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Usually, hall council programming begins to wane as the Spring
semester progresses; however, that has not been the case in Bluff Hall
due largely impart to the motivation, organization, and dedication of
Adam Pallai. Adam is not a member of the hall council executive board
and only joined in late November to help with hall council. April has
been a very huge month for Adam. He has planned and executed a Hall
trip to New Orleans, helped our campus activities board organize and
publicize two early April events, and planned and executed Summer
Surge with the other members of hall council and the Bluff Hall RA
staff. He has accomplished this in addition to being elected to the
Campus Activities Board chairmanship for next year and maintaining his
academics in environmental engineering. On April 4-7, 2005, Adam led 50 students and 3 chaperones to New
Orleans, Louisiana. Through the planning of his committee of about 5
students, they organized an educational weekend that included an
educational tour of the National D-Day Museum and a day at the French
Quarter Jazz Festival. While the students did an excellent job of
handling the logistics before the trip, several issues arose with the
hotel and the shuttle services that were promised. Adam dealt with
hotel management in a very professional, but firm manager. He showed
great poise under pressure, as several of the well-laid plans he had
taken care and double check found some difficulty. Being the strong
leader and communicator, Adam was able to keep many of these problems
from the sight of the student attendees. When the committee received
back their Trip evaluations, students commented what a great time they
had and indicated how impressed they were with all Adam had done to
make their trip more enjoyable. In fact, the students were already
talking about where they could go next year on the bus ride back from
New Orleans. Showing follow-up and excellent leadership, Adam even
went back to the hotels we stayed in and has negotiated some of the
money back we paid, because he thought we weren’t being as good a
steward of students’ dollar. The hotel has agreed and is giving us
back 15% of what we paid. In April, Adam was also a huge asset for Campus Activities Board and
the entertainment committee. He was one of the students who went all
over the residence halls at SIUE and put advertising up on every
student’s bathroom door. He helped the chairperson plan the event and
tried to get more attendance from students. CAB benefited greatly
with two very well attended programs: the Mystery Dinner on Friday and
April Fools Day party later that week. Finally, Adam was a huge part of the success for Bluff Hall’s Summer
Surge program on April 28, 2005. Bluff Hall Council has had pretty
bad luck with outdoor events this year, usually getting rained out and
thus suffering in attendance. With a well-laid outdoor plan, Bluff
was set to have an excellent event; however, rain again threatened to
damper the attendance. Adam helped to tailor the event to a more
indoor venue, helping to set up a dodgeball tournament in the
Multifunction room to replace an outdoor Volleyball tournament. He
also helped get all the correct supplies to set up the Slip-n-Slide.
Finally, he managed to get all the drinks donated to the event from
the Campus Activities Board; a huge financial help. The event was
very successful and drew over 250 of the 500 students in Bluff. Adam has been tremendous and very worthy of April Student of the Month.
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