Standing up and make some noise

Remember the issue with the parking permit I mentioned last time? A classmate of mine did start a petition. An online petition. That, seeded through our department's list serve, gathered over 200 votes within the first two hours and is now spreading throughout the campus. We are allowed to leave our personal comments and the departments that we represent when we sign electronically, so just by glancing at the petition (over 700 signatures the last time I checked, and this petition started at noon, today) we have people spanning all stages of academic career, from undergrad to techs to grad to staff and tenured professors. We have a lot of people from my program and biology, quite a few from chemistry, biochem, bioengineering, and a handful from physics, economy, engineering and political science. We have more lighthearted comments such as "Thanks for giving me the weekend off" and we have mini-essays. I got almost everyone in my lab to sign, including the PI (who gave me a brief lecture on the history of parking lot economy and how it apparently dated back to Reagan --yes this is what my PI tends to do) and have forwarded the link to a few others who have indicated interest, including the vivarium staff.

I'm quite excited about this now because a) we're sending this to the chancellor, and right now it looks like there are enough people who are upset about this that the administrators can't just ignore it and b) this is a good chance for me to see how much power the student/staff body really do have, when it comes to changing regulations and policies.

It's amazing though. Every time I click on the refresh button on the e-petition link, new signatures show up. Even if I click it every two seconds.

...

Unrelated: got my SfN session appointment! Anna's presenting on Monday morning in November, Lis (the other one presenting in my lab) is on Monday afternoon. I'm on Wednesday afternoon, and I forwarded my notification to the PI with a note about whether or not this meant I get to skip lab meeting that week (we have it on Wednesday afternoons). He "supposes" so. People have been giving me tips and advises and things to see about the conference so now I'm getting all hyped up about it too. Should be fun!