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Precinct Captains
or, "What I'm Learning Over My Summer Vacation"
By John Hawkes

One of my favorite parts about writing the Generation Burton series has been doing the research. Since the series is in part my personal memoirs of being a Georgetown student basketball fan, a lot of the "research" is memory. While I'm thinking about topics for new columns or examples to make a particular point, I often start daydreaming about old experiences I had at the MCI Center or games I watched on TV. It's pretty cool to think back on where I was when Burton's lay-up went down, or what the crowd sounded like when Ruben Boumtje-Boumtje blocked Preston Shumpert on two consecutive drives, or how many stupid nicknames I've given to players over the years.

While doing research over the weekend, I had the great pleasure of revisiting some of my favorite artifacts from way back in my freshman year: the signs-some homemade, some done by Sports Promotions and Hoya Blue-that I used to tape on my door prior to games.

My dorm room freshman year was well situated for visibility-it was directly across from the entrance to the main stairwell onto our floor in Village C. Pretty much everyone who lived on the floor passed my room several times a day in the course of their normal routine. And everyone, in theory, saw the stuff on my door.

I had helped Hoya Blue out early in the year in their quest to put flyers advertising football games all over campus. The area I covered was usually all or part of the West wing of Village C, including my own floor. I figured what better place to stick a flyer for visibility than on the door that people see the most often-my own. The inside of the stairwell would've been nice for flyers, but anything put up there typically had a shelf life of less than 12 hours, whereas I could keep stuff on my door as long as I wanted.

Once the flyers were replaced on my door, I kept a number of them for nostalgia. For the football season, there was the season opener against "rival" Holy Cross, whose sign claimed that the 20 rowdiest fans got free "I Bleed Hoya Blue" t-shirts. And later on in the season, the "Clash of the Jesuits" against Fordham, where if you wanted to "go crazy with Hoya Blue," you were supposed to show up at Kehoe Field at 12:30. They're not bad signs-and there's no denying that they worked, given that a number of students did show up and there was for the only time I was at Georgetown a semi-defined "student section" at football games.

For basketball season, I got a little more creative, and branched out into designing my own signs to hang on the doors. I usually did a cut-and-paste job with the flyers for the weekly GPB movie or the latest show on GUTV. Hence a "Charlie's Angels" flyer turned into "Craigger's Angels" with Drew, Cameron, and Lucy replaced by Lee, Ruben, and Wesley. Some were game-specific: for the 2001 Syracuse game, I put up a good luck picture of Ya Ya Dia with a countdown to the day of the game. The next year, I hung the picture of Ruben blocking Preston Shumpert from that Syracuse game in my Village B apartment window on 37th and N prior to the return match (we won going away, and Preston missed the entire second half with a scratched eye.) My favorite though was the Wesley Wilson as Godzilla creation my friend Jon made that appeared prior to the Sweet 16 game against Maryland (where unfortunately Lonnie Baxter made our frontline play like Barney the Dinosaur).

So why did I go through all the trouble of thinking up signs to make and stick on my door? Did I just have way too much time on my hands my freshman year? Well, yeah, I guess I did. But there was a more important motive behind it.

I figured the best way to get people interested in the basketball team who wouldn't normally be-let's say, those "Hard-Sells," "Hardly Evers," or "Hardly Cares"-was to make them more aware of the team and maybe get them to talk about basketball with me. Since I knew everyone would see the signs, and might find them amusing (or really weird), they seemed to be a pretty good icebreaker. It worked a lot too-especially the ones that had a countdown to a game, because that way you had something tangible to remind people about.

I felt like someone doing a "Get Out the Vote" drive in their neighborhood-except instead of getting people to go the polls on Election Day and vote for a candidate, I was trying to get them to go to the MCI Center on a Saturday and cheer for the basketball team.

And when you think about it, political organizing and organizing fans aren't that different.

