WashU Fantasy and Science Fiction Club Agenda
12/7/03
I. Student Life is writing an article about this club. Here is their message:
Hello, ... I'm covering the new Fantasy and Science Fiction Club for an upcoming article in Student Life. I wasn't sure who to contact, but I saw a flier with this address on it. If someone could answer the following questions, or contact me ... as soon as possible it would be greatly appreciated.
1) -Who came up with the idea for this club and why? (How did it get started?)
2) -When will meetings start?
3) -What is this club and what will it involve?
4) -Who can join?
5) - What is the main goal of the club (what do you hope people will get out of it)?
Thank you in advance!
1) To answer the first question, we will have to say the club has at least three points of origin: the Freshman Seminar on Science Fiction last year, the Middle-Earth and Bharata Varsha class last year, and the students and staff Liggett-Koenig dormitory. What else should we say?
2) To answer the second question, we should come up with some sort of tentative schedule, and an idea for a public Forum or some event (see below, V.). Also, are we going to keep this meeting time, established by the Science Fiction Club founded last year? Should we start our meetings at 7:30 or 8:00 on Sundays, so that the other group may have a separate meeting first? Is this necessary, or not?
3) What is this club and what will it involve? How do we answer this rather general question, besides pointing to our flier and Constitution?
4) Who can join? The answer: anyone, as long as at least half of our members are WashU students (graduate students included). This is in line with the Student Union policy.
5) To answer the fifth question is more difficult, because everybody will give a different answer. Speaking for myself, as a faculty member, I like to have a place where I can just relax and be a fan, not a professor with something to prove. What do you all want out of it? The Freshmen seem to want to meet other students over discussion of TV shows, movies, and books they have read (but they don't have time to read much science fiction and fantasy now, unless they are taking a course on it). Graduate students, faculty, and research scholars may have more academic interests. University administrators and dormitory staff probably just want to see the students having a good time! And fans from the community probably just want to be fans, like me! Tolkien fans seem to want a special Tolkien section. Fantasy fans may want a fantasy section, TV and cinema fans may want special meetings. Some are interested in religious themes, some have more secular interests. How can we accommodate such diverse interests?
In addition, at least one SLU student is very interested, and so are faculty at SLU (including Prof. T A Shippey, the famous Tolkien expert). Should our club be one club, or an umbrella organization, sharing members with other groups? We have a proposal to do just that with an already existing, but small, Science Fiction Club which grew out of last year's Freshman Seminar on science fiction. They requested this joint meeting, at their usual time, 7pm on Sunday, to discuss this. Should we also share members with, for example, the Anime Club? Are there other small, informal clubs we don't know about?
Should we spell this all out, in our Constitution?
II. Website. Sarah will be designing a website, to be uploaded to a server to which she has access. I am maintaining a temporary website at http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~jhbauer/tolkien_and_f%26sf.htm#washufantasy, for announcements, our Constitution, and minutes and meeting agendas. When we get a ResTech website, both my site and Sarah's original site will be maintained as auxiliary sites and redirect pages. Do the members of the "other club" want their own web presence and identity? If so, I would be willing to volunteer space on my site, and put links to their site on my Tolkien, Fantasy and Science Fiction page. I would also be willing to provide a simple design, and do simple maintenance. I can work on this over the Christmas vacation. We could set up a local Fantasy and Science Fiction Webring!
III. Transportation. Many students (Freshmen who live off campus, and Freshmen at SLU) do not drive. I do not drive either, so I cannot pick up people and give them rides. Could anybody do this?
IV. Meeting Schedule. I suggest weekly meetings, of four types. If anybody has other ideas, please let us know. I suggest:
A. Movie Nights (like this one!). Monthly meetings to show and discuss movies, in the Koenig House Lounge. Should we keep the Sunday night time? These meetings would be from 2-3 hours long, but of course people can leave early.
B. Tolkien Discussion. Monthly meetings to discuss Tolkien's work, and The Inklings, et. al. Possibly with a religious focus (I have one student request for this, and I am very open to the idea, as a member of the Religious Studies faculty here!) These meetings would last an hour and a half.
C. General Fantasy Discussion. Monthly meetings to discuss fantasy literature, cinema, TV, art, etc. These will have a pre-announced theme (see Nov. 20 minutes for a list of some suggestions). Video clips will be shown. These meetings would last an hour and a half.
D. General Science Fiction Discussion. Monthly meetings to discuss science fiction literature, cinema, TV, art, etc. These will have a pre-announced theme (see Nov. 20 minutes for a list of some suggestions). Video clips will be shown. These meetings would last an hour and a half.
How does this sound?
V. Public Forum. The Liggett-Koenig College Council and the Council on the South 40 are working on an outing for students to see "The Return of the King" at a local theater, which the University would reserve for the occasion. This is tentatively planned for sometime in February. Discussion meetings will follow, probably led by faculty. We have invited Prof. T A Shippey of SLU, author of "J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century" and "The Road to Middle-Earth," to speak. He is currently booked, so he may not be available in February (although we hope he will be able to speak here sometime this Spring or next year).
Since our Club has no money, and we need to plan a public event in order to establish ourselves as a group worthy of being funded by Student Union, we have been talking about sponsoring some sort of reception for Prof. Shippey. CS40 would (we hope) fund the event, we would provide labor and publicity. We could use the event to sign up members.
Since Prof. Shippey may not be available to speak as soon as we had hoped, what is our "Plan B"? The students in my "Middle-Earth and Bharata Varsha" class last year invited Keith Kelly, Prof. Shippey's assistant, to give a guest lecture or lead a discussion. He had a time conflict with an evening class he taught. Should our club invite him? Do you have other ideas?
--Jerome Bauer, Program in Religious Studies, Washington University