Month: February 2004

Without having to extol the many virtues of highly differentiated and high impact advertising (Marketing 101), the recent Quack! Online publicity campaign proved to be a success in many ways. Sung to the tune of popular Pakistani rock group Noori’s Suno kae main hoon jawan, Quack’s Dekhain! Mein Quack! Online kae liyae likh kar kaisa hogya! happened to arouse the interest and attention of many. The eye-catching pictures and accompanying tag lines provoked some students into thinking the campaign to be aggravating and gratuitous, and even polluting, while others appreciated the absurdity of the idea. One student summed it up well, saying, “kya yeh tanz hai kae in mae sae koi likh nahin raha hai?”

Unfortunately, the campaign failed in its ultimate aim of attracting more writers (or more regular writing). Even the pointed task of Sports Editor could not be fulfilled by our ambitious student body of 300 odd.

So, is Masood Arif right in saying that to get Tipians to do anything, you have to get after them personally by “communicating directily with them?” Is that why TISF’s Basant Mela was a bore, because Abdul Saboor didn’t individually inform all 330 students, 30 faculty members and 20 administrative staff? (figures might be a bit off). Is that why Quack! Online gets new articles only when the Editor or the people who C.A.R.E personally get after the writers?

Or did the campaign fail because our students don’t really C.A.R.E?

The tremendous crowd and the huge number of stalls predominant at any Basant Mela were sorely missedd at the TISF’s Basant Mela and Valentine’s Day on Friday the 13th. The number of food stalls, kite variety, music arrangement were all very exciting. Everywhere you saw people were singing and dancing and having a jolly good time. Love as also in the air with Valentine’s Day being celebrated at the same time.

Congratulations are due to the TISF for beginning exciting activities from the first week of the semester.

The activites of the day were followed by a live concert and a film, “Munna Bhai MBBS in accordance with Valentine’s Day. Anyone who missed these events was deprived of major quality entertainment.

A more serious issue is how to make future events more livelier and successful. It is very easy to blame the TISF for every little thing that goes wrong. But all of us should be taking some sort of responsibility. For instance, the number of people who attended the event was appalling. There was absolutely no contribution by any of the students either. Please do send in your suggestions for the future.

From the last few days I have been noticing some cheap publicity of Quack Online going on in the campus. There are more than eight notice boards in the campus, but still the walls are being used for the purpose of posting pamphlets. From corridor to cafeteria, Abid (I`m sorry to say) has left no place. Horror of horrors is the pamphlet placed right outside the notice board.

Dekhain mein Quack online ke liye likh ker kaisa hogaya is what they say. Quack, no doubt is a wonderful effort to provide us entertainment and people already know about Quack, so whats the motive? I don’t why the administration continues to procrastinate on this issue. TIP claims to be an institute which follows international standards, but spoiling or polluting the walls of the campus is by no means an international standard. It is like giving birth to a tradition in which no one will consider looking at the notice boards and rather look for walls that display their favrite news.

After reading this, fellow students please act responsibly and get these removed as soon as possible because we have a beautiful campus and it is our duty to preserve it.

Sidrah Waseem (TD1) and Nida Aleem (TS4) have brought the trophy home from IBA’s yearly Inter-university Debate Competition 2004. TIP’s domination at the debate shined through the moment Sidrah and Nida stepped up on stage.

The other participating universities were Sir Syed, Greenwhich, and IBA. A boy from Sir Syed received first prize for his substantial argument opposing the topic, ‘A strong dictatorship is better than a weak democracy’. Sidrah received second prize for a brilliant pro-democracy argument that strongly appealed to the lofty ideals of freedom and the right to choose, the right to be democratic. Nida received third prize pro-dictatorship.