I have some experience with the former now as well. This summer, I've been volunteering at a campaign office down here in Florida. Much of my work involves organizing the grassroots elements of the campaign-getting groups together to canvass neighborhoods, run phone banks, and host House Parties to promote our candidate. The most precious resources to any campaign, as far as I see it, are willing volunteers. That's why it never bothers me if I spend five hours of my day in front of a computer updating our volunteer database, or most of my afternoon on the phone, recruiting people willing to help out with House Parties.

Every new voter a campaign reaches through canvassing, phone calling, or word-of-mouth from a friend makes a difference. That's painfully obvious in the land of the butterfly ballot and the hanging chad. In the context of the population of the fourth-largest state in the Union, 537 votes (the margin in Florida during the 2000 Presidential Election) is a minuscule number. Imagine, though, if we could add even half of that 537 number to the average number of students who attended basketball games at the MCI Center. It would take some serious legwork-a "Get Out Your Ticket" drive, if you will, of large proportions. But it can be done, in this author's opinion.

And we can learn a lot from the political campaigns on this one.

Easily the most prized member of the volunteer database for a political campaign's grassroots efforts is the Precinct Captain-the person who basically heads up the development of volunteers and voters in their neighborhood. Where the campaign staffers and office volunteers like myself and my co-workers are organizing affairs out of an office, the Precinct Captain is that do-it-all motivated volunteer who's on the ground making the whole thing work in practice. Wherever volunteers are going door-to-door, wherever a local club is hosting a get-together, wherever people want to know how to get involved with the campaign, chances are the Precinct Captain has played a large part in it. I know that there's no way our campaign could be successful in my area without a strong network of Precinct Captains feeding us information and new volunteers from their communities.

Precincts aren't large-many in my part of Florida are made up of only a couple gated communities or a few city blocks. And that's a good thing-it means that in many cases, lots of people in a precinct already know each other. Often times, the job of recruiting new volunteers for a Precinct Captain is as simple as calling up their friends and talking to their neighbors down the street. It tends to make it easier when the people you're calling to help out with an event happen to be friends of yours. You'd be surprised at how frequently volunteer events double as social events. And this is politics remember. Imagine if instead of voting for someone or volunteering to register voters, we were doing something really fun, like I don't know……going to a basketball game.

What I propose here is an example of how Hoya Blue could benefit from following similar strategies to a political campaign on the grassroots level. This draws not only from some of the experiences I've had this summer, but also those I had during my freshman year as a Hoya Blue volunteer and part-time sign-poster. I feel comfortable proposing something of this nature because to a certain extent, I've seen Hoya Blue pull this off before, and am confident they can do it again (with the help of some willing students of course). I should also point out that I'm certainly not the first person to propose this kind of idea for how to organize Hoya Blue. On our own Hoyatalk Board, several current and past students have offered useful and detailed models for getting the student fanbase re-organized-in fact, I'm going to draw from one of them below.

Here's the idea:

Let's replace the political campaign we've been talking about with Hoya Blue. Both are organizations trying to recruit "volunteers" for their cause and increase turnout, whether at the polling place or at the MCI Center.

Instead of "districts" and "precincts" in the geographical sense, Georgetown's campus can be divided up into its apartment complexes and dorms, and further down into various floors. Precincts could include "Harbin 4," "Village C West 5/6," or "Village A, C/D Block" depending on the ratio of students-to-captains that Hoya Blue thinks is best. Each apartment complex or dorm as a whole could be a District. Ultimately, this becomes the outline for organizing and coordinating volunteers for Hoya Blue.

Here's where Hoya Blue steps in: the Executive Board of the club would play a role similar to that of a Field Coordinator in a campaign office-that is, first overseeing the building up of various volunteer "captains," then keeping in constant contact with these captains to provide information about new events they've planned and directions on how to pull off events of their own.

Starting at square one, this means that as soon as possible after the start of school in August, Hoya Blue's leadership would need to hit the ground running with an aggressive membership drive. Their first goal should be to get as large a list of club members as possible. This can be done a number of ways, including daily tabling in Red Square, a presence at SAC Fair, and by exploiting the existing Hoya Blue membership and email lists.

