having others of service to you is a consequence, not a starting point. This is the difference between being a good leader and a bad politician.

Always keep in mind that APO comprises all three of these things equally. It’s like the U.S. government. The checks and balances are in place, inherent in the system, because it was designed that way.

Yilfs, Karen :o)

Quotes discuss meeting taken over by APO brothers, news at 11

[4962] sorokin@ATHENA.MIT.EDU quotes 12/01/94 18:01
Subject: autumn
Matt and I have decided that we are ready to make the
committment of sharing a SIPB drawer. We understand the
responsibilites this entails, and if you would like to

Incoming Officer Articles

President

Hello all. This will be brief as I am still engaged in reviewing everything I ever learned (or didn’t) in CS.

Although I decided at the start of the term that I should sketch out an updated and more detailed set of plans in case I ran for president again, I didn’t manage to do this, probably because I also tried to front-load the academic year.

So here instead is a rough outline. (You didn’t want to read anything longer, did you?) These are things in which you can help. In fact, without help they will probably sink like rocks.

Communication and information propagation

Some things are getting lost in the current system. As the chapter grows (see membership), loss may increase. I would like people to suggest improvements, or let execcomm know about problems we might not have noticed. Here are a few ideas so far, from various sources, in various stages of being delegated..

1. ‘APO locker tour’ run by an ex-AVP or other clueful person.

2. Signup sheet revision, more general institution of the wakeup call option.

3. A list of the ideal (fastest, most reliable) way to contact each member.

4. Storage of bits of PC clue, somewhere other than in PC’s brain, such as ’the people at XXX take three weeks to return calls’.

Membership: recruiting and retention

The best ’formula’ we have for both of these is Personal Contact. And we know that it’s something that works best when everyone helps. This is difficult for shy people and for busy students, which covers a lot of the chapter. Thanks for your continued efforts :-)

12 your name on it clearly - otherwise you might see it at the next Steak Fry auction.)

5. Work with the SVP and MVP to coordinate events.

6. Do any other warm and fuzzy things that seem appropriate for a Fellowship chair to do. I’m open to ideas. I’m very accessible

by email. [kgreig@MIT.EDU]

This agenda may be ambitious for ONE person to successfully accomplish, especially since I will be doing other things this term like pitching on the varsity softball team, schoolwork (Course 3), MIT Christian Science Organization and church, Burton deskworking, Concert Band (maybe, hopefully), and other random stuff. But I thought that if I wrote it all down and let brothers think about them, many of these things will naturally occur. Things that YOU as a brother can do to help (besides volunteering to PC stuff): If you have a little (or a big brother or children), be they inactive, active, hyperactive or otherwise, talk to them early next term or over IAP to stay in touch and see what they are doing. Maybe PC and event together. Keeping in touch is a GOOD THING. To many, this is easy - others it is a little more difficult, but it never hurts to care. It is nice to have people check up on you once in a while - good feeling - brother-like. :o)

I hope I can do a good job this coming term. Hope I-banquet goes well, too. (I suppose we all know by now.)

YilFs, Karen Greig :o)

Treasurer

Well, I met with my predecessor, and we came up with a budget for next term. Sometime after classes are over, and we’re both less busy (much, much less busy), we’re going to go over everything else.

My main project this term is going be looking for ways to trim back the budget and otherwise prepare for the ever increasingly likely possibility of Reg Day going away. I’ve already heard a few suggestions: getting brothers to pay for transportation, raising dues, etc., but right now, I’m still very much in the “investigation” phase. I’ll be Proposed Spring 1995 Budget

Prepared by Harry Tsai

Item  Expense Revenue

Service Funds:

CPR  180.00  -
Tools  100.00  -
Transportation  200.00  -
Service Publicity  125.00  -
Service Food (1st Free Meals)  50.00  -
Service Misc.  100.00  -
Executive Discretionary  150.00  -
Membership  180.00  -
Fellowship  200.00  -
Food (Paid)  900.00  900.00
Office (ASC)  100.00  -
Steak Fry Auction  -  100.00
Phone  400.00  20.00
Soda  400.00  400.00
Publicity / WUAPO  20.00  -
Poster (Pubdir)  400.00  400.00
Silkscreen  200.00  150.00
Historian  120.00  -
APOcrypha  150.00  150.00
Registration Day  -  2400.00
National Layaway  300.00  -
Miscellaneous  500.00  400.00
Total Service Funds  4775.00  4920.00

Press Fund:

Press Fund  500.00  500.00
Total Press Fund  500.00  500.00

National Layaway:

National Layaway  -  300.00
Total National Layaway Fund  -  300.00
Grand Total  5275.00  5720.00

16 I would like to thank all of the people who PC’ed fellowship events this term. The list includes Emily, Jeffrey, Karen, Kate, Ping, and Barbara. If I’ve left anyone’s name out, I apologize. Also, I would like to thank all of the brothers who attended fellowship events and helped make this term’s events a success. Just holding events isn’t all that’s required to have good fellowship in the chapter, though. The brothers have to make an effort to be there for each other, and I believe that’s happened this term. Thanks y’all. Good luck with finals, happy holidays, and have a good IAP.

