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!