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The WERC opening banquet is an informal affair
where the WERC Executive Director, Abbas Ghassemi, welcomes us, the judges and
other dignitaries are introduced, and each university's teams are introduced.
At the conclusion of the banquet, the mandatory safety meeting is held with the
task team leaders.
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| Clockwise starting at left: Kyle Jansen, Justin
Chenevey, Dave McCandlish, Jennifer Phillips, Allison Tate. |
Clockwise starting at left: Joey Taylor, Russ
Farquhar, Marc Christman, Jason Schuster, Kim Frye. |
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| Yup, a lot of people. |
Standing in line for food. After viewing this
photo for a while,
click
here for a movie of paint drying. |
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| The food. |
More of the food. |
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| Krista Adams participated on one of our
WERC teams in 2004 as a senior. After graduation, she went to work
in Albuquerque, and she's getting her master's degree from New Mexico
State as well. Thus, she was present again this year at the
competition, but now as a member of an enemy team. We pretended we
didn't know her! |
The closing banquet is a more formal buffet
lunch where we once again hear from various dignitaries, see a video from
Senator Pete Domenici congratulating us and regretting that he couldn't be with
us (funny how he has been unable to be with us for at least the seven straight
years we have been attending), and find out who won the awards. It has
been known to be a measure of endurance to stay awake through the almost three
hours of the closing banquet, but Dr. Ghassemi got us through it in a little
over two hours this year, and we thank him!
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| It doesn't look much
different from the opening banquet, except that some of the people are
slightly better dressed. Some are dressed worse, though, so it all
evens out in the end. |
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