======================= Grand Council Chronicle ======================= Issue #18 -- May 31, 1995 Contents of this issue: Justin: Voting on the Issues; "Membership" Subcommittee? Magnus: Voting on the Issues Territoriality Gareth: Territoriality and Outsourcing Alysoun: territory Caroline: *** GC GATHERING AT LILIES *** 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. ---------------------------------------- Greetings unto the Council from Justin du Coeur! (Speaking as a councillor, not as Secretary. I'm at the top this time because I'm writing this moments after putting #17 to bed, so as to resist the urge to kibitz.) A couple of brief opinions on The Voting Thing. I'm seeing a real conflict brewing here, between people who desperately want to take a vote Right Now, and those who adamantly don't want any votes yet. My take on it is that the best course is probably somewhere in between. We don't want to get too hyper about votes -- I'd like to see our votes actually make sense, and be the result of reasonably careful thought. Although I rather like Fiacha's proposal, I think it's a little premature yet. We've talked about the subject, but only in a way that I can kindly call "unfocused". I'd like to see his proposal used as a springboard for a focussed discussion group, to reality-check it, before we vote on it in the Council at large. I haven't decided whether I'm going to abstain or vote against right at the moment; regardless, it isn't that I think it's a bad idea, just that it's a little early. On the other hand, I'm all in favor of Bertram's suggestion. Note that his proposal is *not* a demand for outsourcing immediately; rather, it's a proposal to get the process moving to investigate this option properly. I don't think we can even start looking at outsourcing until we do this, so I think it *is* time (and then some) to get this one going. We're not committing to anything except looking at the matter seriously -- I think that makes good sense. That said, we probably should get the blasted subcommittees running, so we can start really grappling with the hard issues. Since no one else seems to be leaping forward (save Bertram, whose idea it was in the first place), I'll take the bull by the horns with my own cause celebre. If there are people who want to discuss it, I'm willing to put together a subcommittee to discuss the issue of Membership -- what is it, and what does it mean? I *specifically* want at least one or two conservatives here, to balance me; I'm one of the most radical people I know on the subject. I figure that we want somewhere around 6-10 people to hash this out, with as broad a range of opinions as possible. If you're interested, please contact me directly, and we'll see what we can do. -- Justin ---------------------------------------- Sender: Maghnuis@aol.com Subject: Re: Grand Council Chronicle #17 I vote against the territoriality Proposal: NO I vote for the investigation of outsourcing: YES I vote for this despite my expression that it is too early to vote, because this is a rather simple and non interconnected issue. That is I believe this can be addressed without an attempt to present an entire, cohesive plan for the Society. The territorial proposal is a little to all affectinfg to vote on yet. Magnus ---------------------------------------- Sender: Maghnuis@aol.com Subject: Re: Grand Council Chronicle #17 Magnus writes: I believe that the Fiacha plan for addressing territoriality is more than is required. I suggest that membership of an invidual default to the group claiming his/her zip code unless he/she makes known that he wishes to belong to another group. Using paid subscriptions to news letters is useless to groups like mine: The newsletter (entierly unofficial) goes out by E-mail not zip codes and extra hardcopies are distributed by hand to the small minority that is not net connected. PS Annual disclaimer, My spelling is fien but my typing is lousy ---------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 26 May 95 12:45:32 -0800 From: rgathercoal@foxmail.gfc.edu (Roy Gathercoal) Subject: GC-response to #17 It is far too early to begin "voting" on specific proposals. These votes are precisely the sort of action to which I was referring in my recent caution about guarding our credibility. On territoriality: This proposal either does so little as to be virtually worthless, or it makes a tremendous shift in a key Society principle, depending upon how it is interpreted. The issue of territoriality is not a simple matter of whether we use zip codes to define group boundaries. My understanding of current practice is that we are not members of branches, but of the Society. We join the Society, send our membership money to the Society and are entitled to the same services without regard to which local branch we choose to attend (or choose not to attend). We are free from any surcharge or special fees or requirements that a branch might attempt to impose, and no branch may create bylaws or formal governing documents that would bind others who might attend in the future (though "guidelines" which could be changed or even disregarded if desired are sometimes useful). No branch may deny services to me. I am a member of the Society, and receive services from a number of branches. Thus when I moved from the Barony of Rivenstar to the Barony of Sternfeld in the Middle Kingdom, and then to the incipient shire of Mountains Edge in An Tir, I did not "change" my membership from one group to another. I did not have to meet different requirements for any of the groups, and my membership fees did not change. I did not become less of a member when I moved to an area not served by a full-status group (although this branch is incipient, I am not incipient). In short, I am a member of the Society and the local branches are there to serve me, not the other way around. Local branches are established to better serve the needs of the individual members. The primary building blocks of our Society are our individual members, not our branches. However, it would be prohibitively expensive to suddenly increase the number of branches so that any two people could have their own branch. Just as any service organization will consider the costs and benefits before they open a new branch, the Society has developed some minimum guidelines that must be met before a new branch is sanctioned. First, there must be at least five members in the area to be served by the new branch. These people might be currently served by some other branch--we do not insist that they go