Here are some pictures that the Iron Warrior published showing the before and after shots of the display case that held The Natural Log.
NEAC stole the log in late November,
and replaced it with a satirical “Engineering Ln”.
NEAC’s letter to the Iron Warrior (Smaller, colour versions of the images can also be found on page B5.)
The full history of The Natural Log, including its multiple log-nappings.
TIN SOLDIER NEWS BUREAU
The statue by the Douglas Wright Engineering building was painted again, this time with the colour of EdCom, black. Many remember when, in the fall of 2006, the statue was painted orange with black stripes and the words “Engineers are GRRREAAT”.
The back of the statue had the initials “NEAC” on it, suggesting that the Non-Existent Action Committee had executed the prank. An IQC professor was asked how the group could have undertaken the task if it did not exist. They are currently requesting a government grant for several million dollars to find the answer.
Iron Warrior/Tin Soldier, March 27, 2007
[NOTE: The statue is actually called Early Morning by Krystyne Sydowsky]
Before the construction of the Mike & Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum Nano Centre (QNC), there was a patch of green space on campus colloquially referred to as “B2 Green”. The announcement of its destruction meant that many students became concerned about the amount of green-space that would be left on campus after the QNC construction began.
As a result, on October 26th, the Non-Existent Action Committee (NEAC), one of UW’s prank groups, planted a cluster of 5 trees in the middle of the green in an act of guerrilla gardening. They also erected a sign with the words “NEAC. Got Wood?”
Here is the article that appeared in the Iron Warrior after the prank:
Pranksters Bluntly Ask the Right Questions
The nanotechnology building might have to be a bit smaller than planned. The latest gardening project of a few mischievous engineering students is set to compete for space with the new centre.
As if to protest the vanishing green space on campus, the group gave a final send-off to the field by planting a few saplings and other flora in its centre. It is unclear whether or not this qualifies as “artistic expression”: these were engineering students after all. Whatever the case, their timing was impeccable; the prank was performed in time for a farewell party for the field organized by the Science Society.
Early Friday morning, The Iron Warrior received an anonymous tip urging it to dispatch reporters:
From: Your Worst Nightmare
Subject: Faraz: You did not get this email
Time: Oct 26, 2007 4:14 AM
We are making you aware of a present we have left on the B2 Green earlier tonight.
Nano may have a building, but we have a forest.
Bring a camera.
You may want to go immediately.
The pranksters identified themselves as the Non-Existent Action Committee (NEAC). NEAC has long been a tradition among the engineering students, who have used its banner to ensure their pranks are attributed to engineering students. The NEAC markings were also seen earlier this year, when the orange art piece by the Douglas Wright Engineering building was painted over in the dark tones of EdCom. The field is here to stay for the time being. Actual groundbreaking will happen in March of 2008, when it will be replaced by a 10 metre hole in the ground. However, preparations for construction have already begun. The Bombshelter patio will be dug up to extend service tunnels from the Student Life Centre. Aside from the tunnel extension, other preparatory work will include rerouting underground pipes and taking soil samples. Editor’s Note: The plants have been pulled out of the ground by the time of issue production.
- Faraz Syed, 4A Chemical
UW’s media darling, the Student Success Office, has announced its intentions to have Orientation Week shortened, requesting that the Thursday and Friday of O-Week become class days. This is in line with the University’s yearly attempts at shortening the week (every year for the last 4 years).
This Tuesday, the Undergrad Senate is meeting to decide whether to forward the recommendation to Senate proper (where it will come to a vote in November).
In light of this, we offer this article about O-Week history from the Iron Warrrior:
The History of Orientation Week at UW
by Ross Ricupero
The oldest recorded discussion of Orientation Week at the University of Waterloo is from the October 13th, 1961 edition of The Coryphaeus, the University of Waterloo’s first student newspaper. It’s a simple article that welcomes freshman engineers to the school and the Engineering Society. It also gives thanks to Dave Smith, chairman of the Initiation Committee (Orientation used to be called initiation) and announces the Initiation Dance as part of WA-WA-WEE ’61 (The old name of Warrior Weekends).
The September 27th, 1963 edition of The Coryphaeus gives even more details on “initiation” with an article discussing the school-wide scavenger hunt (apparently they acquired things like wagons, tractors, hay bales, snow fences and pictures of someone named Brigitte Bardot), a game to measure the length of a city block with hotdogs, a challenge to make a line of pennies stretching from Kitchener City Hall to Waterloo City Hall (which is apparently approximately 140,000 pennies), the (seemingly) annual “Froshman Hop” dance, and some unknown event called the “Hootenanny.” Each faculty organized their own Initiation program and worked with the Orientation Committee, which ensured the individual programs worked across the school.
In ’64, ’65, and ’66, even more traditions had started to form. First-year students from Arts, Science and Engineering (the only faculties at UW at the time) were all awarded “beanies” or caps at the beginning of (the now called) Orientation and the cheer of “I’m a dirty rotten dead horse and I stink!” was used throughout the week, accompanied by students falling to the ground, laying on their back and sticking their arms and legs in the air. The Frosh Queen competition, in which “Freshettes,” or female first-year students, competed to be elected to the position complete with sash and crown, became a major event. The penny-drive also became Slave Day, where first-year students would be sold to members of the community to help them with whatever they choose, or for charity purposes.
