Hi everyone,

Just wanted to take a minute and on behalf of all of the ACM officers welcome everyone back to UIC!

Just a few things I want to cover, I'll try to keep it short.

First, the tunnel is closed for the time being apparently and so is the New lounge. But the primary CS lounge and new computer lab is open, as well as the ACM office itself.

Secondly, a few people were asking about certain office policies. The two I'll go ahead and mention right now are gaming and soda. As far as gaming goes, we are going to try and not restrict the hours and see how that goes. The expectation is that the volume of office is kept to a minimum level of disruption. If things get out of hand then we will readdress the issue. The ACM workstations are meant to be priority work and not gaming particularly during the day. Let's all try to be reasonable with this.

The second thing is our soda policy. Last semester I had to hunt people down and even pay off some debts from my own pocket. So the update is this... We are allowing a CREDIT SYSTEM only! You may put money into the bucket and add chalk marks for how much soda credit you have, but you may NOT go negative. The board is currently not cleaned for it so I'll get to setting that up later today. Any questions about these two things go ahead and talk to us.

Third and lastly for now, it's cool that you guys eat lunch and bring whatever to ACM, but I really must stress PICKING UP AFTER YOUR SELF. Be conscious of your garbage and make sure it is disposed of appropriately, this goes for the fridge as well. If we all cooperate on maintaining the area then we won't need to worry on massive clean ups.

Those are really the big things off the top of my head. Welcome back and let's try and have a really strong semester and focus on improving the ACM image to the department, our fellow students, and the other Engineering student organizations. Again, any questions feel free to ask any of the officers or get in touch with me personally. I'm always available to talk.

Tom Phillips
ACM President

PS - unless I am mistaken, our first meeting is next Thursday September 5th at 5:30pm in SEO 1000.