UW-Madison history 123 Discussion

1. UW-Madison history 123Discussion PAIL AND SHOVEL Melanie G. Rachel B. Dana D.

2. UNIT 3 – STUDENT GOVERNMENT • Objectives: • Gain a better understanding of the Pail and Shovel party from 1979 • Meet our guest speaker Jim Mallon • Encourage students to vote within the 2014 student government election

3. Proposal • Mood- The overall mood of our performance is informational but humorous and slightly absurd at the same time. We want our audience to enjoy the history of Pail and Shovel so they can truly absorb the information. We don’t want our audience to feel pressured to participate but we want them to willingly speak up when we prompt the audience to answer a question. The overall feel of our performance will be laid back, much like a real discussion section that college students sit through every day. We will use many of the techniques we learned within resonate to make our message really sink in rather than bore our audience.

4. PERFORMANCE • Our audience will be the students within our English 177 discussion section, but they will be thrown into a History discussion class simulation where they will be learning about exactly what Pail and Shovel was back in 1979, as well as encouraged to vote for Pail and Shovel 2014In our role-play discussion section we will be having a roundtable interview with the professor, Jim Mallon, and a current UW-Madison student who is trying to recreate a 2014 version of Pail and Shovel.

5. At the beginning of our presentation we will hand out campaign fliers as well as pennies from a pail to re create one of the pranks from the original campaign. While the conversation between our professor, student, and Jim is going on, a slideshow of photos from the original Pail and Shovel election will be playing in the background along with music from that time. Once the interview of Jim Mallon ends we will play the 2014 Pail and Shovel campaign video where real students from UW-Madison will talk about what they would like the newly elected student government to do for them. Performance cont.

6. For the scenic elements of our presentation, we will have the lighting be as though it is a regular small classroom and have a table with three chairs to represent the roundtable discussion. SCENIC ELEMENTS

7. To support information architecture, our group is going to use the organizational method of chronological order to present the information, but when presenting we will use a spatial metaphor, and have the audience “walk through time.” Information architecture

8. Pail and shovel interview P: Good afternoon class! As mentioned in discussion last week, we will be beginning our next unit, Wisconsin history. Our first topic will be focused on learning all about the 1978 Pail and shovel party. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the topic, Pail and shovel was the name of the UW-Madison student government party who gained control in the spring of 1978. With the slogan “Honesty, Integrity, Responsibility, Pail and Shovel doesn’t believe in any of them”, they pulled some of the most famous college pranks of all time. I am honored to introduce to you, the pail and shovel legend and president himself, Jim Mallon. Additionally, we also have another guest here today, Melanie. This current UW student is working to bring back and recreate the pail and shovel party, the 2014 edition. JM: Thank you for having me, its great to see that my work is still known around this wonderful campus today. P: We are very excited to have the opportunity to talk with you! Could you begin by telling us a little bit about why you choose to create the pail and shovel party and run for student government? JM: Well, before vice-president, Leon Varjian, and I ran, the UW student body was very, very uninterested in the student government. I mean, we can’t really blame them; it was all pretty boring stuff before we came along and shook things up a little bit. I began my campaign by just sitting at a table in East campus mall having students sign my petition. I was actually only enrolled in one credit so I could maintain status as a student so it was pretty clear that I wasn’t really here for the academics. I just wanted to have some fun and let the rest of the UW students have a little fun as well. I wanted to give campus issues “The seriousness they deserve.” This is the University of Wisconsin-Madison after all right, full of so many fun and games. P: Why did you decide to call it the “Pail and Shovel party?” JM: We thought it would be a great idea to turn all $70,000 of the student government budget into pennies to allow the students to dig into it with pails and shovels. Who wouldn’t love digging into a huge pile of pennies, I know I sure did.