The second goal during the membership drive is to find students who are willing to go the extra mile and volunteer with Hoya Blue. For example, the campaign I volunteer for uses a standard volunteer sign up sheet that is available to folks who drop by our office, come to a House Party, visit our website, whatever. In addition to providing biographical information (name, address, phone), prospective volunteers are able to check off boxes that indicate certain activities they'd be willing to help out with. Some are simple, like putting a sign in their yard. Some involve groundwork like phone calling or canvassing neighborhoods. There's also a box if you want to be a Precinct Captain.

Hoya Blue could do something similar with their sign up sheets. In addition to getting a reliable list of names, email addresses, and dorm/apartment numbers from their members, they'd also be finding out which students are interested in helping out with certain activities. Hoya Blue-style examples could include putting a bumper sticker/sign on your door, helping put up flyers for games, or bringing friends to games. Of course, there'd also be a box for people who wanted to be Floor or Dorm Captains.

Not everyone who signs up is going to want to be a Floor/Dorm Captain. In fact, many people who want to be Hoya Blue members won't be able to commit to doing any volunteering at all. That's okay-it happens all the time in political campaigns too. Remember though, every bit of volunteering helps a campaign, even just putting a bumper sticker on your dorm. And just having a large master list of regular members is useful in and of itself for promoting games and events on campus.

So what do we (or Hoya Blue more accurately) do with this information? What kind of structure are we looking for to organize all of the student fans and volunteers?

The best concept I've read for how to organize Hoya Blue comes from current Georgetown student and regular Hoyatalk contributor Stephen Fraser, SFS '06. Stephen's concept centers on the creation of an "army" of student supporters that provide the legwork for Hoya Blue's promotional efforts-including hanging up signs, going to rallies, passing out ticket order forms, and even going door-to-door to recruit people for Hoya Blue. These are the rank-and-file volunteers, the boots-on-the ground types whose numbers are so essential to any successful campaign. The more volunteers helping out, the more areas are reached by the campaign.

Here's where the "Captains" become important. The "army" would be coordinated at the "floor" level by a "Floor Captain," recruited from the volunteer lists Hoya Blue collects at the start of the year. If, let's say, a freshman "floor" meant one floor in Harbin, half a floor in New South, or two floors in a single wing of Village C, each Floor Captain would be responsible for an area of about 50 total people. Not all of them are Hoya Blue members of course, just as not everyone in your neighborhood wants to vote for the same candidate. Nonetheless, the advantage here is that-especially in freshman dorms-students tend to know most of the people they live near very well. That makes a huge difference for the Floor Captain, whose basic job would be to coordinate small events and promotions on their floor(s), since they would feel comfortable around friends.

Floor Captain would have been a good position for me during my freshman year. I certainly had the sign-posting thing down well, and I felt perfectly comfortable talking my floormates into coming to games and paying more attention to the teams.

For the more dedicated volunteers who want a more active role in Hoya Blue planning, the next level of organization would be the "Dorm Captain". Simply, there would be one person per dorm or complex in charge of coordinating the work of the Floor Captains. The Dorm Captain, in essence, is the liaison between the Hoya Blue Executive Board and the rank-and-file volunteers. When a new promotional campaign starts-let's say a new set of flyers needs to go up-the Dorm Captains are the go-to people for the Floor Captains. The Dorm Captain in this case would tell the Floor Captains via email that there was a new flyering campaign coming up, distribute the flyers, and then report back to the Hoya Blue board on how the project went.

The advantages of adding Dorm Captains into the mix are many. A strong overall structure allows for better organization of Hoya Blue activities. Moreover, it gets more volunteers into the mix, so that more students feel like they are active and participating members in Hoya Blue-and trust me, that's hugely important (and the subject of a future column). The more dedicated students who want a leadership role in Hoya Blue can now have one that's actually useful, rather than being member #17 on a crowded Executive Board. And finally, any student who has an idea that they think will help Hoya Blue better promote games can now take it to someone down their hall, rather than trying to get in touch with someone anonymous via email.

