The Agrinautica

   So yesterday I missed the Jason Webley show at the hippie cafe because I am a frat boy. (I'd link here to Alvin saying we're all big ass nerds (BANs) in Phi Alpha Delta or something along those lines but its in a comment somewhere deep in my lj). Anyway, we were having our weekly meeting yesterday and everything was going smoothly until a certain member brought up some previously resolved drama (we'll call him The Appellant) and started trying to stick it to the officers. What was really weird about this was for the first time in a very long time someone was having an organizational judicial drama debate and I wasn't involved at all! But I certainly have a lot of experience in the area so I thought I'd at least review it.

   Now I have absolutely nothing personal against The Appellant, and despite my opinions on how the drama went down, I still have no personal opinion about him.
   So basically what went down is he kept asking the officers questions he intended to implicate them in wrongdoing and wrack them with guilt. And this went on for quite some time. The incident had already been resolved through an agreement between the officers and the member who had been found liable, but The Appellant, uninvolved in the incident, felt that he should demand recourse for the member. Anyway, through his questioning he changed what his actual complaint was to varied other things such as alleged check fraud, failure of officers to adhere to their own duties, lying to the national office, and a variety of other things all of which I believe are completely unfounded. But the point is, I think the act of changing his complaint to whatever it looked like might stick at the moment is really the hallmark of someone whose concern isn't about the original issue but just has beef with The Man and wants to try to stick it to them through any manner possible.
   Also the argument went round and round and round, often returning to things already discussed and answered. It was quite tedious. Now I've been in The Appellant's approximate position before, of alleging wrongdoing of an organizations officers (ie Secretary-General Myung's reign of terror in MUN), but I'm proud to say unlike The Appellant in the instant case, I usually kept the discussion down to about two interchanges before I made a motion or stated the action that I was going to take lest they resolve it. This was just messy.

   As to our officers, they did a pretty good job considering. My only advise would be (A) try not to get flustered and defensive (they did a good job in this really, but remaining unflustered and undefensive is really the key to making a renegade naysayer look like a nutjob¹), and also (B) making a diagram of the situation on the blackboard would of made it harder for him to run around in circles with the issue and would have been delightfully patronizing.

   So thats that. Altogether our officers have handled the situation very well, and I know that they had all tried very hard to come to the best solution to the original problem. But hey we're a pre-law fraternity so you have to expect a member to get litigious every now and then.

¹_{But in the event the renegade naysayer is not a nutjob, or the likely circumstance the renegade naysayer is myself (take note, new MUN leadership), it still makes things easier for everyone involved if you try to give the individual the most thought out and serious answers possible. On any account, if the complaintant is myself, it could lessen the enthusiasm with which I make you look like a nutjob to everyone else.}

Picture of the Day

I try to be artistic while the professional photographer takes pictures of Kristy's relatives. See also.
Note there will be no