to a specific branch to be served, but we do insist that there should be at least a handful of members in the area of the proposed branch. Second, the proposed branch must be able to serve the members in the area better than existing branches. It usually does not make sense to open two branch offices on opposing street corners, though exceptions could exist. We allow for these by saying that if there are at least five members who want to set up a new branch, and they are supported by the surrounding branches, they can start up a branch. We even allow sub-branches (cantons, ridings) and institutional, non-territorial branches (colleges, ports and strongholds) for those cases in which geography is not as important as institutional affiliation. Note that one overriding concern is that branches should not be allowed to become the tools of competing political factions. The Society is not well served by having overlaid branches devoted to preventing each other from succeeding--as awful as these sorts of problems are when they occur within a local group, they are far easier to attempt to help than when the warring factions are free to involve organizational resources to impede the other branch. Couple this with the fact that separate branches seldom have face-to-face meetings and the opportunities to heal divisions dwindle. It is far easier to bring healing to intra-group than to inter-group divisions. So in the cases where a change in a branch's status is being considered, we need some way of determining whether there are enough members in the area to warrant the organizational costs of establishing a new branch. It would not work well to simply use a petition, for it would be far too easy for friends who live far away to sign a petition because "having a branch there would be cool." Only if we were willing to impose some cost for support (in implementation I think this would be a major problem) could we reasonably use a self-selecting petition. I would also oppose a required commitment (e.g. by supporting this branch you agree to attend all of the meetings here for the next year) because I value my freedom in the Society to attend meetings at whatever branch I choose. Currently, we use postal codes to determine whether there are the minimum number of members living in a certain area to justify formation of a new branch (or creation of a barony/province, principality or kingdom). The only time this is even an issue is when a proposed branch (or change in branch status) is barely able to meet the minimum requirements. My experience (and thus firm conviction) is that healthy groups will remain at the minimum number of members for only a short time. If a group has not substantially grown beyond five members in a year's time (and most groups are incipient for at least that long) there are significant problems that should be addressed within that group. Likewise, whenever a group loses members so that there are fewer than even the minimum number, especially in that this would mean not that members who live nearby are not choosing to attend meetings frequently but that they have chosen to no longer be members, and have not been replaced with new people, there are likely significant problems within that branch which should be addressed. At least in the last 10 years or so there has been a great deal of flexibility in the application of this territory thing. Old groups have traditionally had their territorial claims "grandfathered in" and the precise boundaries of ancient groups are often quite indistinct. This flexibility is easy because it usually doesn't matter. The greatest number of problems arising from boundary questions come from people who either are upset with their nearby branch and who state "I don't want to be counted as a member of that branch!" or are jealous of territory because of some resource (such as a great site or a new skilled peer who recently moved into the area) or because of animosity toward an adjacent group ("that's our territory/site/demo/member and you can't have it!). In fact, as of last July, kingdoms are free to adjust group boundaries (below the principality level) as they see fit. So postal codes simply function to easily keep track of how many members live in a particular area. They are supplied by the group making the application (they are not imposed by the corporate office) and can be changed at any time, for good reason (previously in a simple petition to the board, now by Kingdom Seneschal). This brings us to the question, "why do we need to vote on this proposal?" I would maintain that it either does too much, or too little, depending on how you read it. If you read it as "now we will be instituting a system in which people are members of branches, instead of the Society" then we are doing far too much too early. There are a host of implications that we have not yet addressed, such as --Can branches set their own membership fees, and perhaps offer discounts to peers, fighters or other groups in order to attract particular people? --Can a branch refuse membership to someone because they do not have a particular persona, or because someone in the group doesn't like them? --How often can a person change their branch membership? Could someone "sell" their membership to forming branches to get the minimum required, or will we require that people actually attend a certain number of meetings? Do members have to live anywhere near the branch where they are listed as members? --Can a Crown (in those kingdoms in which "The Word of the Crown is Law") decree that certain people must be, or cannot be, members in a particular branch? --Can a branch refuse to accept members who are of a particular race, gender or religion (blacks and Jews need not apply. . .)