Hey Everyone!
Wow, the past two weeks have seen this campus abuzz with so much excitement. If there would be a theme for this entry, it would be activism. Activism can be so many things, but what it comes down to is that in order to accomplish your goals in life for yourself and for any group you may be part of is that you have to do something about it. Sitting around, gets absolutely nothing done. Get out, be active and let yourself be heard.

The reason I bring this up is because the past month has seen an issue develop on the campuses of Embry-Riddle. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s long term decisions are made by its Board of Trustees, which since the 1960s, has a student representative from each residential campus and a faculty representative from all three campuses. The BOT was recently given recommendations from an independent consultant to remove these votes and a committee proposed new bylaws without these representatives included. This caused much distress on campus, because no one wants to lose their representation on a board that makes decisions about them. Students banded together positively, organizing a massive campaign to let the BOT know that we do care about the long term future of the school and want to keep it a great school for the people who are here now, to the people reading this journal and also the people who will dream of attending Embry-Riddle twenty years from now.

This campaign included a mass petition which received almost 2,000 signatures and an all day rally which saw 1,600 students over the course of the day, of which some pictures are posted below.

The rally and the whole campaign were successful to a degree. This past Friday, the BOT voted to push back the vote on the new bylaws to the spring, citing more time needed to make such a decision.

On another SGA front, Task Force One is coming really well. Rockin’ the Holidays has hit a bunch of stumbling blocks, but these obstacles are teaching us how things work in the Student Government Association. Hopefully we can overcome these obstacles and put a good show. We are really working hard at this and we hope to become closer to the SGA in our relationships with the Student Representative Board, the Student Finance Board, and the Student Court. If you are at all interested in student government, next year Task Force one will be the place for you. You will be finding out much more about TFO in the months to come. This is what a TFO meeting might look like, just with less people than you should have next year (hopefully!)

On the school side of things, I have a LOT of work to do. Professors went project happy the last two weeks and I’ll be working until I leave Daytona on this Friday for home (yay!) and while I am home. Although I did know of these projects because I received a syllabus, you can’t really do the projects until you learn some skills in the class so you can’t really do them until the end of the semester. It’s a real catch-22 situation.

This past Friday I did absolutely the coolest thing of college so far. I attended the National Business Aviation Association 2005 convention in Orlando and had a blast. It was reported that approximately 30,000 people attended this convention centered around corporate aviation. Quite a few ERAU students attended and there was even an Embry-Riddle alumni booth. I saw a lot of new planes, met a lot of people that work for industries you take for granted and don’t realize their services are necessary for a plane to work, or look really nice. These kinds of things are important because networking is an important part of college, especially at a school like this. Once again, I’ve added some pictures from NBAA. The picture of me on the fake horse was just one of the many fun things that were at each booth.

So it’s time to bring this to a close. We have learned some things today, like get involved and do things that make you happy, but I think the prevalent piece of information is that I really like pictures. On that note, here’s one more of the people on my floor at our trip to Wing House, a restaurant here in Daytona Beach.