[20003] in APO-L
Re: Length of Legislative Session
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (jgrossi)
Tue Jan 26 09:21:26 1999
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 09:13:19 -0500
Reply-To: jgrossi <jgrossi@bbnplanet.com>
From: jgrossi <jgrossi@BBNPLANET.COM>
To: APO-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
(note: Ellen please disregard the one that went to purdue thanks!)
Well I've sat back for the last couple of days and watched the debate on
Nationals float to the fore and seen mucho-mas messages with all sorts of
ideas from the eminently practical to the crazy come out.
Yes the legislative session was long. (I sat in the scum gallery for all of
it) The thing you all have to remember, was out of the 17? reports only one
or two were fairly painful. Membership took 6 hours (more than 25% of the floor
time)! The committees though did a great job of paring down the legislation,
National Organization I didn't report 7/8 of the legislation submitted to it.
(as an example) A lot of the problem with the legislative session was that:
a) Brother Schroeder and the rest of the "board" [vague] made a procedural
decision to let the all-male, co-ed, and toast song debates go, not stamp on
them, let everyone have there was and get out the whole story. And aside from
one brief, heavily controlled discussion in 1992, this is the FIRST time our
convention has dealt with those issues in a totally open and free manner.
Yes ladies and gentlemen, Brother Schroeder should be highly commended for
getting up there and spending six hours thinking on his feet running that
discussion, a discussion that if run poorly could have seen 10% of our chapters
walk off the floor and never come back. And you know, that was a disscussion
that should have happened 20 years ago in my opinion and now that Resolution
14 has passed maybe we can get back to our goals of doing Service and stop
the Fratercide of some of these never ending debates. *crosses fingers*
and I think one late night was more than WORTH it to deal with those tough
issues!
b) The chairs made a decision that they were NOT going to go after the final
banquet. They COULD have cut short things on the 29th, and sent you all to bed
at 1am, BUT that would have meant that banquet, and the convention ending
festivities would have been cut short by a FINAL legislative session. So don't
complain too much...
Now I think I'll touch what looks to be the current hot potato of the week,
Alumni submitting legislation. AND as I said on the floor. I do NOT think that
alumni submitting legislation was the problem, it's a scape goat for a long
legislative session. Looking back at the proposals, our number 1 submitter
was a Board Member (Lee Correll), with 39 ammendments, OUR number 2 submitter
was Richard Vehlow (an active) with (14 or 15 ammendments). The Next couple of
heavy submitters were section chairs (myself being one of them, with 9
proposals). For the most part though, the "alumni" that are being railed against
are the Section Chairs. For the most part the people submitting were your
staff and your advisors, I can only think of ONE case where a random alumni
submitted legislation.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to say that you are all missing the point!
(several have come close but not hit it on the head) In an organization of
14,000 active students and say 2,000 active alumni it's not a question of why
are some people submitting so much, it's why are some people submitting so
little? That the Section Chairs are submitting is not surprising it's
encouraging! The Section Chairs are the works horses of the fraternity, being
the people on the front lines day in and day out, and that they are submitting
legislation is an encouraging sign that they are doing a good job and want to
make things better. The question to me is why are only 10 or 15 at most of our
actives writing and submitting legislation... let's ask the question, WHY NOT?
instead of running around and finding a scape goat for a long night of
legislation.
In many cases I will put it down to the fact that the actives DONT know. They
are various reasons for this, they've not been around long enough, they don't
know the scope of things out there, also in many cases they are not willing to
do it. Now someone answer me the question of how to get the actives more
involved in the legislative process, instead of coming up with all sorts of
great ways to hamstring the process... find me cans! FIND ME POSITIVE answers
don't find me negative ones! The point is to encourage leadership development
in the active students. Giving the students the tools they need to
know how and what to submit [legislation] is something that Dave Emery and the
Leadership development committee can look into, but don't get rid of the old
process UNTIL you've got a new one to replace it. Or else in 2002 we'll have a
rump convention with 6 proposals (3 submitted by students and 3 that the board
is asking for a rubber stamp on)
Just some thoughts
John Grossi
Alumni Omicron Iota/ Phi Epsilon
Section 94 Chair - Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont
Member International Relations Committee
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