YiLFS, Rachel

APOcEd

And so my plans to take over the world have been foiled. I’d like to thank all of you that have been writing the articles so I could put the thing together. And to those of you who openly admit to not having ever written an article… we’ll get you yet. And finally, thanks to all of you who are reading this. APOc’s wouldn’t be here without you.

During this term, I’ve had to apologize a lot. My wrists, my lame butt and other factors have been trying to make the APOc late, your articles to get lost, and the locusts… never mind about the locusts. Thank you for your patience.

Editing the APOcrypha is great fun, and I’m sure I’ll miss it. I guess I’ll just have to turn to writing filler or something. =)

I’ll cut this shortnow , lest the APOc overrun its pages… YiLFS, bert

Pre-Incoming Officer Articles Comment (President)

Hi I’m writing an incoming president article as we speak (er, whatever) but first, here’s a word from me as a brother:

theGREisSaturdayAAAIUGH! bridget :)

donate my drawer to someone else, you may. =)
[4963] marc@ATHENA.MIT.EDU quotes 12/01/94 22:14
Subject: dcctdw
I have style, and I have a big mouth, and that's it.
[4964] rjbarbal@ATHENA.MIT.EDU quotes 12/02/94 21:03
Subject: ckclark
Sunsoft's biggest problem is that they are not the Borg,
but they fantasize that they are.  For example, they are
under the delusion that people will actually run Solaris
on Intel processors, and that they will take over this
way.  In reality, there are about 4 people in the world
using 2.4 on Intel machines, they all work at Sun, and
they boot Windows when the boss isn't looking.

(courtesy of Ping)

Ye Generic APOc Article

Well, ok. It’s not terribly generic.

It’s a lichen report. Next term, i’ll be a lichen, in all probability. What that means is that i’ll be a part-time student, finishing my thesis, but hopefully working part-time. So, I’ll probably go inactive next term, because I still feel it’s The Right Thing To Do – all that stuff about getting out of the way of the actives.

So maybe I should go to AXAA meetings. Oooh, what a scary concept.

It’s kinda interesting – I don’t know what I want to do with APO now that I’ve basically graduated/escaped. (It’s unclear if i’ll graduate. It is clear that I’ve almost escaped.) I’ve given some thought to infiltrating AXAA and bending its considerable power to my will. (Author’s note: HA!) (Oh, what the heck, i’ll throw this in for free – Editor’s note: HA! (Hey! Who’s the editor here, anyway? -ed)) I’ve thought about serving on staff. But I think there’s something to be said for just holding a job, paying off debts, living life, and mellowing out from the rush of undergraduate life. Hmm. I guess

20

AVP

I’m off the hook! No more minutes taking! No more ASA meetings! No more room reservations.

Hold on… That sounds too much like Kate’s AVP outgoing report last term. Let me rewind and redo this…

It wasn’t that bad. There are certain things that went wrong though as I pointed them out at the last ExecComm meeting. Let me list them here and discuss them as we go along:

What went wrong:

• I have messed up a couple of the officers’ reports due to my limited minutes-taking ability but, hey, you didn’t send me written reports!

• I had been a little sluggish in printing out up-to-date signup sheets and address lists but we have lots now.

• I skipped the October issue of WUAPO

• I shouldn’t have flamed some officers but officers should correct my mistakes in my “pre-WUAPO” so that we won’t confuse people about the event times and dates in WUAPO.

• I didn’t update the techinfo info about APO yet but I’ll some time after my finals.

What went right:

• Wrote WUAPO generator so that future AVP’s won’t have to keep editing LaTEX and ASCII instances of WUAPO (I still have complete the postscript calendar part.)

• Rooms got reserved.

• Database was updated and modified to indicate visibility on signup sheet so that now the signup sheet is a lot shorter and includes only people who might show up at events. Also featured is new and improved universal perl script.

• Minutes got taken and LaTEX’ed before next meetings. Let me state clearly that this is purely because I’m anally attracted to nice printouts and it is not necessary that minutes be LaTEX’ed. call X for the sake of clarity, there’s a brother Y whom X feels the most comfortable with. This might be X’s big brother or someone from X’s pledge class, etc. If we find out who this is, it makes a big difference for X if Y keeps in touch with X and encourages X to attend APO events. I personally had positive experience with this and think that this is something worth pursuing or at least thinking about.

Social event idea As an individual who always strives for something new, I think we could run something like a “Movie Marathon” during IAP. Movie rentals are only $1.xx at Towers from Tue-Thu. The chapter has a VCR already and I’m happy to lend the chapter my ancient yet fully functional 19” TV for the event. All the PC needs to do is to take a survey of what people like to see, announce the event, and rent the 5-6 movies from Towers, set up the TV/VCR in the office (maybe move the furniture a little bit). W20 is such a strategic location that if someone doesn’t like a certain movie, he/she could always have other places (not limited to Athena) to hang out and come back for another one. Food as usual is a necessity :)

Gilbert

pftgoto from bridget

I have a new fish tank.. you can drop by Senior House and say hi to the fish after I-banquet if you want :-) -bridget

Christmas Stories with Kevin

Hi everyone!

