Let me tell you something, Red. Organizations aren't cool -- people, are cool.
                --Arthur Fonzarelli, in the FKN episode


Remember all the GESO rhetoric to the effect of "we just want to insure an environment free from coercion and intimidation -- an environment of mutual respect"? Who were they trying to fool?

There's a petition going until the first week of May to protest GESO recruitment to the following effect:

We, the undersigned, wish to formally state our disapproval and request the cessation of the GESO policies of over-aggressive campaigning, including, but not limited to:

  1. Arriving uninvited at residences of non-GESO members to solicit members and/or signatures.
  2. Inviting an individual non-GESO member for dinner or coffee, then arriving with one or more additional GESO members to intimidate the student and exert pressure on him/her.
  3. Persistently entering lab areas of non-GESO members to discuss GESO and its policies and refusing to leave despite repeated requests or expressions of dissent or disinterest.
  4. Claiming representation of the entire student body in general, but especially using the signature obtained through the aforementioned methods of coercion.


  • HTML format (just pull it up in your browser)
  • Word (Download a Word document and open it in Word)
  • pdf (open it in Adobe Acrobat reader)
  • postscript (download a postsript for direct printing to a postsript printer)

    If you are so inclined, please download this document in one of several formats above, sign it, ask (very politely) others around you who may be similarly inclined to sign it, and mail it to Steve Corcelli, Sterling Chemistry Labs. Alternatively, email your signature (i.e. some simple statement of support for the petition) to corcelli@onsager.chem.yale.edu if it suits you better. (In fact, if you mail a petition, email him as well so he knows to keep an eye out for it.) There are no plans to turn over the list of signatures to GESO nor the administration, but don't sign it if you're not comfortable with the possibility that anybody will be permitted to see it.

    This petition was presented to GESO at their pep rally on April 26, 2000 by Steve. The petition and its first 103 signatures came to be in just one day prior to the meeting. A random GESO person with a sense of humor that eluded us asked for a hug following its presentation, which he didn't get. David Sanders (a GESO organiser) then stepped into the circle, and publicly recommended that people in GESO take this effort seriously, as it obviously doesn't do for GESO to be wearing out its welcome with students (this was the essence of his comments, anyway.)

    About 40 of the 103 people mentioned above volunteered their signature after receiving a very rapidly forwarded email regarding the petition availiblity here. Many more emailed to say they would love to sign the petition, if only there was enough time (the email went out at 2:30, and the meeting was at 5:30). We are therefore extending the opportunity to sign the petition through next week (the first week of May) before we start citing any number as final. It should be noted that a similar petition circulated through MCDB last fall and accumulated 12 signatures. If I may editorialize, the need to collect names as if they were currency in this struggle against GESO is fairly repulsing. But true to GESO's collective nature, they don't respect when individuals tell recruiters to buzz off, only when large groups of students make an issue of it. Unfortuntely, such is the nature of the majority politics.

    Thanks for everybody's willingness to help! Beauty.