Fall Schedule and Opening Address

Hello GMU Econ Society members and readers of our blog,

I know many of you have been waiting for our Fall 2008 schedule of events, and I'd like to throw out a tentative set of events that the other officers and I have been coming up with.

First and foremost, there will be a beginning of the semester Econ Social, in which we will try to get new Econ majors, minors, and anyone interested to get together with those involved in the Econ department. This has been a yearly tradition and each year it only gets better. I'm sure it will be a great networking opportunity as well as a chance to say 'Hello' to some of your professors outside of class. Tentatively, we would like to have the event on a Wednesday afternoon in September at 4:30pm.

The rest of our schedule is much more foggy, but don't worry we are coming up with some great ideas that I'd like to share with you all. There will definitely be some new book events, as professors are having books published this fall. Currently we are working on getting a professor to speak at such an event (Hint Hint he writes for Cafe Hayek), but we can't say much more due to unknowns. On a much more ambitious (although no more unrealistic), we plan to have the first annual Freedom Week at Mason (which much credit goes to Ian Dunois for coming up with the idea).

Freedom Week will be in late October hopefully, and will have week long events spotlighting topics on liberty. Remember that this will be right before the Presidential Election, so we have the opportunity to do fun things like giving out those political map quizzes. Hopefully we will be able to get a few GMU professors to speak on liberty, and perhaps we can have an outdoor tent set up with support from IHS, Mercatus, FEE, Cato, the Libertarian Party, or even the Mises Institute. Personally, I would like to add a Economics related pumpkin carving contest with prizes (maybe someone can do a supply and demand curve one or Hayek's profile.)

This is all we can say for now, as we are still hashing out the details. Besides events there are some things that I would like to accomplish soon that I feel like sharing with the Econ Society. The first is that I would like to rework or update the graphics of the website and maybe this blog. This is depending on the availability and work of Michael Ostrowski, our Treasurer, whose skills with anything visual computer related are amazing. Another thing I would like to do is increase the membership and spread the word about the GMU Econ Society. I went nearly 3 years at Mason loving economics but missing out because I didn't know the Econ Society existed. I have talked to Michael about going to some of the orientation weeks to talk about the GMU Econ Society and Economics at Mason in general. In the first few weeks of school I would also like to print fliers and have them given out to students in all of the Economics classes, as well as questionnaires to classes to ask the Econ major students what kind of speakers and events they would like to have. I feel getting feedback is the most important thing here, because that's what the Society exists for, for serving the wants of the Mason Econ students.

The last thing I would like to end on is to ask you all, what do you want for the GMU Econ Society this upcoming year? Any ideas for events, speakers, anything?

I hope that I answered some of your questions that you may have had, but if you have anymore questions. please feel free to either leave a comment or email me at gmueconsociety@gmail.com. I hope to serve you all well as President, so if there is anything I can do for you please ask. I look forward to hearing from you all.

-Kevin R. Hilferty