In 1967, Stewart Saxe, a political science student and head of the Orientation Committee, re-imagined the entire week and introduced the big-brother concept. All first-year students (there were only 2,200 in 1967, a third of the 6,000+ we expect this year) were divided into groups of ten, each of which were overseen by an Archon, a single upper-year student leader, which stayed with the group the entire week. This year continued the method of each society running their initiation programs, and the Orientation Committee overseeing the entire thing.
1967 was also the first year that an aerial photo from Orientation Week was published. The 360 strong group spelled “Hagey” across the Arts quad to salute then-president J. G. Hagey (the same Hagey that Hagey Hall is named after).
It was during the late 1960s that the bulk of Orientation Week was moved to the control of the Federation of Students (FedS). While the student societies still planned and ran events for their specific faculties, many of the larger events would be planned by FedS. It’s from this point throughout the 1970s that FedS took the Orientation Week of the 1960s and made it into a month-long Orientation program with varied social or educational events each day from the start of September to the end. This included many high-profile concerts such as Meatloaf, Gordon Lightfoot and Ike and Tina Turner, as well as speeches from major political figures, cabinet ministers, MPPs and radical leaders.
While the much expanded programming offered more choices for incoming students, it was during this time that student apathy and low attendance began to take its toll. Concerts lost money (the Ike and Tina Turner concert lost $6,000 in 1972, which is over $30,000 today when inflation is accounted for), speeches went unattended and acts cancelled or simply didn’t show. Reviews of the Orientation program varied wildly from condemnation to enthusiastic.
It was during this time that the Engineering Orientation program moved away from the Slave Day charity and began running the Bus Push charity (which has continued annually since then in the Winter term). 1969 also saw the Engineering Stag event of Orientation Week, which was little more than a drunken strip-tease for first-year students.
It wasn’t until 1978, when the LLBO took dispute with the University’s “beer tents,” that programming needed to be reduced and concerts re-thought. The LLBO refused to license the outdoor tents that were part of Orientation Week in years past, reducing the amount of money that the Orientation program could use, preventing headline concert acts and major guests.
Then began the dark years (or the years where written records become spotty). It’s expected that Orientation Week continued this way for the 1980s and early 1990s. Student societies continued running programming for their faculties, and the Federation of Students continued running the overall program. It was during an unknown Orientation Week during the 1980s that the Education Committee was founded, and that the engineering hard hats became a major symbol. These have stayed as key components of Engineering Orientation Week since then. The oldest record of the Education Committee is an Orientation Week video from 1988 and hard hats could be over a decade older than that.
At the end of the dark years, Engineering Orientation Week was a tight, multi-day program packed with events. Incoming students would go through a program similar to the program we have now, but that had very distinct differences. In 1993, a UW Orientation Manual was produced and distributed to the groups running the faculty programming and soon after, a major part of Orientation Week today was founded: the Federation Orientation Committee (FOC). The goal with FOC was to have better collaboration between the independent groups running various Orientation Week programming and the Federation of Students, allowing a more efficient Orientation Week overall. This started the process of Orientation Week becoming more regulated and controlled, something that would take the unorganized, month-long Orientation programs of the late ‘70s and ‘80s, to the smaller, week-long programs of the ‘90s. By 1996, a schedule that resembles the modern day Engineering Orientation Week began to emerge: Aerial photos were taken (these can all be seen in the POETS lounge), they earned their hard hats, and they all met the Dean. However, they also competed in chariot races, paraded through town and had organized off-campus parties, events long since banned or modified.
It was during 1997 and 1998 that a new program started to address major concerns highlighted in an Orientation Student Survey conducted in 1994 and 1995. This survey concluded that there was a dangerous undercurrent of behavior across all Orientation programs. From discriminatory chanting to exclusive programming and a dependence on drinking, it was seen that there was a fundamental problem with Orientation Week: the leaders themselves. There was no formalized Orientation Leader training program for leaders to go through, and there were few checks and balances on the actions of these leaders. People simply ran Orientation Week like it had been run for the year they went through it and every year before that.
It was because of this that the Provost’s Advisory Committee on Orientation (PACO) was founded, and PACO training was implemented in 1998. This training, mandatory for all Orientation leaders, covered things like drinking and drugs, inclusivity and non-discrimination. While some students cried out that this was gutting the Orientation Week they knew and loved, it ultimately led to the modern Orientation Week we have now, which many believe to be better than ever before.
With the double cohort of 2003, a large percentage of students were now entering university at age 18, which is younger than the legal drinking age. This became a problem as many planned events during Orientation Week were “wet” events where alcohol was served. A controlled environment was implemented, with “beer gardens” allowed at certain events and each organizing group allowed to have a single “wet” event for their faculty or residence.
By 2004, PACO was dissolved and we were left with Orientation Leader Training, the modern version of PACO leader training. 2004 was also the last year that Orientation Week officially included alcohol with a beer garden at the Saturday night Toga party. Once Orientation Week 2004 closed, alcohol would not be part of the week again.
In 2011, Orientation Week is over 50 years old, involves over 8,000 first-year students, 1,000 upper-year students, has a budget in the hundreds of thousands, and the support of countless sponsors and contributors. While it may be completely different from the Initiation of 1961, Orientation Week 2011 has built upon the past decades; all of the conflicts and problems, changes, successes and failures have been rolled into the week.
While it may not be perfect, it is a continuation of a tradition started soon after the University of Waterloo was founded, and it represents the unconventional history and future of this school.
— Iron Warrior, September 5, 2011
The original article can be found online here.
