Reasonably Logical

All classes has been canceled for the second day in a row. Anyone know if UIUC classes have *every* been snowed out for two days in a row? I don’t thing they have. I know the last single snow day was back in the 70s or something. We’ve gotten somewhere around 16″ of snow and are expecting more. (Just my by eye estimate!)

Update 2-15-07: The last snow day was in 1979 and there have never been two consecutive snow days in the history of UIUC. Total snow fall was just over 12″ (estimated from area reports). It looks like more than that to me, but hey…

I spent the morning working on preparations for the Midwest conference this weekend and starting the ground work for the the CU GLBT Info Line mentioned yesterday. This afternoon I spent on the quad in a giant snowball fight with a bunch of friends. Hell of a blast. In a few minutes, I’m heading over to Gary’s for a “no school tomorrow so lets enjoy ourselves” party. Overall, I could start enjoying this weather.
As a side note, I *HATE* my new Internet service provided by my landlord (Advantage Properties). We used to have great service w/McLeodUSA, but they switched us all to Insight. My connection is almost never up and when it is, its as slow as molasses!

Sunday night I attended a meeting to discuss the starting on a GLBT community center for Champaign-Urbana. I went mostly just to find out more about it and to see how promising it looked. As it happened, I got dragged right in. (Big surprise there right?) Instead of an actual community center, what is being proposed is an information phone line that would be staffed by volunteers. We’ll be working out the details over the next couple of weeks, but it seems like it might actually be workable. We’ll definitely be taking things slow though, particularly after what happened with OUTpost.

The idea of a community center was tried once before, back in 1996. Called OUTpost it lasted until mid 2000. From what I heard last night and in previous conversations, OUTpost pretty much self destructed due to internal conflict, overworking its volunteers, and (according to some) outright fraud by two of the board members. Suffice to say, we’re trying not to repeat their mistakes. That is why we’re starting out small and growing from there if needed.

Before OUTpost, there was another GLBT info line in Champaign-Urbana, but I really don’t know much about it.

The next meeting to discuss the info line is:
Saturday, February 24th at 2pm
Urbana Public Library

Well, I for one was very disappointed with the forum last night. Not surprised mind you, just disappointed. The chancellor totally dodged the issue and wouldn’t give any statement on the Chief issue. Mind you, I can’t blame him (for that at least) too much given that he works directly for the Board of Trustees.

As for the Chancellor’s response to the question about a LGBT cultural house, his use of “sexual preference” was downright insulting, particularly given that the question used “sexual identity”. (For any who might not be aware, “sexual preference” is disliked because it implies a choice. Being gay is not a mater in which you have any choice what-so-ever. It’s simply the way you’re born.)

Check out http://www.iresist.org/ for a video of the forum. Well over 1600 folks were there. They had all of Foellinger Auditorium full, plus overflow in Greg Hall and the Union.

I really hope that at today’s racism forum that the Chancellor will make a firm statement regarding the future of Chief Illiniwek. I don’t really care that much about the issue, but enough is enough. Lets just get it over with. In the long run, the university is going to have to give up the Chief. That’s just a fact of life. So why prolong the agony? I wish they’d just save us all a lot of trouble and get it over with.

Since I see folks are hitting this blog (from search engines) looking for info on tomorrow’s racism forum, here’s the mass mail from the other day. I encourage everyone to attend. I will be.

“A Forum on Racism, Power and Privilege at UIUC”
Thursday, February 1 from 4 to 6 p.m
Foellinger Auditorium

To Members of the Campus Community:

We try to minimize the number of messages we send to the campus via mass mail, but I feel strongly that the following message rises to a level of importance that it is appropriate to share through this system.

On this Thursday, February 1, “A Forum on Racism, Power and Privilege at UIUC” will be held in Foellinger Auditorium from 4 to 6 p.m. I want to thank the students who organized the event, and I invite everyone in the campus community to attend. There will be an opportunity for members of the audience to offer their thoughts, as well as to pose questions to a panel of campus and university officials.

These are important issues that merit broad discussion, and I hope you will set aside time to participate.

Sincerely,

Richard Herman
Chancellor