GWU Snuggies?

Could a Colonial Snuggie be on its way?

CNBC recently reported that makers of the Snuggie, an over sized blanket with sleeves, are looking to develop college themed Snuggies.

Snuggie has partnered with Collegiate Licensing Company a company that helps colleges, include GWU, with licensing.

Big 10 schools are the first universities to have the privilege of wearing college-themed Snuggies, but there is the potential to expand to other colleges.

Snuggie's infomercials claim that they are perfect for "drafty dorm rooms", and they even come with a book light! Time will tell if GW students will have the opportunity to study for exams in their own collegiate over sized blanket with sleeves.

CALL TO ACTION!

This is the time that you've all been waiting for, people! With over 200 members, the facebook group protesting J Street's hours has begun to act!

This message was sent out to the group just moments ago:

Hey everyone, this is your call to action! We need to start sending our message to the people in charge of dining, and here's what I'm thinking. If all of you send an email to the Sodexo people in charge of running J Street, then they may take the time to respond to us! Here's the text you should use:

Subject: J Street Hours

To whom it may concern;

My name is [your name] and I am a [year] at The George Washington University. As a student here, I feel that I am being let down by my dining services. GW has decided to go down a completely different route from most college campuses by employing a food court style dining service exclusively, as opposed to a cafeteria. This certainly has some benefits, including the added ability to choose, the ability to change out venues, and the presence of many different options for those with dietary concerns.

However, unlike most schools, GW does not keep its dining services open on the weekends or late into the evenings. Between classes, jobs, internships, and other activities, most of us can't find the time to eat at normal hours. And yet, if we don't make it to J Street in very specific hours, we aren't able to buy anything. And on the weekends, we're totally on our own. This is especially troublesome for freshman who aren't given the benefit of knowing local eateries and are forced to spend $700. But even for upperclassman, J Street offers food at a convenient, central location, and if it is closed on the weekends, many will be forced to pay for more expensive food at other local restaurants. This is not fair to students.

We are asking that you begin looking into ways to fix this issue, including opening J Street for hours on the weekends and late at night.

Thank you very much for your time,
[Your name]
GWU, Class of [Graduation Year]

It will take only two minutes of your time!! Here is a list of recipients:
Mohsen.Emami@sodexo.com
sam.ramos@sodexo.com
teymour.jafari@sodexo.com
Rawn.burnett@sodexo.com

There are all the managers, district controllers, etc. for Sodexo and J Street. This is the time to act! Let your voice be heard! And make sure to CC me (nickfabiani@gmail.com) and I'll post them all online!

So, if you have time, SEND THOSE PEOPLE ABOVE THAT EMAIL! The more emails we get, the more likely we are to get what we want!

GWBlogSpot Twitter challenge, Ashton Kutcher style

Last week, Ashton Kutcher promised to donate $100,000 to Malaria No More if he could beat CNN in a race to get 1 million followers on Twitter. He won the challenge and donated the funds to the organization, which will use the money to send 10,000 mosquito nets to children and families in Africa. 

I happened to have lunch with an employee from Malaria No More earlier this week, where we discussed how this highly publicized race was certainly an interesting challenge with an excellent cause. And it got me thinking: Could we do this over at GWBlogSpot? I think so!

Today is World Malaria Day, which makes it the perfect day to launch such a challenge. So here it is:

Right now, the GW Hatchet has 278 followers on Twitter. GWBlogSpot has 26 followers. If we can get more Twitter followers on the GWBlogSpot than on the GW Hatchet, we will donate a minimum of $100 dollars to Nothing But Nets, an organization which also sends one mosquito net for every $10 dollars donated. 

But $100 is just what we're starting with. You can contribute money (even as little as $1!) if GWBlogSpot wins the challenge. Please pledge your amount here.

So log onto your twitter account, or make one if 

you don't have it, and become a follower of GWBlogSpot!

The Glory that is Manouch

I had a lot of work last night. I had math homework that took much longer than I had expected and I had a UW symposium presentation to prepare for. And of course, in typical fashion, I procrastinated all evening and when I did sit down to work, I was easily distracted by everything around me. The majority of my friends partook in normal Thursday evening festivities and all night I could hear the fun being had just down the hall without me. But my night was not a bust. On the contrary, my night turned out to be great because I ventured out to 21st and Hst around 12:45 in the morning to fill my stomach with some hot dogs from my friend Manouch.

I got my usual, a hot dog with GDub sauce, mustard, and onions, and brought a pretzel back to Mitchell for one of my friends. The hot dog was flame grilled right in Manouch's cart and the GDub sauce was as good as usual. Yet the best part of the experience was not the hot dog. What makes Manouch Manouch is the atmosphere that he fosters.

A man on Iranian decent, Manouch often signs hymns in Farsi and will always engage any daring student in a political or philosophical debate. Last evening, Manouch sparked a debate with Professor Scott Talan challenging the professor of communications to bestow some knowledge on the hot dog vendor/author.

When Professor Talan got his GDub sauce on a toasted bun, and bid farewell to the unusually small crowd (there was only 5-10 people there at that time last night), Manouch dared a Thurston Freshman to come up with a quote that would impress the deeply philosophical man.

At that point, my friend Sam and I bid farwell to Manouch. We walked through University Yard and back to our end of campus with a content feeling that our evening amounted to something because our stomachs were filled with delicious hot dogs and our minds were filled with some more of Manouch's words of wisdom.

We will be back later this weekend.

Gavin Newsom for Governor? Jerry Brown?

