======================= Grand Council Chronicle ======================= Issue #13 -- April 26, 1995 Contents of this issue: Hossein: Intro, Pay-to-Play, Delphi Finnvarr: Territoriality, Incorporations, Admin. Burden Caroline: Nominees Approved by the Board Serwyl: Territoriality, Cdn Law, Crown Authority Justin: Board Meetings, GC Focus, Territoriality This is the Grand Council Chronicle, the proceedings of the Grand Council of the Known World, a body chartered to examine the structure of the Society for Creative Anachronism, Inc., and make recommendations of changes. The contents represent the opinions of the contributing authors, and do not necessarily represent the official policies of the SCA, Inc. ---------------------------------------- >From the Secretary's Desk Just a quick note this time, since several people were concerned previously. I am in the final stages of arranging for all the Important People in the SCA, Inc. to get the Chronicle on a regular basis. Whether they *read* it is their own problem, and there isn't much we can do to make them, but at least we can hope that, having gotten the issues, they will pay a little attention, so we can avoid the obvious confusion that arose at the most recent Board meeting... -- Justin ---------------------------------------- Sender: greg@bronze.lcs.mit.edu (Greg Rose) Greetings from Hossein Ali Qomi! While my appointment to the GC seems to have fallen victim to the latest BoD foibles, and I have deep reservations about the entire process until the Board explicitly recognizes the independence of the GC and agrees to accept its recommendations as those of a body representative of the Society at large, I will defer to Tibor's and Caroline's recommendation and participate in these discussions until such a time as the Board voids any or all of the appointments made by the nominating committee. I believe that the Grand Council's first priority should be establishingits political credibility to the membership and its dedication to a full, free, and open discussion of all issues relevant to the Society's governance and future. The events since January 1994 (and, indeed, since the previous October, when pay-to-fight was adopted) have shown that a substantial, indeed, chasmic rift has opened between those who support discriminating between paid members and non-members in SCA activities and those who do not. The adoption of pay-to-fight legislation by several kingdoms and continuation of the non-member surcharge remain matters which concern and outrage many participants in our game. If our deliberations are to be the full, free and open discussion which I believe is essential to restoring trust and creating a Society in which our disagreements will not permanently estrange us, the playing-field must be levelled. The decisions of the Board from October 1993 forward have put a particular structure in place which has only been partially repealed. If we are to calmly examine the advantages and disadvantages of distinguishing between paid members and non-members and, in consequence, discriminating in their participation, it must be in the status quo ante. These changes were serious departures from the traditions of our Society. Little discussion or consultation took place before their adoption. Simple fairness requires that they be repealed completely and corpora amended to its condition prior to October 1993, so that we can debate the wisdom and prudence of these policies while limiting the damage they do to our comity during that debate. If, after thorough debate and full and frank consultation on the widest possible basis, it is concluded that the majority of our participants want these policies, then they should be adopted. But it is both unfair and prejudicial to implement these policies in the absence of that debate. I therefore call upon my colleagues in the GC to discuss the following proposition: that we immediately recommend to the Board that all policies, adopted during and since 1993, discriminating between paid members and non-members in their access to and participation in the activities of the SCA be immediately repealed and corpora amended to reflect this repeal, until such time as the Grand Council has made recommendations regarding the adoption of such policies. I do not think that we should play at tinkering around the edges of ill-founded policy. This issue is fundamental to our purpose and should be debated without the prejudice and turmoil of implementation of such policies. In another regard, I wish to note my adamantine opposition to Delphi techniques. Parliamentary democracy with open votes on resolutions openly proposed by our members is the surest safeguard of the legitimacy of the process. I frankly think that 40 people are certainly not large enough a group to induce worry about our ability to fully discuss issues without prior Delphi screening; town meetings in New England are frequently far larger and they make do quite nicely with old-fashioned, vote-yea-or-nay-by-show-of-hands procedures. Hossein/Greg ---------------------------------------- Sender: Steve Muhlberger Subject: GC: Comments on Chronicle #12 Greetings to the Grand Council from Finnvarr. The question of territoriality is obviously a hot one. Here are my comments. I think some good arguments have been put forward in favor of the territorial monopoly. There is one more that hasn't been made, which is particularly important for people in small, especially small and new groups. One of the most valuable assets the Society has is *its good name.