Genericon XXXIII Happening March 21 & 22 – Tickets Now Available!

Listen up, detectives! Genericon XXXIII has been confirmed for March 21-22 with the following hours: Saturday 8AM-7PM & Sunday 8AM-5PM. There will be no Genericon events on the Friday before the convention weekend, but early badge pickup will be available during the preceding week in the RPI Union like usual.

Although the vast majority of Genericon attendees are respectful and amazing, several issues have arisen over the past few years with unacceptable behavior from attendees violating our rules. Our host school, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), has a first priority as a school and not as a convention center. As such, they did not want to continue hosting Genericon in its previous form because of the aforementioned issues and the limitations of running a convention on the campus itself. This will mean that in order for Genericon to stay on RPI campus, the Institute has told us that there will be an increased security presence and no more night events allowed at Genericon.

Worry not! We have managed to fit almost the same amount of exciting Genericon programming, but we have reduced ticket prices for this year anyway. (Friendly reminder that tickets are free if you volunteer to work or if you are selected to be a panelist/GM/contest winner.) Tickets for Genericon 33 are priced as follows:

  • RPI Student: $10
  • Child under 18 accompanied by an Adult over 18: $10
  • Pre-Registered Adult: $15
  • At-the-Door Adult: $25

If you are interested in attending this year’s convention, tickets are now available for purchase through our Eventbrite page, linked here. As always, we hope to see you come March 21st!

Volunteering at Genericon

Volunteering at Genericon is a great way to give back to your favorite college-student-run con and will now be much more structured. In previous years, you could anticipate long hours and late night shifts. With our departure from 48-hours of convention, we can now have a significantly more pleasant experience for our volunteers. The longest possible shift we now offer is 8 hours in one day, with two 4 hour blocks with a one hour break in between.

For more information, a list of rewards for volunteering, and instructions on how to register, check our page on Becoming a Volunteer.

Updated Security Policy

Updated security policy: you gave us feedback and we hope we’ve answered your concerns! We really appreciate feedback and if you’d like to have even more of an impact on the convention, please consider volunteering or joining our Discord!

In order to enter the convention, you must have a valid Government or school issued identification card with your legal name and your photo on it. The basic information on your card will be recorded by an RPI Public Safety officer on an encrypted and air-gapped laptop that will only be accessed by Public Safety officers. Your ID will not be scanned or photographed. The laptops will be stored in a secure location with Public Safety. The only information recorded will be: the legal name, state issued/type of ID/school, the last four digits of an identification number from the ID, date of birth, and the time that the officer recorded the data. For questions about the type of cyber security used, please email [email protected], as our Chair will be handling the cyber security personally. All of this data will be stored on an air-gapped system (no network connectivity) on an encrypted device (LUKS, AES-256, or FIPS compliant device).

The information will be held on to for 30 days after the convention for posterity, then securely deleted. If a problematic individual is identified and the data is deemed necessary to keep, only the data of the individual will be kept an additional 15 days, the rest will still be deleted after 30 days. It will only be shared with law enforcement agencies if necessary, and will not be used in any other ways. After a Public Safety officer records the information from your ID, they will give you a sticker with a number on it, which will correspond to your data entry and appear on your badge. This means if anyone is reported to Public Safety for violating our rules, they can be identified by only the number, and we no longer need to put legal names on the badges.

We will not be allowing any cosplay that is covering the face, except for use during Cosplay contests/events and only inside of those events. This is to ensure that no masked individuals will be able to harass others without consequence. Makeup and hats are permitted, but the individual must have their face showing enough that they are recognizable by their photo ID.

If you intend to come to Genericon to drink alcohol and harass others, please do not attend. RPI has a strict no alcohol policy, and it especially applies to Genericon. Alcohol is not allowed at the event or on campus, even if you are over 21. Any person found in possession of alcohol or under the influence of alcohol will immediately be escorted off campus and banned from attending Genericon in the future. Drugs are not allowed at the event (or in general). Any person found in possession of or under the influence of drugs will be escorted to Troy PD and banned from attending Genericon in the future. RPI is a smoke free campus, smoking is not allowed on campus but is permitted on 15th St.

We apologize for the increased security measures, but we cannot make exceptions to them. If a significant security issue occurs, Genericon may not be allowed to continue operating on the RPI campus, so please adhere to all rules for all of our benefit. If you have any questions, please message our Facebook page or email either [email protected] or [email protected].

Genericon is a weekend-long, general convention run by the students of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. We feature a wide variety of attractions that run the gamut of geeky hobbies, including science fiction, gaming of all forms, and anime. Our events include panels by guest speakers, video gaming tournaments, role-playing games of both the pen-and-paper and live-action variety, and showings of both science fiction classics and modern anime fresh from Japan.