? --Would there be some sort of appeal to a higher body, or would any appeal go directly to the national judicial system? If, on the other hand, you read this proposal as "we are simply allowing groups to declare their own areas, but are making it clear that they don't have to use postal codes to do it" then I would maintain that this is pretty much a trivial proposal. Groups can already propose their own boundaries, and many are defined in terms of municipal or county lines. The postal codes are added later to allow us to produce polling lists (e.g. for baron/ess) to ensure that the people polled are actually the people who live there, and, for example, not simply the known-world-wide members of one candidate's household. If we are saying that we want to retain the concept that members are members of the Society and not simply of one of a federation of local groups but that we think that the corporate office needs to use some other way of tracking who lives where, then we are guilty of precisely the sort of micromanagement that so many of us have criticized the board. Instead of proposing this small change or that, let us begin by developing a clear and consensual view of what the Society should look like. This is difficult work, which is why no one has yet done it. With such a statement, however, we can justifiably move from the general to the supporting/enabling specifics. This is far preferable to letting the general fall together as a default result of the unintended consequences of unconnected specifics. So, as a "for instance" (not as a finished proposal!) could we consider: 1. The Society is dedicated to promoting a better understanding of the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance through facilitating the recreations of individual members. Branch meetings, events and other collective activities shall be promoted as an aid to each individual's better understanding of the cultures and practices of historic places and times. 2. The Society is dedicated to providing opportunities for all people who are interested in learning about the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance. Therefore we will strive to provide opportunities for meaningful activities for interested people of all ages and abilities. Special care should be taken to ensure that groups historically less represented, such as older and younger people are encouraged to fully participate as their interests and the laws allow. While certain activities (such as fighting in armor) may not be safe for children activities appropriate and meaningful to children should be also developed to ensure that all of our members have a diverse selection of activities from which to choose. We encourage branches to hold meaningful activities for children and others who choose not to participate in the martial arts at each event. 3. We stress that the Society is not primarily an athletic or sports organization. We embrace fighting in armor and with weapons based on those used in Medieval and Early Renaissance times not as an end in itself, but as a means of better understanding the practices, arts and culture of those historic times. To this end, our focus in athletic or sport competitions should be educational and not primarily on winning the competition. 4. We embrace diversity within our Society, in our members, in levels of competence and in perspectives and interests. In principle, we are more interested in exploring possibilities than in strictly adjudicating among competing dogmatic positions. 5. Social interaction is a vital part of our recreation and whenever possible we should put our social behaviors in a historic context. Thus our interactions within the Society should be at least partly attuned to the sensibilities and practices of our chosen time period, rather than absolutely based on modern social norms. 6. Realizing that there will always be a wide range of competing interpretations and possible applications of these principles, we acknowledge that the primary purpose of the Corporation and its officers--including the board of directors, advisory bodies and society, kingdom, principality and branch officers--is to provide opportunities for medieval recreation leading to a better understanding of the practices and cultures of the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance. Thus the bias in every case ought to be to refrain from ruling where rules are not needed. 7. Our governance should be seen as derived from the whole body, so that each officer remembers that he or she serves the body as part of the body, rather than as an external trustee or overseer. Our governance is too important to assign away and thus the body should be regularly consulted about the important issues facing our Society. We should always seek a balance to avoid both extremes of allowing our primary purposes to become obscured by administrative and procedural debates and nurturing a benevolent tyranny of those willing to shoulder the whole burden and right of governing in order to isolate the membership from the troubles of decision making. To those who would complain "our mission is not to address the nature of the Society, but of only the Board" I would answer: The two are so closely related that to deal with them as separate would be to further isolate the board from the body. Much of the problem facing us today is the result of our past leadership's inability or unwillingness to provide leadership in guiding us to make decisions about what we want (and don't want) to be. Without such decisions, whether by commission or by default, any decision will be flat out wrong in the eyes of a majority of our body. We have become large enough, and diverse enough, that we can no longer rely on our informal face-to-face negotiations at events to keep us all heading on the same general course. Diversity and tolerance are important virtues, but if we become too much more diverse and too much more tolerant, we will cease to be anything except a huge theme party. On outsourcing As to outsourcing, I am not sure what we gain by insisting that the board do something they have committed to do. If they are too busy to get to it, the addition of our clamor will not help. I do not know what items are currently on each board members' agenda, and would not presume to make prioritization decisions for them without that knowledge. Further, if we now insist on committing board resources to getting information on outsourcing specific services (and we should not simply go to one source for information!), then later we decide that some or all of these services should be significantly restructured or eliminated, we will have been guilty of an awful abuse of the board's trust and confidence (if we have yet earned any to abuse. . .) I am not a great fan of outsourcing. It is not all sweetness and light. As example, I would point to what I consider to be the largest single administrative disaster in recent Society history as an example of outsourcing -gone-bad--the outsourcing of the Executive Director. There is a lot to be potentially gained by outsourcing, but also a lot to be lost. These issues are far more important than the cost in dollars and cents. If I have offended by the length of this posting, I do apologize for the offense (but not the action) for I take these issues to be too important and too complex to be