03 June 2005

Party Time!

Tonight's the night. The English & Writing Department at Southern Oregon University is holding its end-of-year party at Professor Tom Nash's house. Why am I so excited for the party? Well, I get to announce the winners of the Second Annual Ed Versluis Memorial Writing Contest. But, the winners may be controversial.

The poetry winner, Mariah Cosand, is a volunteer SPEWS crew member. The nonfiction category has a tie currently, with the judges weighing the two against each other—one of which belongs to a founding crew member. And, the fiction winner? Well, the final scores came in this morning. Sara Simon needs to tally them, but last I heard, I'm ahead. I wonder what sort of reaction regarding these results we'll receive. Will people think the contest was rigged?

Speaking with my assistant editor, Sara Simon, I expressed concern about the possible "public" outcry. She pointed out that it's no surprise the "best" writers would seek out student publications like SPEWS, and thereby win the contest. Our faculty advisor, Professor Mada Morgan, verified this sentiment months ago when we initially discussed judging. She wanted to include SPEWS crew, because she felt to not allow us to participate would be to considerably cut the amount of terrific entries down.

Many snags arose during the implementation of this contest, and we may have placed serious demands on our judges. But, we came up with a great batch of entries for a final posting on SPEWS.

4 comments:

Southern Oregon Animal Sanctuary said...

Ye gods, we're in for it! I hope you have a good speech ready, and I hope Bill or someone can speak up about how the judging took place, to assure people it was fair.

RC

Anonymous said...

The party was definately worth attending! I don't think the winners were contoversial, SPEWS member had nothing to do with the judging. And in my experience, in some ways it doesn't matter what you do people will always have hurt feelings when they are putting their stuff out there to be judged. Especially if they have problems taking constructive ctitisism and see it too personally. Overall, I think the whole thing was a success.

: ) Shannon

Anonymous said...

Is Sara Simon her real name? Sounds like a writers name... Is it a nice day Sara? How is your daughters, the Dogs and your self?


james jesse

jessee007@msn.com

james said...

sara
Hello again my friend
james