2010s
2015 Rewritten Constitution and Standing Policies replace Old Constitution and Bylaws
2013 Creation of Vice President and Vice Treasurer positions
2011-2012 Offering free pizza to students is tried as an incentive. It is unsuccessful in drawing more students.
2011-2012 PE is offered first quarter in the fall only
2010 Spring PE offered again; an hour each on Tuesdays and Thursdays, creation of the PE instructor position (2 quarters worth)
2000s
2009 Fall No PE offered because DAPER reorganized and became more stringent about PE
2009 EC votes to have Class Coordinator & Class Assistants get free subscriptions when there is a class due to them doing a lot of work and not getting to dance much (but this policy to be renewed each year)
2008 Having outgrown Lake Shore Farm, the annual Tech Squares Weekend is moved to East Hill Farm in Troy, NH.
2007 Rounds fees incorporated into general dance fee
2005 Clark Baker hosts the first Tech Squares Challenge Weekend at Lake Shore Farm, NH, targeted at solid C1 and C2 dancers.
2004 tech-squares-officers list created
2003-4 Weekly Job descriptions and officer descriptions put on the web
2003 Weekly dances end at 10:30pm year round. When Summer 2003 came, we again shortened the night to 10:30pm. Sometime during that time, we also started serious discussions with Ted about what we could do to make him happier (so he wouldn’t retire 26 and stop calling for us). He mentioned that ending at 10:30pm made a big difference. In July of 2003, a proposal to shorten the night to 10:30pm was brought to a club vote. The club approved it, but asked that the board review this decision once a year to be sure that this decision was reverted when the situation no longer warranted the early ending time. Many club members miss the extra half an hour, especially those that arrive later, but the club enjoys Ted so much that they are willing to sacrifice that dancing time to keep him. The officers should seriously consider adding the time back when the situation changes.
2003 Fall - rounds mailing list created
2003 Summer - Dance ending time moved from 11pm to 10:30pm
2002-3 Weekly dances end at 10:30pm during the Summer. Ted Lizotte has a long drive home and asked if we’d be willing to end a half hour early for the Summer of 2002. At the time attendance during the summertime was always low and it seemed like a reasonable adjustment. In Fall 2002, we returned to ending at 11pm.
2002 35th anniversary dance
2002 Tech Squares moves back from Thursday to Tuesday nights,
01 or 02 - weekly emails to tech-squares start
2001 Spring - PE credit was officially offered for the Crash Course
01/02 Notes: Changed from dancing Thursday nights to Tuesday nights Year of the amateur cuers
2000 Monthly dances (previously occurring 8/year) are reduced. 2 are cancelled this year, 2 the next, and only 4 are booked for 01/02.
2000 Coffee maker sold
2000- Weekly emails to tech-squares stop
2000 Spring - MIT starts offering the Tech Squares Crash Course as a PhysEd class.
2000 - Discuss was created in 00 when the officers list was large and discussion that should have been open to the club happened on the officers list.
2000 - Club hosts Jerry Story dance
1990s
99- tech-squares-social mailing list created
1998 Dancing moves from Tuesday to Thursday nights.
1998 Booked only 6 monthly dances for 1999–2000
1997-8 Weekly dance night changed from Tuesday to Thursday
1997-8 Club requests and receives ASA funding for the first time
1997 30th anniversary dance, October 18
1996-7 Weekly Jobs Start
1995 Linda Resnick and Clark Baker host the first Tech Squares Weekend at Lake Shore Farm, NH. This becomes an annual event for the club.
Before 1994, the caller was payed a percentage of that night's gate.
1993-4 Semester subscriptions are offered
1993 Bill Kim Dance-a-thon (November 7). Through the last 80s and early 90s the club was run primarily by a single, dedicated person: Bill Kim. When he was diagnosed with cancer, people from both Tech Squares and the contra dancing community pulled together to run a dance-athon to raise money. He passed away a few years later, but his badge was given to the club and (as of 2006) pinned to the club banner in memory of his spirit and dedication to the club.
1992 25th anniversary dance, October 24
1980s
1983? At some point in the distant past, officers got in for free. This stopped due to financial trouble.
1970s
1971 The first “Krash Kourse”: an intensive course designed to produce club level dancers in 8 weeks is taught.
1960s
1968–1969 Veronica McClure and Charles Hatvany (an MIT undergraduate) organize the existing square dance group into a separate club of MIT. At the time they asked the outing club if they wanted to have Modern Western Square Dancing as part of their student activity. When they declined, Veronica and Charles formed a new student activity, Tech Squares, and asked Tex Wilson to be its caller, since Don Beck was finding it difficult to continue calling now that he was in school. Don continued to dance with the group. At the time Tex was calling the Outing Club “One Night Stand” (an introductory session for non-dancers, without the expectation that they will continue) but he was also a Modern Western Square Dance caller.
1967 Veronica McClure moves from Baltimore to Boston December 1, after visiting in October.
1967 Bill Mann, Don Beck, and Judith Kotok start square dancing at MIT as part of the MIT Outing Club. Don recalls, “When Bill [Mann] asked me to come to a square dance session he wanted to start, I said only on one condition: that I got to be the caller.”