Of course, the big movers in this "army" are the Hoya Blue board. It's these individuals-with the help of ideas flowing in from the student body now, of course-that will still be responsible for setting up events, from Midnight Madness to Hoyapalooza to a student section at the first football game of the year. A strong set of leaders within Hoya Blue is more essential now than ever. But at the same time, establishing "local, decentralized control" and getting "as many people involved as possible," as Stephen puts it, can only increase the effectiveness of Georgetown's official athletic supporters.

Okay, so now we know what the structure looks like, and what jobs like "Dorm Captain" and "Floor Captain" entail. But what kind of events and activities are we looking to pull off? Well, we can learn from the Precinct Captains on this one too. Let's take a look at some of the common types of events Precinct Captains help coordinate and how they translate to Hoya Blue and Georgetown sports:

Canvassing the Neighborhood

These are the true foot soldiers of the campaign army-the folks out walking the streets in your neighborhood and knocking on your door. Canvassing is one of the most common activities coordinated by our campaign office-we even hold all-day training sessions teaching our volunteers how to do it. For the purposes of a political campaign, the goal is typical threefold: get people registered to vote, remind them to get out and vote, and get a sense of who's supporting whom in the upcoming election.

I doubt we'll have to worry about that last part-everyone on campus better darn well be on the right side of the "Georgetown vs. Syracuse" question.

Instead of getting people "registered" to vote, the Hoya Blue canvassing groups (led by the Floor Captain) start by going around and asking people if they want to be in Hoya Blue. Then, instead of reminding them to get out and vote in the next election, the idea is to remind every student to get out and come to the next football, basketball, lacrosse game, whatever. This is what Stephen Fraser refers to as GOTH or "Get Out the Hoyas".

At the very least, the canvassers can also be handing out Hoya Blue bumper stickers or schedule magnets for anyone to put on their doors. Even the smallest piece of door decoration helps increase Hoya Blue's presence around campus and create a better culture among student fans. And trust someone who's been working in a campaign headquarters all summer, people love those bumper stickers and buttons.

There's another important analogy to be made here. There's no question that when it comes to its sports teams, Georgetown is a "basketball school" by a long shot. Not surprisingly, the bulk of Hoya Blue's promotional efforts during the year focus on the period between Midnight Madness and March Madness. While it may be tempting to concentrate on the big-ticket sport, though, in the end it's a losing proposition. Because, to put it one way, you can't win an election if you never get past the primary. A strong organization-from paid staffers and strategists down to volunteers-is essential for any campaign. But they don't materialize out of thin air, and they don't magically appear after everyone leaves the New Hampshire primary.

Just like any campaign has to build support for its cause from the very birth of its effort, and keep a strong organization from the first caucus to the final ballot, Hoya Blue needs to create a strong culture of support for Georgetown sports teams from August through May. And that means starting to treat football and lacrosse as first tier sports as well, and treating soccer, women's basketball, baseball, and other sports like they exist. But that's a topic for another column.

Phone Banking

The slightly less personal form of canvassing, phone banks get together a group of volunteers at a central location to call lists of potential voters. The questions are very similar to those in foot canvassing: whom you favor in the upcoming election, whether you plan on voting, and whether you would be willing to volunteer, among other things.

Obviously, getting around a bank of phones isn't an option at Georgetown, and the small area that a few dorm floors take up means that Hoya Blue volunteers can cover their entire area on foot anyhow.

But there is an important set of tasks that can be done by computer. Even if we assume that it's easy enough for Hoya Blue to send out a mass email telling the entire Student Body about Midnight Madness, it wouldn't hurt to have a reminder or two elsewhere. Floor Captains could make it a point to leave a note about Midnight Madness in their Instant Messenger profiles and away messages. They could send IM's to floormates on the day of big events or big games reminding them to come out.

Email is also an essential tool of communication between Dorm Captains and Floor Captains, who will be in constant communication about upcoming events and activities.

