Burnt Orange Report

University Democrats

By Karl-Thomas Musselman

Tonight was the second University Democrats meeting here at UT. Last week we had about 300 attend the first meeting where Congressman Lloyd Doggett was our speaker. Today, our first ever "Action Wednesday" saw about 130 in attendance to hear about local operations, opportunities to go to Florida for free with the League of Conservation Voters October 1-4, and other sign ups.

65 people were deputy registered, bringing our total to about 100 in our first two meetings. Voter Registration is our primary activity as far as campus goes since we are focused on turning out the vote for our county-wide Democrats since we can affect that here in Austin. Yesterday (alongside Students for John Kerry) we registered 175 students, and today, 265. Since school has started we have registered around 750 students and that doesn't count the effort of other independent operations on campus.

Thanks to an election for UD Treasurer today (which was won my Larkin Campbell, (now former Historian)), dues money has flowed in. Over $500 was collected last week with at least another $100 today. The office of Historian will be filled at next week's meeting, which will see a wide-open race since there is no one 'in line' you could say for the spot. (Larkin was our interim Treasurer until today so her 69-14 win was not unexpected.) It's amazing the amount of new blood in UDs (super majority are 1st and 2nd years).

So props to Byron and the past officers for building UDems up since 2000 and getting us ready for where we are today. We couldn't have done it without you.