[20791] in APO-L
Re: define political activity
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steve Gravrock)
Wed Aug 25 15:58:45 1999
Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 12:58:43 -0700
Reply-To: Steve Gravrock <gravrock@GOCOUGS.WSU.EDU>
From: Steve Gravrock <gravrock@GOCOUGS.WSU.EDU>
To: APO-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
In-Reply-To: <FDC51698E3CCD211A1D600A0C9D5A76519D45E@exegrnnts002.seattleu.edu>
On Wed, 25 Aug 1999, Clifton Gilley wrote:
> Maybe I'm just being picky...us law students do tend to do that. But the
> key language here in the quoted statute is "no substantial part of the
> activities of which..." With all due respect to Mr. Bullock, I have yet to
> find a Federal statute which is "unequivocal". ;-)
Indeed.
> I think that APO-L can hardly be seen as a "substantial" part of APO, if
> only for the reason that those subscribed to this list are perhaps (I don't
> have the numbers to back this up) a minority of those actual members out
> there. A posting to this mailing list, particularly by an auto-respond
> message is *highly* unlikely to jeopardize APO's status as a tax-exempt
> organization. IMHO, It's similar to a member who holds his own political
> beliefs, and happens to tell someone about them at a meeting. That's not a
> "substantial part" of Alpha Phi Omega.
I think you're probably right here. If I'm reading the law correctly we
can debate political issues amongst ourselves all we want, as long as
neither APO nor a particular chapter/comittee/whatever takes a public
stance on the issue. I think that the message in question would fall
solidly in the former category. Given that APO-L is clearly designated a
private list and clearly disclaimed by the fraternity itself, I don't
think we need to worry about that in _this_particular_forum_.
(All the more so because the message in question was not even the personal
opinion of a member: it was obviously either the result of a misconfigured
autoresponder or [more likely IMO] a spam. Either way, that's another rant
which would be off-topic here...)
I do think that being restricted from participating in political campaigns
and such is a Good Thing, at least from the perspective of individual
chapters. Most of us have been in a situation where a brother has proposed
a service project that would have caused the chapter to publicly take a
position on a controvorsial issue. It's nice to be able to simply say, "We
can't do that, or we might lose our non-profit status", rather than put it
to a vote and force part of the chapter to go against what they believe
about the issue.
With apologies to those who suggested that this thread be dropped, I think
it's at least partly relevant and on-topic, since this is an issue that
does come up regularly in APO.
--
Stephen D. Gravrock
WORK PLAY
http://virtual.wsu.edu http://www.wsu.edu/~gravrock
sgravroc@scs.wsu.edu gravrock@gocougs.wsu.edu
... oh, yeah, and something about my employer and what I say.