House Parties

Chances are if you have a passing interest in politics, you've probably been invited to at least one of these during the 2004 Election cycle. House parties are get-togethers of friends and neighbors at the home of a volunteer/supporter that get people excited about the campaign. There's always a sign up sheet at the door, along with plenty of bumper stickers and buttons-everyone loves bumper stickers and buttons after all. The host will typically give a short speech about why they're involved in the campaign and passionate about the candidate. Often times, there's also a short video shown about the candidate.

House Parties are great for giving people who are already eager to help with the campaign an opportunity to see how they can do it. They also do a great job of turning people, as I call it, from "curious" to "convinced". People come to House Parties to learn more about a campaign if they're still undecided, and they almost always leave impressed.

Village A, Alumni Square, and Henle apartments are all great locations to have a bunch of friends over for Hoya Blue's version of a House Party-where the video of the candidate is instead a Hoyas basketball game on ESPN. Okay, but you're a freshman and your dorm is too small to have people over. No worries-Georgetown took a step in the right direction for Hoyas sports fans by renovating the Village C Alumni Lounge and adding a big screen television with a satellite hookup. All last season, in fact, Hoya Blue and other groups organized events around Hoyas basketball games with great success. What's more, with the future renovation of the space formerly occupied by the New South Cafeteria hopefully to include hangout space for students, another venue for Hoya House Parties may be on the horizon.

The great thing about these House Parties is that they will reinforce the sense of community in the Georgetown student fanbase that never quite seems to be consistent throughout the year. A lot of this is due to the comparatively small presence of Hoya Blue and student sports fans in general on the Georgetown campus during a run-of-the-mill day of classes. Here's hoping we can change that together next year.

When I look through the folders where I keep all those old homemade signs from my freshman year, I also see all of the bumper stickers and 2000-1 schedule magnets I got from Hoya Blue tables at SAC Fairs and Late Nights at Leavey gone by. As unique as I imagine a "Craigger's Angels" sign is, those bumper stickers and magnets were far more important in their commonness. Just about everyone on my floor had at least something from Hoya Blue on their door-a magnet, an "I Bleed Hoya Blue" sticker, a picture of a basketball player, something.

The great thing about items like that is that you don't have to be a basketball fan to Bleed Hoya Blue. Georgetown was always a very spirited school when I was a student there for the last four years. It's just a matter of making that connection between the kind of school spirit you feel for your alma mater and the kind of school spirit you feel for your alma mater's sports teams.

I think it's possible to Get Out the Hoyas in a big way in 2004. But it's going to take every student possible, from the Hoya Blue board to the foot soldiers on the ground in the dorms to get in done.

A note for the readers of Generation Burton:

The next two installments of the series will be devoted to evaluating the performance of Hoya Blue over the course of Generation Burton. I feel it's essential to going forward with the new Generation of student fans that we discuss some of the successes and failures of Hoya Blue in the past several years. The hope, of course, is that we learn from our mistakes and try to duplicate our successes as a fanbase so that we can put the best possible effort together in the coming season.

Here's where you come in. I would like to request that everyone who has a free moment or two to write me an email telling me about your experiences-both positive and negative-with Hoya Blue during your time on the Hilltop.

Tell me what you personally think Hoya Blue's been doing well or not so well-what kind of events you liked, what kind of events you wished they'd had. If you have some ideas of your own on how Hoya Blue can be run better, go ahead and let me know. If you've actually run Hoya Blue and want to share your experiences and some of the things people don't know about the organization, even better. Even if you weren't a student during Generation Burton and never experienced Hoya Blue as a student, that's okay. I'd love to hear from you about how it was back in Generation Ewing or Generation Iverson or even Generation Tagliabue, and what kinds of things you'd like to see the student fans doing nowadays.

My hope is that your comments can be a big part of the next two columns. After all, a series like this works better when there are more voices at the table.

Send your comments to me at flhoya@yahoo.com, or drop a personal message through the Hoyatalk Board to "FLHoya". Look forward to hearing from you.