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Feb. 3, 2017
2004– One month ago, applications went live for new campus organizations to vieye for official registration with the University. Along with this status comes tax exemption, tabling privileges, and selective student government funding. Organizations submit an online application along with a faculty sponsorship. These applications are reviewed by the Committee on Recognized Student Organizations (CORSO) arm of Student Government. One such organization is a collection of writers previously operating as a support group for disenfranchised Gundam fans, now referring to calling itself The Chicago Shady Dealer after securing its RSO status.
“We write about the most important issues facing the Gundam community,” says third year Frankie Zapata., “We do a lot of activism, too. It’s critical for our message to be heard,, and to show Yoshiyuki Tomino and the heirs to the Gundam dynasty that there is a strong American audience. Right now our meetings are mostly formal presentations by several several break-out teach-in committees we have going, and we’re. We are slowly working through the incredible corpus of manga, television, and other mixed media manifestations of the series.”
The Shady Dealer currently meets in Harper 145 on Sundays at 7 PM. The club publishes its magazine, Gundam? More Like “I’m Having Fun, Damnit”, three times a quarter. The magazine features critical reflections on Gundam and its treatment in society. The magazine has seen contributions from faculty members in the English, Physics, and Cinema and Media Studies departments.
“My research specializes in the self-reflexivity of Gundam and especially its relation to the convergences and divergences in the presentation of space and staging of action across cinema and video games, mediums in which Gundam finds itself cheekily situated,” says Bernard Gillem, Aassociate Pprofessor in English., “Tthe Shady Dealer has published groundbreaking, to some even canonical, texts in this field. Their timeline analysis of Amura Ray in the post-Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team is inspiring work.” Anyone who wisheswanting to join The Shady Dealer can do so by going to one of the open public meetings.