Gavin Newsom (pictured right), the studly Mayor of San Francisco, announced on Twitter and YouTube today that he will be running for Governor of California.

Here is his campaign website, if you would like to take a gander.

I first saw Gavin Newsom speak at the 2005 Young Democrats of America National Convention in San Francisco.

It was a great speech and he invigorated the crowd with fiery post-2004 rhetoric, and said a lot that resonated with me, and has stuck with me ever since. I saw in him someone who could be President one day, and I still maintain that. He certainly gave a better speech than Phil Angelides, the 2006 Democratic Nominee for Governor of California, at the conference.

As the picture implies, Newsom is known as somewhat of a playboy and fell into a scandal for sleeping with his chief of staff's wife in 2005.

At that same conference I met Jerry Brown (pictured left with his old girlfriend, singer Linda Ronstadt from my home state of Arizona). He is expected to announce his candidacy for Governor of California soon, a post he held in the 70s. In 2005, he was the Mayor of Oakland, across the bay from Newsom. Now he is the state's Attorney General.

Here's how crazy and awesome Jerry Brown is - Legends say that in 1991 he met with his chief advisors to plan a run for the Senate over lunch, and when they left the restaurant, he was running for President in a crowded field (hint: he didn't win the primary). He is a pol like none other, only recently getting married and carrying on with many women in his younger days as governor. He is now 71.

I am not from California, and I do not have a particular interest in this race, except for the fact that it currently involves two of my favorite politicians. It will be an interesting one to watch, and I'm sure that many GW students from California will be involved.

If you will be involved in the race, or are a GWBlogSpot reader from California and support one of these guys (or, god forbid, LA Mayor Villaraigosa), shout out in the comments section with your thoughts.

Student Orgs Honored - Attend this Wednesday

This Wednesday at 7pm in Lisner Auditorium is the SAC's Excellence in Student Life Awards, recognizing everything from Greek Chapter of the Year to the Grad Life Award for Individual Excellence, Students' Choice Award for Performance Group of the Year, and many more.

An entire list of awards that will be given on Wednesday can be found here. Nominations have been closed for some time.

Ask the executive board of student organizations you are involved in for tickets if you would like to attend the event.

This isnt the only awards ceremony honoring student organizations to take place this week. This past Sunday, fraternities and sororities were rewarded by the Office of Greek Life and Order of Omega, the Greek honors society, for their achievements over the course of the last year (disclaimer: my own Beta Theta Pi won Gold at this ceremony).

It was a fun night for the Greek Community and it was nice to have a respite from all of the work it took to put the applications together and do everything necessary to win. Inter-Fraternity Council, Panhellenic Association, and Multiculural Greek Council organizations were honored. From The Hatchet:

The ceremony concluded with the announcement winners of the Gold, Silver and Bronze Awards, which honor fraternities and sororities for their overall excellence. To be considered, each fraternity and sorority must submit an extensive application covering 20 categories of criteria reflecting their accomplishments over the course of the year.

Harwood said the groups considered for the highest honor, the Gold Award, have demonstrated excellence in each of these categories, and then some.

"We want groups that are doing all of the things that make a fraternity or a sorority great," he said.

The chapters that won the Gold award are finalists for the Chapter of the Year award, which will be announced at Wednesday's Excellence Awards. The Gold-winning chapters are Kappa Kappa Gamma, Phi Kappa Psi, Beta Theta Pi, Sigma Chi, Pi Kappa Phi, Alpha Delta Pi, Alpha Phi, Sigma Phi Epsilon, Sigma Psi Zeta Sorority Inc. and Phi Sigma Sigma, and Pi Kappa Alpha.

In addition to the Greek Excellence Awards, many individual awards and chapter points of recognition were given out.

If you are in a student org, ask the president or an executive board member for a ticket to this Wednesday's awards show at 7pm in Lisner. Hopefully it will not disappoint.

Oh, Wonderful, More about the Float.

So I realize that the school's inaugural float is a topic that's already been pretty thoroughly beaten to death, but in light of recent revelations about its actual cost, as well as Andrew's post on it, I have a pretty straightforward question about it:

Will the school release a line-by-line expense sheet for the project?

I ask this because, while I believe that the abstract idea of the school having a float in the inaugural parade is an appealing one, the fact is that the one we actually put in the actual parade looks like it was built by kindergarteners, or possibly trained monkeys - and that was my impression before I heard about the price tag. My reaction after hearing the total estimated cost of $80,000 was more along the lines of so, what, they budgeted $79,000 for drinkin' and $1,000 for "oh shit, we forgot that we were supposed to be building something with all that money?"

The Hatchet, whose journalistic efforts I ordinarily don't find nearly so much cause to complain about as many of my classmates and fellow bloggers here do, doesn't really seem to care on this one. The only specific line item they take note of in the above-linked story is the flown-in artist from UNC. Here's the thing, though: Raleigh-Durham to Reagan National non-stop costs about $300 round trip on US Airways, and first-class to BWI on Southwest is the same - and Amtrak business class is a six-hour ride for $100. While the virtues of the university footing the bill for imported talent might be questionable (what, we couldn't find a single person who lives in this city who knows how to paint?), I really, truly, honestly couldn't care less about that - in such a massive bottom-line price, it's a drop in the bucket.

The real question is: how did we end up spending what could have been nearly three years of a full-ride scholarship on something so embarrassingly and resoundingly mediocre? If it didn't go to the builders (who were volunteers), or to purchasing the materials (which, um, seemed to be primarily finger-paint, cardboard and plywood), where did all the money go?