Residence Hall Association

Residence Hall Association

Special points of interest:

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GRAFFITI I s s u e

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Kicking Off the Semester!

Executive Winter Ball

Steve Hanna—RHA Events Coordinator

is Feb. 21st, ticket sales end February 16th

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Room renewal starts February 3rd

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RA informational fair for prospective RAs is February 18th

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NRHH Social is February 17th

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Movie Voting is Online

Inside this issue: I Bring Back Friendliness

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IBC:

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Too Much Work? Or Just What We Need? It’s A Vandal’s 3 Life Calendar of Upcoming Events

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This semester we started things off right at the Beat BSU Pool Party where people were jumping, splashing, diving, volleyballing, and basketballing the semester off to a great start! Over 60 people from over 14 halls showed up to make the event a massive success and lots of fun! At teh pool party, we hosted the 2009 Water Olympics and contests included the dog-paddle race, 4x4 100 relay, freestyle races, and the coveted dive and splash contest. RHA Vandal Olympians took to the diving board and performed their best jumps, dives, and splashes, which included a good number of bellyflops and flails. Henry Guzman was double-nominated as a finalist in both the dive and splash contests, and took home the gold in the dive. Adam from French won the gold in the splash category. French also won out in the dog-paddle race, and teamed with Syringa and Global Village to win the 4x4 100 relay. Other winners included McCoy (freestyle), Scholars (freestyle second heat). Important info about the 2009 annual RHA Executive Winter Ball Ticket sales continue this week for the RHA Executive Winter Ball. All UI students are invited! Get your tickets for only $40/couple and $25/single. Tickets are not available at the door and sales close on February 16. Ticket price includes a catered candlelight dinner for two, social hour, desert, rose bouquet raffle tickets, and an evening of dancing under the stars of a thousand lights. Formal attire is required. This will be the biggest event of the year, and we are spending over $6,000 to make it a world-class event. The ball will be held off-campus at the University Inn Best Western Empire Ballroom and seasoned professional Redgy Erb of the DJ Company will DJ the dance. The music selection will draw on a large variety of top 40, well-known radio hits, country swing, waltz, hip-hop, and rock. You will not want to miss this event! Limited tickets are available. Tickets are available from your hall president, an RHA Executive Board Member, or at the RHA office. We will also be selling tickets outside of Bob's on February 4 & 5 and February 11 and 12 from 5-7 PM.

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I Bring Back Friendliness Josh Peters—Graham Hall

I’ll be the first to admit that I come off a little strong. Ha that’s an understatement, but anyways. I go out of my way to be friendly. I open doors for strangers, say hello to people, make jokes as much as possible to break the ice. I smile at others, usually; I say hey how’s it going? I wish everyone went out of their way to make the world a little friendlier. I

try to be a good person and to let the small stuff slide too. Of late though, people have brought to my attention that this sort of behavior is apparently “weird.” Why I ask is it weird to be a Good Samaritan? Why is it strange to smile at a stranger and say hey? Why can’t people make eye contact when they walk past each other without it

being seen as aggressive? Or smile at each other without it being seen as a sign of wanting? When I do my laundry late at night and see people I don’t know, why should it seem creepy if I introduce myself and try to get to know someone else? I think people should be more like me and bring back friendliness.

IBC: Too Much Work? Or Just What We Need? Colin Livingston—Graham Hall RA

Students hard at work in IBC Program

What is IBC? Do you ever wonder what it’s like to be in our university’s Integrated Business Curriculum? Many of my friends and I dreaded entering IBC because of how difficult we’d heard the year long program is. Some people I know even decided not to be business majors because of this program. However, as an IBC student I can assure you that IBC is a program that will challenge you in ways that you’ve never been challenged before. It will give you more opportunities to grow as a student and person than you’ll get in any other program. In IBC, students form teams of 5 to 6 members and are given projects to work on together. Teams are encouraged to compete with one another, challenging students to learn and perform to their highest potential. While working in teams can be frustrating at times, it is very rewarding to see the process that teams go through to attain their goals.

If you want a unique challenge here at the UofI, you should consider majoring in business. The IBC will teach you how to work with other people, and how to succeed in a team atmosphere. If you can master these skills before entering the workforce, your chances of succeeding improve significantly.

Two Haikus for Winter Austin Warren-NRHH President Clear the sky above Today a spring in winter Such is Moscow life Frozen fog abound This cold will not show mercy Such is Moscow life

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It’s A Vandal’s Life Cory Griffard—Scholars Hall

To my fellow Vandals, Hello and welcome back! I would like to discuss looking back at last semester and looking ahead. In my opinion, we look back to think about all of the good times and bad times (hopefully not too much of the latter) to analyze our college careers and think of how to make the best of them. That’s kind of the neat thing about the spring semester—if you find you weren’t too happy in the fall, or didn’t feel like you made the most of your college experience, then you’ve got a chance to make things better this semester. If you have been perfectly fine this whole time, then keep doing whatever it is that makes you happy. Some people may find themselves wondering how to make their college lives more fun, while others may have been too busy with studying and work and stuff. Well, here are a few hints that may help. I feel that a fun college experience, at least if you’re living in the dorms, includes talking to and hanging out with people from your hall, doing fun events with them, participating in an extracurricular activity or two, seeing friends in the area you’ve known since kindergarten, going to a Vandal sporting event (if not for the team, then at least for the cheerleaders!), chasing after that cute girl/guy you’ve liked for weeks if not months, doing an intramural sport, or if you’re me, bringing a keg of root beer into the top of the Theophilus Tower, thus having the first legal kegger in the tower. Now please don’t take this the wrong way and think you still shouldn’t do homework

and whatnot. As a resident of the Scholars LLC, I feel obligated to encourage you to study your butts off, but just not to the point of where you’re not having any fun. That’s another thing you can look back on—if you were taking any classes pertaining to your major, did you enjoy them? The way I see it you should be passionate about you major and enjoy what you’re studying, otherwise what’s the point? Remember it’s not too late to change your major if you’re not happy about it. Now I know some of you are taking 18 to 20 credits and only have time for studying. To you people I would like to say………well, perhaps you should talk to your advisors. Now you may ask “Why bother? What makes campus life so important?” Well, believe it or not these are perhaps the most important, most fun years of your life. I know, I know, that’s what they said about high school. But I seriously doubt high school even compares to college. And keep in mind (this especially goes to you freshman out there) college goes by way faster than high school. I don’t care if you’re here eight years, they will go by faster than those four of high school. The first month or two may have been a bit slow because you’re settling in and just getting to know everything, but once you get moving along, time goes by faster than a cheetah on crack. So with that in mind, do what you can to make the most of your life here on campus, because it’ll be over before you know it. Have as much fun as you can (while still attempting good grades) and enjoy your short time as being a Vandal!

Want to inspire others, serve your community, and make the residence halls an even better place to live? Join the top 1% of residence hall students on campus, who are doing just that!

Join NRHH! To learn more, email [email protected]

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*Room Renewal: Any hall, any room

***RA information fair for prospective RAs (required for all applicants)

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RHA Executive Winter Ball

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**Applications for NRHH membership due

* Renew rooms for 2009-2010 on Vandal Web ** NRHH Social is open to anyone and is at 7:30 PM in the LLC classrooms. Also, on the 24th the applications are due at 7:30 in the LLC classrooms. *** And questions you have about RA information contact Steven Wong at ([email protected])

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