* If there were two or three competing SCA groups active in a fairly small area, any one of them could spoil things for all the rest. This is obviously not an absolute argument for territorial monopolies. It is, however, an argument for giving some authority to a central body to decide who can represent us in a local area. In fact, we already have such a system. Unless we disband the SCA, Inc. entirely, someone will have the headache sorting out the legitimacy of local groups. Territorial monopolies may be the simplest way of handling the question. Certainly getting away from territorial monopolies will not do away with the need of supervision and enforcement. However, this is quite different from the question of separate incorporations. Since I started looking around, I have found that almost every SCA group in Western Canada (the parts in An Tir at least) is already separately incorporated. Indeed my informant tells me that the Crown Principality within An Tir which includes many of its Canadian groups, has cut a deal with the Seneschal of the Kingdom to eliminate unnecessary reporting: all the reporting that relates to US tax law. In other words, our discussion is really much behind events. There are already about a dozen SCA corporations in various parts of the world (that may be an underestimate). The separate incorporations have grown up for good and practical reasons, without destroying the SCA. Few people have even noticed these events. So our discussion must be refocused. If there is need for a central authority to set standards and receive appeals from individual members (and I strongly believe there is), how should it be organized? Probably the SCA, Inc. of California is for various reasons still the best umbrella group. Yet we must realize that there are three separate functions here. One is the handling of various mundane business with the legal authorities: tax matters especially. The SCA, Inc. of California no longer has a monopoly here! Second, there is the provision of services to the membership: publications, heraldic registration, insurance (both acquiring it and certifying that we have it, if questioned). The SCA, Inc. of California provides direct services to people in all parts of the SCA, which none of the other corporations does. Third, there is the setting and enforcing of standards for the "medieval" activities of the Society. The SCA, Inc. of California still dominates this process. We cannot formulate any sensible plans about the future of the SCA without keeping these different aspects of our activities separate in our heads. A last point. It has been brought to my attention more than once in the last three weeks that much of the administrative burden on local groups and other bodies within the SCA is generated not by the Board, or the Corporate Office, but at the Kingdom level or even lower. Some of this burden was mandated by the Corporation in the past, and some of these activities are still actively desired by the Corporate Office --whether for good reason or not. But much of it has never been mandated by the Board or by the Corporate Officers. Am I the only one who thinks this is true? If not, maybe some thought should be put to this phenomenon. Finnvarr ---------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 24 Apr 95 21:03:43 cst From: "CAROL L SMITH" Subject: GC: Nominees Approved by the Board Joyous greetings from Caroline! I am pleased to announce that the 20 nominees to the Grand Council, as presented by the nominating committee, were approved by the Board at their conference call on Monday, 24 April 1995. You are now officially "in". Congratulations! The report to the Board on the nominees and the process should be elsewhere in this issue. It is also available at the ftp site. Now that we are whole, it is past time to get working on projects to fulfill our mission. What are YOU working on? Let me know! If you don't know where to begin, please send me a note or call me and I'll give you some ideas. Of course, you can form a committee of GC and non-GC members to work on your area. I don't want to assign projects, so think of some area you'd like to work on today! Thanks again to Corwyn and Tibor for all of their hard work on the nominating committee. Vivant! (My Atlantian upbringing shows. :) ) Ever in Service, Caroline clsmit@ccmail.monsanto.com ---------------------------------------- Greetings from Serwyl. Nathan: I find myself in agreement with you on almost every point you presented in GC #11. And Thank you for putting them more eloquently than could I. I do have comments on several points however: TERRITORIALITY Most people have weighed in on this issue already, and it may be time to take a preliminary vote. At the very least, we can get a general idea of the prevailing feeling on the issue. CANADIAN LAW While I agree with the need to comply with foreign laws and regulations, I don't think we should jump into anything without more fully exploring the situation. We need input, particularly >from anyone familiar with Canadian law. I would like some