9. JM: Hahhaha that was probably one of the most clever things I have came up with throughout my entire lifetime. We wanted to do something big. Something that was not only hilarious, but would gain peoples attention too. During our campaign, we promised that if elected, we would move the entire Statue of Liberty to lake Mendota in February of 1979. While the helicopter was flying Lady Liberty to Madison, a cable snapped that caused her to crash through the ice until only the top of her head and her arm remained above water. P: As awesome as that story is, what is the truth behind lady liberty? JM: Unfortunately, we ere not able to actually bring the real statue of liberty to Wisconsin, but we made do with what we had. She was made in a woodworking shop out of chicken wire, and papier-mâché. When people first saw her floating on the lake, they were really shocked. A lot of people even thought it was real. Hearing people get so hyped up about a harmless prank that we pulled was really funny and made It all worth while. She even cause some traffic jams and some airline pilots changed their flight patterns. Sadly, some drunken frat boys burned down the original Lady Liberty, but she has since been remade. It’s awesome to see that the lady liberty legend still lives on today as groups of people put her back on the lake almost every year P: Very clever. So tell us a little bit about the actual 1978 election? JM: It was definitely a great experience for not only myself, but for the students as well. The 1978 election saw the largest voter turnout in the past 5 years and I must say I am still pretty proud of that. We received 1,510 out of the 4,529 votes, won all of the senior class officer seats, 5 student senate spots, and we were able to post on the boards of the student newspaper and yearbook. Having all of these powerful positions allowed us to do almost whatever we wanted, which we did and it was great. What helped us get such a great voter turnout was that we brought toys to occupy students while waiting in line during voter registration because we all know how boring that can be. The students felt we had the best campaign platform. We built it in front of them on the mall with 1,000 Popsicle sticks. P: You guys really put a lot of thought into that, really aiming your target audience: college students still embracing their inner child. So I am sure all of the students are dying to hear you talk about the legendary Lady Liberty prank.

10. P: That really was quite the prank if you ask me. So tell us about the flamingos on Bascom hill. JM: We did this little prank for two reasons. One, we wanted to have a celebration of the start of the pail and shovel party and two, we thought that all UW students needed a little something to spice up the dreaded, first day of school. So on the first day of class, September 4th 1979, we planed 1,008 pink plastic flamingos all over Bascom hill at 8AM. Let me tell you, it was quite the sight and watching people look at the so puzzled was great too. We decided to tell everyone that the flamingos were blown north by hurricane David. No one really believed that, but they clearly liked the idea seeing as within a short two hours, the flamingos were moved all over the campus. It was definitely the best first day of classes I've ever had. S: Today, there are still a lot of things going on around campus thanks to your brilliant flamingo idea! Four of the convenience stores located in the UW dining halls are called the “Flamingo Run”. There are paintings of pink Flamingos everywhere. Also, on September 1st, 2009, the Madison city council voted to make the pink plastic flamingo Madison’s official bird. It definitely didn’t take much convincing at all, they only debated for about 5 minutes. Seeing the Flamingos displayed on Bascom hall every year is one of the main reasons that I want to bring the pail and shovel party back. I want more crazy things like that to happen all around campus. JM: I’m definitely going to have to go check out this “Flamingo run” you speak of, sounds pretty awesome. P: Other than the Lady liberty and Flamingo prank, what else did you boys have up your sleeves? JM: We had a lot of plans. We were able to complete some of them, and others were a little too crazy for even us, the best of the best, to pull off. During our campaign, we said that we would turn all the campus clocks backwards so that classes would end before they even began. We wanted to put all the dorms on wheels so that they could roll around and give students a new view every day. We also wanted to flood Camp Randall stadium so that we could hold mock naval battles. Another thing we thought was a great idea was to change UW’s name to “The university of New Jersey” so that UW students could say that they graduated from a prestigious eastern school. Since New Jersey was the only state without a “The university of….” And Wisconsin had 26 of then, we figured that we could spare one. We also wanted to change every male student on campus name to “Jim Smith” so that professors could say that they knew everyone’s name. Not only would that have been convenient, but also pretty damn funny. Even as kick ass as these ideas were, they clearly were not realistic but when I look back, it was a real fun time.

11. S: I don’t know about the rest of you, but my favorite idea gathered from these students is to make jump around mandatory at the end of every lecture, so we should probably start that tradition right now (PLAY JUMP AROUND) (WE ALL JUMP AROUND) P: Where are any other pranks that you were able to pull off? JM: Well we were pretty well known for throwing some pretty sweet toga parties. One time as many as 10,000 people attended. Everyone was required to wear a toga in order to enter and they were a lot of fun. P: Thank you so much for sharing all of your memories with us. It kind of feels as if we were taken back in time. Before we switch gears, does anyone have any questions for Jim? (PAUSE TO LET CLASS ASK QUESTIONS) P: Alright well wonderful! Now we are going talk a little bit about the possible 2014 Pail and shovel party. S: Listening to Jim talk was really inspiring. I know that me and the rest of the students involved hope to be just half as good as Jim and the 1978 pail and shovel party. I have a little video to show what some of the current UW Madison students would like the newly elected student government to do. (PLAY VIDEO) S: Do any of you have any ideas that you would like the 2014 Pail and shovel party to consider? (PAUSE TO LET CLASS TALK)