Welcome to the new online home of the Inanimate Objects Party. Here you may find our opinions, some resources, and other useless stuff. You can read what we have to say on various topics important to the students of RPI. You can download our posters, along with instructions for putting them up. You can hear the latest pronouncements of Arthur Galpin. You can even find out how to send us nasty e-mails, if you so choose. Thanks for visiting!
Recent News
Several Small Updates
Time to break the silence. Elections are over, and our favorite candidate seems to have failed this time. The official numbers are a little odd. 40 write-in votes do not make 10% of 2575 total votes. The numbers do make sense if you assume that about 230 votes for Arthur were thrown out of some calculations but not others, so I will claim that number as our total.
There are a few other things you should know about. Tomorrow afternoon, there will be a meeting in the Union relating to the ongoing free speech situation. The Faculty Senate has rejected the proposals to change their constitution and other documents. I expect there will be more interesting developments before long.
Finally, the IOP is planning to hold a general meeting sometime before the end of the semester. Details will follow.
Elections Today
Turn out and vote, preferably for Arthur Galpin.
GM Week Disappointment
GM Week is here, and it looks like a disappointment in several ways. First is the ridiculous Red Carpet theme. What fun is that? What does it have to do with RPI? Two years ago, we had a freedom-loving, roguish idealization of piracy. Ironically, the next year's theme was the music industry. Now it's the film industry. Extrapolating this pattern, I can predict that next year's theme will be commercial software. Featured activities will include a Turn In The Pirates contest, a Lost Data Recovery Demonstration, and Almost-Free Upgrades. All participants will be required to accept a complex EULA requiring them not to remember anything about GM Week or attempt to discover how the election process works.
In addition to the uncreative theme, the animate candidates are just boring. No one is able to stay on the list of GM candidates for more than a week. None of them care enough to put up any interesting posters. (Wordplay on candidate names does not qualify as interesting or creative.) Only the freshman class officer positions have enough people running to hold a primary. You can tell no one is worried about getting into office because there have been few ridiculous campaign promises so far.
The Poly shares our disappointment, not endorsing anyone for Grand Marshal. They did take the opportunity to write a blistering opinion of Kevin Morenski, which shouldn't suprise anyone who remembers what he said about the Poly last year. Morenski has since dropped out of the race.
After all the excitement of last year, I'm afraid the tradition of Grand Marshal Week is beginning to die. But you can help keep it alive, with its spirit of fun and absurdity. Turn out on Thursday and write in Arthur Galpin for everything.
A Warning
You never thought it might snow at the end of March, just before GM Week. You never thought an inflatable whale would make a good GM either. This snow and sudden end of warm weather is just a warning. It is only the beginning of what might happen if animate candidates are elected again. Elections are next Thursday, with a primary on Monday if necessary. Think carefully about which candidate you want to support. Otherwise there will be worse things than snowstorms.
IOP Convention
There is an IOP meeting tomorrow (Thursday) at 6:30, on the first floor of the Union.
Campaign Week
Campaigning for GM Week actually started last Tuesday, but it's picking up this week. An animate candidate for Grand Marshal has appeared, the Pants Party is running someone for PU, and a few senators have started postering. The IOP, of course, has been putting up signs all last week. You will have to look closely to find them; there aren't many, and they often come down quickly. We don't have a $300 budget.
Still, this year's campaigning is starting slowly. Most candidates haven't put up any signs or made any announcements that I've heard. The Genesis Party hasn't appeared yet (maybe we finally outlasted them.) If this apathy doesn't wear off, Arthur may have a good shot this year.
Presidential Town Meeting
I wanted to go to the presidential town meeting today, but it was conveniently scheduled at the same time as a class I couldn't miss. Still, I did manage to catch the last fifteen minutes. There was a lot of talk about the "Virtual Jihadi" exhibit which was shut down recently (see RPI Free Culture for details.) I hadn't realized there was so much uproar over it.
Someone, I think the Provost, tried to settle down the discussion by reminding everyone that most of them had opinions, but only a few had responsibility, and that people without responsibility should not think their opinions are so important. When people with power and responsibility begin confusing the two, things become frightening.
I'll have to wait for the Poly to get a full description, but there should be a lot to talk about. What are the chances of the "New Student Life Initiatives" being good news?
Preparation for GM Week
One month until elections. Time to dig out posters, signs, and air pumps.
Want to take part in an RPI tradition? Want to take a stand against inefficiency and uselessness? Want to Mock the Vote? The Inanimate Objects Party is looking for help. We don't have free mugs or free T-shirts, but you shouldn't need a bribe. You do get, without charge, the fun of spreading misinformation and annoying the animate candidates.
So if you haven't lost your sense of humor and you want to support the cause, contact arthur (at) inflatablewhale.org for instructions. All skills and talents are useful, even people who just think inflatable whales are cute.
If you are an inanimate object seeking office, lacking qualifications, and needing the power of an organized political machine, send in your name and desired position to be placed on the IOP ballot. There is an informational meeting in the Union on Tuesday for animate objects fitting the same description.
The Institute as a Monopoly
Fellow Ioperative Dan Hildebrand has written a Statler & Waldorf editorial comparing schools like RPI to businesses and states. I started thinking about the topic, and came up with another perspective.
At first glance, RPI does seem like a business with students as customers. It takes our money in exchange for a product, education. On the other hand, it behaves like a government. It controls territory, created a legal system, and engages in projects. I would like to propose a third comparison: it is like a monopolistic business. More...
Faculty Governance Update
As far as I know, the Faculty Senate is currently operating in a semi-official "advisory role". But the Faculty Governance Review Committee has come up with a plan for the permanent role of faculty government. To show that they actually put in some effort and came up with something good, they explained that they studied faculty governance at other universities to find out what works there. I would be more impressed if they studied the situation at RPI to find out what works here. But Rensselaer being the leading university that it is, they had to use innovation, i.e. reimplementing existing ideas.
What the plan actually proposes to do is still not made public. This will make things difficult for our open participatory governance. Wait a minute, I'm confusing RPI with the Debian Project.
Sophomore Housing
I was hoping to be at Pizza with the President, but I wasn't, so I will have to fall back on reading the Poly article. Requiring all sophomores to live on campus seems odd. It won't make any more money- that would take creating more housing, not changing the year of existing rooms. So they must think one year of dorm life doesn't give students enough experience. The solution, of course, is to have For Your Enformation First-Year Experience throw their e-mail announcements at them for another year.
Knowing several sophomores who moved off campus because they couldn't afford to stay, I think this plan will require financial aid increases or at least the possibility of exceptions. Otherwise students in that situation will have to transfer instead.
Defeat of the Incomprehensible TA's?
Recently the Grand Marshal has been telling us about how the Student Senate has had the quality of this semester's TA's improved. Apparently they convinced the departments to use higher standards, making sure that only students able to explain the material become TA's. I was glad to hear that so much progress has been made, because I have been assigned an almost incomprehensible TA for the first time in three years. My case might be an exception, but I can't seem to find any statistics or even news at the Student Senate site. Maybe the IOP should do its own research.
Site Changes
This Web site is now out of alpha, finally. Dates now appear with news, links go where intended, and communication may be directed to webmaster (at) inflatablewhale.org.