my coworkers and MTV Julie at the ill-fated reception


Me, Ben, & Abby at the NCAAW booth

This was National Collegiate Alcohol Week at UNLV, which I planned. I'll sum it all up with a quote from "Elizabethtown," my favorite movie of the week... "A failure is simply the non-presence of success. Any fool can acheive failure. But a fiasco is a disaster of mythic proportions. A fiasco is a folktale told to others to make them feel more alive because it didn't happen to them."

Yes. A fiasco. We planned major (and by major, I mean expensive) activities all week long, and the only one which drew a crowd of more than two people was our keynote speaker reception for MTV's Julie Stoffer. She was the BYU gal who was on the New Orleans season of Real World.

Originally, I had booked Harry Reid, thinking that the senate minority leader would be a good choice. But then I got in huge trouble because apparently public universities aren't supposed to have partisan speakers. So the next obvious choice, of course, would be to book a girl from an MTV reality show, right? Haha. So we booked her and she came to speak, drawing a crowd of mean-spirited frat boys who heckled her the instant she got up to speak. She didn't help matters much by talking about how one of her favorite high school past times was watching people get drunk. Let's just say it got really ugly really fast.

Basically, the whole week was mega-expensive with meager results. The activities I planned wasted thousands
of university dollars. Not only that, but there was a major public backlash against alcohol-free activities. I'm not saying that UNLV needs to be BYU, but it was just... sad. But the week is over, we learned from it, and life goes on. I'm staying positive.

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Also, Blair was in town for the SPJ conference. We had a good time on Sunday. Tuesday evening, however, involved uncharacteristic drama-rama... my car battery died in the Harrah's parking garage, while I was temporarily parked in a handicapped space. Then, a big scary drunk dude stole my CIE 658 notebook. Lovely.

Poor Blair. All he wanted to do was ride the dangerous rides at the Stratosphere and visit the Diesel store. And all I wanted to do was hang out.