Well, I have returned from the convention, and needless to say is was pretty amazing. Here are some of the highlights:
-UIndy was one of the 6 Indiana universities represented at the convention, including; Norte Dame, IU-South Bend, Purdue, Ball State, UIndy, and IU-Bloomington, with a total of 10 participants! It was the largest Indiana delegation in recent memory.
-Katie Naranjo was re-elected as CDA President, while Jamarr Brown was elected as CDA Vice-President.
-The State Federation of the College Democrats of Indiana won the Rising Star State Federation of the Year award!
-Over 300 College Democrats participated in the Convention, with over 120 Chapters represented, and 38 State Federations were in attendance.
-I met with Congressman Carson and he said that he will come as a guest speaker to UIndy this year!
I hope that at the 2010 CDA National Convention, more UIndy students will attend. It is a good learning experience and an execellent resource to network with fellow Democrats from across the nation.
Later this week, I will post more news and an update on details regarding our involvement in Welcome Week activities. Anyone who would like to volunteer can email us at our new club email address:
uindycollegedemocrats@gmail.com.
As some of you may have noticed, our website is constantly evolving and adding new features to make information more accessible to our members. So I advise you to spend a few minutes to look around the site and discover some of our new features.
The picture of the day is President Obama and our next Associate Justice of the SCOTUS, Judge Sonia Sotomayor.
In other news, the Executive Board has decided to move our weekly meetings to the 1st, 3rd, and last Mondays of every month, so that we will not overlap with the meetings of other Democratic clubs throughout Indianapolis. We have also moved the start times of the meetings to 7 pm in order to better accommodate our Guest Speakers. Our first General meeting will be on Tuesday, August 25th at 7 pm in the Schwitzer Basement (The exact room and Guest Speaker is TBA). Our first General Meeting on the new schedule will be on Monday, September 7th at 7 pm.
We are still looking for volunteers for the UIndy Life Expo and Welcome Week Circus, both are on August 21st. Let us know if you are interested in volunteering for this, so we can add you to the list. A list is also being made of club members who are wanting to attend the One City Indy Youth Rally and/or the Marion County Democratic Clubs Unity Picnic both are on August 23rd, we are hoping to get people to volunteer to carpool other members from the campus to these 2 very important events.
The Executive Board is meeting on Wednesday afternoon to discuss things and to work on getting things prepared for the beginning of the year. The results of the meeting will be posted on here and anyone that wants to attend the Executive Board meeting is more than welcome to because we believe in transparency, so just let us know and we can provide the details to you. This school year should be a very good year for the UIndy College Democrats and we want all members to be actively involved, because without you, we are nothing!
I hope everyone had a wonderful Fourth of July weekend and that everyone is enjoying their summer break! Summer is more than half way over and classes will be starting again before we know it!
There is so much news to talk about so let's get to it! A new feature we are starting today with every new post is the picture of the day. The picture of the day, today, is President Obama meeting with the Russian President Medvedev.
On August 23rd is the One City Indy Youth rally from 5 to 7 pm. They are needing volunteers to help out with things, and ICCD will be having a booth there that we need people to come and work at, so any volunteers can let me know that they want to help out. It is in the afternoon, and we want everyone club member to show up, and I hope to have carpooling going on from UIndy to the IUPUI track stadium where the rally is taking place. Don't forget, it is going to be the state's largest youth rally and we will be setting 2 world records at it!
Also on August 23 from noon to 4 pm at Garfield Park is the annual Democrats Clubs Countywide Picnic. All of the city's Democrats clubs will be taking part in it along with UIndy's College Democrats Club and hopefully even ICCD. There will be plenty of elected officials there along with many party members and activists, so feel free to come join in on the festivities.
After talking to IUPUI's College Democrats, they are on board for ICCD and the Constitution for it has been written. We are still working on contacting the College Democrats at Butler and Marian Universities to get them involved in it. More information on the details of meetings and such will be posted in the coming weeks when more details have been worked out.
The UIndy College Democrats Constitution has been amended for the first time since 2005, and it has had a major overhaul, that was quite necessary. The Executive Board will be getting together soon to discuss it and then at our first meeting of the new year, the General membership of the club will be allowed to vote on the approval of the amendments.
We are signed up to have a booth at the UIndy Welcome Week Circus on August 21st, we are going to be having a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey and we will also be recruiting new members, fundraising, and registering Marion County residents to vote. We also are set to have a booth at the UIndy Life Expo, and we will be needing volunteers for both events. Please let me if you are wanting to volunteer.
The National Convention for College Democrats of America is July 23rd through the 26th, and our President, Christopher Jackson, will be attending and representing the UIndy organization at it. He is also a candidate for the CDA Director of Political Affairs, so please wish him luck on this!
There are some details to discuss at the first meeting of the year, along with the amendments to the constitution, including the night of the week that we will be meeting, if we are going to go to a schedule of 3 meetings a month, guest speakers (who I have been hard at work recruiting), and planned activities and functions for the year, the selection of Committee Chairpersons, and much more. The meeting is tentatively scheduled for Tuesday August 25th, and we hope to see everyone there, and free food will be provided at the meeting! I will send out an email to everyone when the date of the first meeting is finalized.
