9/11 Meeting Recap

• Due to some confusion about who is eligible to run, officer elections have been pushed back a week. Anyone wanting to run has until Monday, September 17, to email a 3-4 sentence bio (who you are, why you want to run, your qualifications, etc.) to austinhpalliance@gmail.com. During the meeting on Tuesday the 18th, each person who has submitted an email will have 2-3 minutes to speak about why they are running and why the rest of the members should vote for them. After the meeting, the candidate's bios will be posted on Facebook and an online poll will open. Members will have until Monday the 24th to vote for each professorship, and the new officers will be announced at the meeting that Tuesday. ANYONE can run for office, including new members and freshmen. See last week's recap for a description of each post and please feel free to email us with any questions.
• The Equality FTW fundraiser wrapped up last week with $94,953, nearly twice the HPA's goal! Thank you so much to everyone who donated. That money is going straight into making our campaigns and projects even more awesome.
• The HPA has officially relaunched their voter registration drive, Wizard Rock the Vote, for the 2012 elections. If you are not registered to vote, need to renew your registration, or you're not sure if you've registered, this site is where you want to go: http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/voter/reqvr.shtml. If you would like to help register people to vote in our upcoming registration drive, it would help if you are a certified Volunteer Deputy Registrar. The required one-hour class to become a VDR is held every weekday at 10:30 and on October 2 at 10:30, 12:30, and 6:30 at 5501 Airport Boulevard. I am going to the one tomorrow morning, so if you are interested and need a ride, let me know ASAP. More info on becoming a VDR here: http://www.traviscountytax.org/goVotersVDR.do.
• If you want to get a head start on the election season and find out who's running for what, the Texas Secretary of State's office has all the info: http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/candidates/general/2012gensbs.shtml and http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/candidates/index.shtml. To find out which district you're in for any of the races, just enter your address here: http://www.fyi.legis.state.tx.us/. Make sure you're looking at the November 2012 districts, not your current district representatives; the district maps were redrawn this past year and many cities got their representatives shuffled around. Speaking of voting laws passed last year, please remember that the voter ID law did NOT go into effect. A federal court struck it down as unconstitutional just a few weeks ago. If a poll worker tries to tell you that you need photo ID in addition to your voter certificate, they are wrong. Unless something drastic happens in the next 8 weeks, all you need to vote is the certificate they give you upon registration. If you forget that, then your UT student ID should be sufficient. No driver's license or birth certificate required.
• The HPA is also rebooting their Not In Harry's Name campaign, a project designed to get Warner Bros. to switch to fair trade chocolate in their products. Their current chocolate provider received a failing grade from Free2Work, an organization that rates companies on their efforts to address and prevent forced labor and child labor (literally the only criteria out of 48 that the company met was that there have been zero reports of retaliation against employees who attempted to organize, which may well be because there have been no such attempts). This campaign has been nearly two years in the making, and Warner Bros. has yet to say much on the matter, but the more people we get involved in this the more likely it is that they will have to pay attention to us. To read the ongoing correspondence between the HPA and WB, sign the petition, or read the full (and very depressing) Free2Work report on Behr's Chocolate, go here: http://thehpalliance.org/action/campaigns/nihn/.
• As I'm sure you all know, J.K. Rowling's new book, The Casual Vacancy, is coming out in just over two weeks. For whatever reason, no Austin bookstore seems to think this is an occasion worthy of celebration, which means we're just going to have to throw our own party. :) Keep your calendars clear on Friday the 28th for a kickass HPA celebration, because even if Harry Potter is over the only proper way to celebrate a new J.K. Rowling novel is with butterbeer and chocolate wands! As soon as we have the room reservation cleared, we'll make a Facebook event with all the details.