seriously dealt with in a paragraph or two. Renewed in service to you, Gareth ---------------------------------------- Sender: Carole.C.Roos.2@nd.edu (Carole Roos) Subject: GC: territory Greetings from Alysoun I don't think Fiacha's proposal, especially the concern with zip codes, solves all the problems. I will try to sort out the issues involved. I will relate my discussion to my local area--the only area I have information on--and urge the rest of you to do the same, so we can begin to see how widespread the difficulties with territories are. First, then, Indiana is primarily a rural state and has 2 baronies, 9 shires, and 1 incipient shire. These groups are scattered through the state and are based in population centers, with the exception of Greyhope which is listed as serving three counties. Our shire White Waters is understood as having our county for a territory. Greyhope is to our immediate west, the Michigan border is a few minutes to the north, and there are no other groups for miles and miles to the north, east, or south. Because our groups are so far apart, inter-group squabbles over boundary lines are not much of a problem. Our problem is that people from outside our territory, who have no group, participate in our activities but cannot be counted as official members. I suspect that counting members underlies many of the inter-group disputes in other areas. (It's not the land you want, is it?) Territoriality as we now have it serves two functions. It defines a space to allow for the future development of the group by restricting the formation of new groups and it defines the membership for determining the size of the group. There is reason to believe that the first function encourages group cohesion, in that without the restriction on group formation people would form new groups everytime they disagreed with the party in power. There is also reason to believe that it does NOT encourage accountability in the governance of the local group, since the members have no recourse beyond sending in complaints. In other words, the lack of competition allows ruling factions to act like tyrants. A further liability of the current structure is that a territory does not place obligations on the group (very un-medieval). Although we have all of St. Joe county as our territory we are not required to give demos, provide exhibits for schools, or even plan meetings for the convenience of members in all parts of the county. We can in fact ignore most of our territory if we so choose. But we can block anyone from starting a new group within our boundaries. On the second function, we can all agree that the current head-count system does not accurately reflect the size of the local group. It fails in the following areas: 1. It does not count participating non-registered members. This is not a problem of territoriality, but of membership, and we are craven cowards for not addressing this first and foremost. To open the discussion, I suggest that we have a basic membership, no publications, at some very nominal fee as a method of head-count. 2. It does not count registered members who live outside the territory but who are participating in the only group available to them. This might be solved by adjusting the group's territorial boundaries, but it may make more sense to allow such people to declare an affliation. This would keep open the possibility of starting a group in their area. 3. It does not count registered members who live in another group's territory but who are participating in the closest, most convenient group. This is not a problem of territoriality, but of the ease of the procedure in adjusting boundaries. If a community is closer to group B than group A, it should be in group B's territory. 4. It does not count registered members who live in one group's territory, but like another group better. This relates to accountability--the group where they live may not be meeting their needs, but still gets to count their heads. This could also be solved by allowing members to declare an affilation. 5. It does count registered members who live in the territory and do not participate in a local group. This again relates to accountability. The local group does not have to make any effort to meet members' interests or needs but still gets to count their heads. This is another problem that might be solved by allowing members to declare affiliation--in this case, by not declaring it. I do not think that Fiacha's proposal as written solves all the problems. I do think that by redoing the head-count system (which requires addressing the membership problem first) and by improving the procedure for adjusting boundaries, we can take the pressure off territoriality and encourage greater accountability in local governance. I personally feel that with territory should come responsibility and that groups which accept that responsibility should be rewarded. This can be done if we shift the emphasis from allowing the geographic area to define the members to allowing the members to define the territory. Groups which do not defend their borders will be in danger of losing land and groups which do not serve members in the interior of their territory may find that the sovereign creates a free town (new group) in the middle of it. In a nutshell, then, I am suggesting that we have a basic, cheap head-count membership which allows members to declare a local group affilation. That the size of a group be determined by this method. That territorial boundaries be reviewed periodically (every five years?) and adjusted in accordance with the stable membership of the group. And that a procedure for a more speedy change be available when a community of members can demonstrate good cause. I would be interested in hearing how something like this would work in other areas--especially in urban areas or where groups exist in close quarters. (Please reply--Council members? Anyone?) ---------------------------------------- Sender: "CAROL L SMITH" Subject: *** GC GATHERING AT LILIES *** Greetings from Caroline! The GC and Board gathering at Lilies will be SATURDAY the 17th at 2pm in the picnic shelter. (I'm sure it has a better name, but that's the most descriptive one.) There are no battles scheduled for this time. If you are able, bring some food/drink to eat and share. I realize that some of you will be traveling a long distance for this War, so if you have to choose between armor and food for the gathering, go with the armor! Looking forward to seeing you there! Caroline ----------------------------------------