Before 1994, the caller was payed a percentage of that night's gate.
The rounds mailing list was created in Fall 2003.
Weekly emails to tech-squares started in 01 or 02.
Discuss was created in 00 when the officers list was large and discussion that should have been open to the club happened on the officers list.
Social was created in 99.
Starting in the Spring 2000, MIT started offering Tech Squares Crash Crash course as a PhysEd class. And a year later, PE credit was officially offered for the class. The class is limited to two hours, so it officially runs 8:15 to 10:15. Be aware that the PE classes officially start one week after the rest of MIT classes. This means if Crash Course starts the first week of classes, we will have a group of PE students appear at 8:15 on Week 2 expecting to be taught from scratch. If students write us about signing up for our PE class, we should tell them to register through the lottery. While in practice we can just take them into the class, to the PE department sign-ups are an indication of demand and it’s in our best interest for the department to know if we’re a popular offering through initial sign-ups.
More Club History This section contains history of the club, including club lore and things we used to do, but don’t anymore and why. 14.1 Club Founding Tech Squares was an offshoot of the MIT Outing Club and was founded by Bill Mann, Don Beck, and Veronica McClure in 1967. For one of the club anniversary dances that was a brochure made of our club history. Serveral copies can still be found in the club locker. 14.2 Bill Kim and the Bill Kim Dance-a-thon Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s the club was run primarily by a single, dedicated person. His name was Bill Kim. He handled much of the weekly jobs and still had energy left over to encourage new dancers. When he was diagnosed with cancer people pulled together from both Tech Squares and the contra dancing community to run a dance-a-thon to help raise money. That dance was held in November 1993 and he passed away a couple years later. His badge was given to the club and remains pinned to our orange club banner in memory of his spirit and dedication to the club. 14.3 Free Admission for Officers Once upon a time, before the club shrank and started having financial problems (before 1983?), officers got in free to dances. At times in the past, it has been considered a nice incentive when attempting to recruit officers. We should consider reinstating this policy if we think it will actually serve as an incentive. 14.4 Ending at 10:30 Ted Lizotte has a long drive home and asked if we’d be willing to end a half hour early for the Summer of 2002. At the time attendance during the summertime was always low and it seemed like a reasonable adjustment. In Fall 2002, we returned to ending at 11pm. When Summer 2003 came, we again shortened the night to 10:30pm. Sometime during that time, we also started serious discussions with Ted about what we could do to make him happier (so he wouldn’t retire 26 and stop calling for us). He mentioned that ending at 10:30pm made a big difference. In July of 2003, a proposal to shorten the night to 10:30pm was brought to a club vote. The club approved it, but asked that the board review this decision once a year to be sure that this decision was reverted when the situation no longer warranted the early ending time. Many club members miss the extra half an hour, especially those that arrive later, but the club enjoys Ted so much that they are willing to sacrifice that dancing time to keep him. The officers should seriously consider adding the time back when the situation changes.