professional (or at least reasonably knowledgeable) advice on how best to proceed. A NEW TOPIC A while back, someone commented that our current structure has a very ambiguous line of authority. This is clearest in the relationship between the Crowns and the officers of a Kingdom. Corpora is vague on just what authority the Crowns have over the officers, and this is an area I would like to see dealt with. First, Crowns have approval authority over officers in that they sign warrants (and conversely, can refuse to do so). This seems to be an infringement of the authority of both the officer and the corporate superior. It may be argued that the Crown is in a better position than the corporate officer to make these determinations, but there are very few Crowns I have seen I would like to trust with that kind of authority. A more sensible option would be to allow the corporate officer to consult the Crown for Their feeling on a candidate, either before appointment or at the end of a trial warrant. I have noticed many of the Corporate officers starting their Kingdom subordinates off with an initial 6 month warrant, so the advisory capacity of the Crown is quite useful here. It also allows for feedback to the Corporate officer on the activities of a Kingdom counterpart outside the usual channels. Second is the issue of officer requirements. Can a Crown set guidelines for being an officer? For instance, stating that Greater Officers must attend ALL Kingdom events or obtain express permission from the Crown to miss one? (Don't say that couldn't happen...) This implies that the Crown has the authority to regulate officers, and I'm not sure this is a good idea. What authority the Crown would have to punish an officer who failed to receive permission before missing an event is unclear. So what is the authority of the Crown to regulate officer activities? The Crown must certainly have a leadership role in the Medieval aspects of the game, but we need a clearer line between Crown authority and officer authority. Finally there is the issue of money. While not specifically an officer issue, it seems that Crowns serving for only six months and chosen by combat have altogether too much control over the expenditure of finances. What authority should the Crown have to allocate finances? Any comments or ideas? ---------------------------------------- Unto the members of the Council does Justin du Coeur send Greetings! (Wearing my member-of-the-Council hat this time.) In the last issue, William Oakenshield suggests that the GC make a recommendation that closed Board meetings be abolished. It's not a bad idea; certainly they should be *enormously* reduced from their current level. There is a bigger issue, though, of how Board communications and decision-making should take place; these processes seem to be generally rather screwed up, and this may well just be a symptom. (Possibly worth addressing separately anyway, but part of a greater whole that we may need to address.) More generally -- is this the time for us to deal with this level of concreteness? I had personally been hoping to deal with some of the Big Picture uber-questions first, to get an underlying philosophy set down to guide us in the later decisions. We seem to be drifting, though; much though I've tried to spur the Big Discussions, I don't seem to be getting much concrete response. (There has been far more talk about the concept of a Mission Statement than really what the purpose of the SCA, Inc is.) Maybe we need some concrete issues to work on, so we can gain some much-needed focus. Heaven knows there are *enough* such issues to deal with, many of them pretty important... On the subject of territoriality, Alban writes: >The main rationale for changing these rules seems to be to >enable more widespread incorporation at a local level This is definitely *not* why I've been talking about the matter; they are related, but not the same issue. It comes from a very different problem: the fact that a group is defined as a body of land, but we tend to play with *people*. This works fine, except when people start disagreeing. I've seen lots of cases where two groups in (say) a Barony just fundamentally didn't get along, for one reason or another. The current system forces them to stay cheek-by-jowl forever, fighting eternally more often than not. It shouldn't be *trivial* to get multiple groups in a single territory, or people will abuse that ability. But the fact is that most of the ugliest politics in the SCA arise from the fact that we have made Branches a limited commodity, and that sometimes leads people to get really ugly about controlling them. Having some method for groups that disagree to play the game separately can help to ease tensions; it can even lead to reconciliations in the long run, where no such agreement hadn't worked with the day-to-day friction. I don't think this is critical (as I've said), but I suspect it would help. (It *is* critical for a thoroughly decentralized SCA, for different reasons -- if we *really* decentralized, we wouldn't have a single group with the authority to arbitrarily say, "You are the sole real SCA group on this territory". And make no mistake -- that authority *is* used arbitrarily, more frequently than I like.) -- Justin ----------------------------------------