Well, its almost Christmas! Hey, I have a question for all my fellow Christians. Do you have Jewish friends? (I do.) Have you always felt like a butthead because you never get around to wishing your Jewish friends “Happy Haunakah” until Christmas, and even then you can’t spell it? (I have.) Did you swear to yourself that this would be the year you finally do that on the actual first day of Haunakah? (I did.) And did you blow it anyway? (I did. Am I weird or does everyone do this?)

24 April 1st. (Charley: this is in case I forget to tell you.) Sparky (that EZ alum that’s being showing up a lot recently) has proved a great help in keeping the informal communication between our chapters going. Only 4 brothers went to conclave - but good roll calls come in small packages - and we enjoyed our sojurn in Maine. We have given you all a reputation to keep up at WPI in the Spring (March 10-12, another date for you calendars).

On the national fraternity front, we paid our AAMDS (annual active membership dues) with plenty of time to spare. We found time at chapter meetings and during a dinner trip to discuss a lot of the proposed changes to APO legislation that will be discussed at Nationals. Good luck to dave and ping as they try to figure out what it all means and then map that to the chapter’s opinion polls.

No big strides or achievements were made on two of the chapter’s most consistent, reoccuring problems - communications and membership retention. I have few (no) pearls of wisdom to pass on ... except that more communication is better than less and interdeparmental mail still sucks. Recognising that these areas are in need of constant attention, even though there seems nothing concrete that can be done, is much better than ignoring the issues.

Overall, the term seems to have left everyone with very little time for anything but academics. Hopefully, everyone will have time to recover before the spring term starts and classes can only get easier, right ??

YiLFS Kate

SVP

(courtesy of 16.622, 17.471, 6.003, and 9.00)

In the history of US national security policy... oh wait, wrong article.

I need to be brief, so I encourage everyone and anyone who has questions for me to hunt me down and ask. I plan to stay somewhat actively doing SVP type stuff over IAP and beyond, so I’m very available. Um, I mean... well, you know what I mean.

What went wrong this term:

Project Report: National Braille Press

The project was ran by Barbara and myself. Overall I thought that the project went very well. However, one item that I was disappointed with was brothers who said they would show and did not come or call us or let us know. This project was interesting because it was the same day as Project America, the nation-wide community service day. This meant that we got free breakfast as we were waiting to listen to Dan Quayle speak. He was late so we decided to go to project. Ping is reported as saying, “Why don’t we go up to the microphone and announce that we wish we could stay, but we are going to go do project now.” After working to move piles of zinc, stacking music and painting a bathroom not big enough for two cats—much less Bridget and a couple of other people. We were then treated to Uno’s and continued working until about 2:00pm.

Christopher

Project Report: Pledge Project

This project went well. However, more organizanization was needed… I believe that greater cooperation is needed between the MVP and SVP and pledge PC or PCs. Also, on a side note, the pledge PC should have a key to the office for a Saturday project, in particular if a borother requested a 6am wake-up call.

Christopher

On nice breaks before finals

Well, after my announcement of being done until finals at the end of Joint ExecComm I was instantly the recipient of flames from a hostile brotherhood. However, the threat over e-mail was most effective (thank you Big Bro). Well, here it is.

Question: How do I earn a nice break before finals?

Answer: don’t take labs, Unifried, three 00*’s, 1.00 etc. Those late lab reports and problem sets can be a bummer. Finish work ahead

28

Contents

The Editor Takes A Leap Out Of Office 1

Incoming Editorial Comments 1

Outgoing Officer Articles 2

President 2

SVP 3

MVP 5

AVP 7

Treasurer 9

Fellowship Chair 10

APOcEd 11

Pre-Incoming Officer Articles Comment (President) 11

Incoming Officer Articles 12

President 12

SVP 13

Fellowship Rambling #1 14

Treasurer 15

Mold Report IV 17

Fellowship Rambling #2 19

Quotes discuss meeting taken over by APO brothers, news at 11 19

Ye Generic APOc Article 20 don’t push the chapter too much. Our best advertising is guys who are interested in serving others.

You might also try to hold a rush party with the other brothers in the area… Make it a ‘come and talk about MIT and APO’ session combined with a lot of fun and fellowship, where you fill them up with food, joy, and info about the ’tute and AX.

Len Tower, SVP (F’69) [XXX:1]

We have a myriad of pledges (20 < myriad < 30)

Chapter meeting minutes (10/14/70) [XXXII:5]

An accepted tradition (for many, many years now) is that each pledge class gets to throw their MVP into some body of water after Spring Afterfinals.

Avi Ornstein (F’71) [XXXIV:3]

Among so many people, one feels a lesser part of the whole. Pledges are being raised not knowing their fellow peons… Members lose the feeling of togetherness as the Fellowship Circle grows.

Sheva Stern, letter (S’72) [XXXV:3]

Membership VP (Richards): … I’d rather have fewer pledges with more attention per pledge, for a lower inactive rate.

ExecComm minutes (9/6/72) [XXXVI:3]

As in the past terms, pledges will be encouraged to submit a short introductory write-up of themselves.

Chapter Meeting minutes (9/27/72) [XXXVI:4]