11/17 Meeting Recap

• Texas Quidditch and the HPA will be selling Yule Ball tickets on West Mall from 12-2 tomorrow. If you can't make it to the meetings, come get your ticket then! Tickets are $12, cash only please.
• The shirts are finally on their way! They will get here the last week of classes, hopefully in time for our meeting that Thursday. If they aren't, or if you can't make the meeting, we will have them available for pick up during the Yule Ball.
• Since that is our last meeting and we will hopefully have shirts to pass out, we are cancelling the December 1 BookPeople volunteer sessions. Apologies to all of you who signed up, but I will see about setting up another date during dead week when you guys can come help out. Currently all of our other slots are filled, but if you are interested in helping out, let me know and I'll put you on our back up list in case any of our volunteers can't make it.
• Unfortunately our Operation Christmas Child plans have fallen through. OCC asks for a $7 donation per box to help with shipping costs, and while that's completely understandable and it's a fantastic organization, we also don't want to make you guys pay for that. Instead we'll be participating in Brown Santa, an organization that helps feed the homeless both in Austin and across Texas. Please bring a few canned goods to our meeting on December 1 to help out with this! Caleb will be posting a list of the specific items they need the most.
• Quidditch match tomorrow! Matches start at 6 PM Come out and cheer on the Texas Quidditch teams, fresh from the Quidditch World Cup. We will be selling concessions, Yule Ball tickets, and other fun HP items, so bring some cash! All proceeds go directly to making the Yule Ball that much more awesome. If you don't have a ride, you can catch the 1M bus at 24th and Guadalupe at 5:18 and get off at 51st and Lamar. I will do my best to meet you guys at the bus stop, but I have a meeting right before the match and might not be able to make it to the stop in time. You can also catch the IF UT shuttle at 5:30 at 26th and San Jacinto.
  

11/10 Meeting Recap

• The HPA is revamping one of its old campaigns, and it's really easy to help out. "Not in Harry's Name" is a new effort to push for fair trade chocolate in Warner Bros. products (like their delicious but sadly unethical chocolate frogs). Time Warner, the parent company of Warner Bros., currently gets their chocolate from truly horrific places. Farm workers are paid what are called starvation wages (which often amount to roughly $2 a month). Children are effectively sold to work on different farms when they get old enough, and the overall conditions resemble modern day slavery. Way back in November 2010, this was the HPA's first Horcrux in their Deathly Hallows Campaign. Between then and now we've collected over 16,000 signatures (including HP actors Jason Isaacs and Evanna Lynch, among others) on a petition to Time Warner to try to get them to switch to fair trade chocolate. This led to some very brief talks between Warner Bros. and the HPA president Andrew Slack, which basically amounted to WB patting us on the head, saying "good for you for caring!" and then proceeding to ignore us at all costs. To try and fight back, the HPA is pushing that petition again, and we'd really love it if you'd take a minute to sign. You can read more about what's going on and sign the petition here.
  
• We still need volunteers to help us out at BookPeople in a few weeks! If you can come wrap books on Tuesday, Nov. 29 from 8-10 or Thursday, Dec. 1 from 6-8 or 8-10, let us know. This is an awesome way to get us a bit of income for the Yule Ball and to start us off next semester, so come help out!
• During the first week of December, we will be participating in Operation Christmas Child. More details to come soon, but in the meantime please hang on to any shoeboxes you might have! We will be organizing a trip or two to the Dollar Store and the like, but if you want to go ahead and start getting things to send go for it. We don't want you guys spending a ton of money on this, so little things are more than welcome, if not expected. Just please avoid getting any food that can melt (since these packages will be shipped) and any toys or games that have to do with fighting or the military. Many of these packages will be sent to war-torn countries, and we don't want to encourage that in any way.
• The Quidditch World Cup is this weekend! UT's varsity team will be competing in four matches over the weekend. Unfortunately the only one that will be livestreamed starts at 8:40 AM on Sunday, and while I certainly encourage you to support your team, I wholeheartedly understand if you just check the score later. That being said, you should try to catch some of the other games if you can! They have games going literally all day, and they'll broadcast the final matches starting at 5 PM on Sunday. You can watch the livestream here.
• In other Quidditch news, we will be selling concessions at the match next week! The match will be on Friday the 18th from 6-9 at Whitaker Fields. We'll be making the concessions at next week's meeting. Sign up to bring ingredients here.
• Wrimos! Don't forget the HPA write-in tomorrow night at 7 at SRD. There will be Butterbeer!
  

11/3 Meeting Recap

• Thanks to everyone who helped out at Longhorn Halloween! I still have several unclaimed costume items, so please make sure you grab them at the next meeting. If you can't make the meetings, email me and we can set up a time for you to pick them up.
• If you signed up for a Yule Ball ticket last week and didn't pay for it last night, we unfortunately had to take your name off the list. That doesn't mean you can't get a ticket, it just means you don't have any tickets reserved right now. You can sign up again at the next meeting, but make sure you pay within a week to guarantee your spot. You can also buy tickets for friends, but we are restricting the ball to only UT students, so please keep that in mind.
• We've got another service project/fundraiser coming up in a few weeks! Every holiday season, BookPeople sets up a deal with local nonprofits: we gift-wrap customer's books, customers tip us $1-2, and we get to keep all tips. Less work for the BookPeople staff, and a nice bit of income for us. We currently need people who can work on Tuesday, Nov 29 from 8-10 PM; Thursday, Dec 1 from 6-8 PM and 8-10 PM, and Monday Dec 5 from 4-6 PM. If you want to work more than one shift, list the shifts you can work in order of preference and I'll let you know which ones we need you for. We're limiting the number of people to 3 per shift per BookPeople's guidelines, so the slots are being filled on a first come first serve basis and I can't guarantee you your top choice. You'll get 3 house points for every hour you work, and the money we earn will be used to make the Yule Ball even more awesome and to kickstart the projects we'll be working on next semester.
• The next Quidditch match is going to be the weekend of the 18th (specific date and time TBA) and we'll be selling concessions again! Sign-up sheet for bringing food is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArAqdbMi3tCTdF9SaFRIQTVwNE95MVpYQktwcE9hREE. If you want to make things on your own or have an idea for something we could sell, let me know!
• Finally, Wrimos! Don't forget about the Frenzied Novelists write-ins every Tuesday and Thursday at 7:30 at Bennu Coffee. Also, we'll be having an HP write-in (mostly meaning there will be butterbeer) this Friday, Nov 11, at 7 at SRD. More info here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=285368498160124. Also, author Maureen Johnson is now NaNoWriMo's official Agony Aunt! Every day this month she'll be answering a NaNo-related question on her tumblr. Check in every day to find out how the writing process is like chasing a wheel of cheese down a hill or how the 50,000 word goal isn't so much looming over you as staring wide-eyed at you, rather like a stuffed owl. Words of wisdom we can all live by. :)
• **UPDATE**: We realize that the UT-students-only restriction on the Yule Ball is a bit problematic for those of you with non-UT dates. With that in mind, we're amending that restriction: As long as there is one UT ID per couple, you're good. We don't want an influx of non-UT people, so please respect this rule (i.e. don't bring a group of non-UT friends and pair them up with your UT friends so they can get in), but we also don't want anyone to feel reluctant to come because they can't bring their SO/best friend/what-have-you. As usual, if you have any questions just let us know.