======================= Grand Council Chronicle ======================= Issue #22 -- June 28, 1995 Contents of this issue: Sec'y: Vacation next week Finnvarr: Reply to Gareth's post, GCC #20 Barbary de Folo [fwd]: Territoriality proposal John: I'm back and Territoriality Terras: Government Serwyl: Votes, Territoriality Justin: Committees -- How Open? 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 One quick note this time. I'll be away on vacation next week, so it's time to try switching things over. Next week's Chronicle will be assembled by Edward the Discalceate, the new Deputy Secretary. Be sure to send comments to "scagc-l@lists.princeton.edu"; if you mail them to me, they won't get in next week. Wish Edward luck, and be nice to him. (And note that the schedule may be slightly skewed, since he's working from New Zealand...) -- Justin ---------------------------------------- Sender: Steve Muhlberger Subject: Reply to Gareth's post, GCC #20 Finnvarr to the Grand Council, Greetings. I was away from home for a week to go to Lilies War, thus the lateness of this response, which will mean that people will not see it until GCC #22. My response to Gareth's reply to me. The question of children in the SCA is an important one, no doubt about it. However, whether anything either the Board or the Grand Council can do will have a salutary effect is doubtful. I too am a parent of an SCA child. Even so, my hackles come up when I see bureaucratic solution to the "problem" of children appear in Kingdom Newsletters from on high, as recently did in the Middle Kingdom. And I am far from being the person most suspicious and most allergic to solutions from on high. We must remember that anything we suggest and succeed in getting the Board to implement will come to the larger membership as a pronouncement from on high, indeed as a policy of the Board. This means that we have to realize that our mandate is very limited. We are not a real representative body, just a think tank with some representative elements. On the question of the place of fighting in the SCA. This is so central to the development of the SCA that any attempt to monkey with it "from above" (i.e. by us or the Board) will infallibly split the Society in numerous pieces. Martin Luther thought that he could preach the plain truth to the Church Universal and convert it as a whole to a more evangelical model. What he actually did was found a denomination -- a new church with a new church structure. We are in the middle of a very tricky exercise here, and messing with central symbolic issues is just asking for trouble. Finnvarr ---------------------------------------- Sender: Steve Muhlberger Subject: Re: GCC: Territoriality proposal This should have been sent on much earlier, but a technical glitch as I was preparing to leave for Lilies prevented me from sending it then. I send it in part to show that Barbary de Folo is taking an active interest in the GC and its deliberations. Finnvarr From: watkins julia k Subject: Re: GCC: Territoriality proposal Date: Sun, 11 Jun 1995 09:06:26 -0500 (CDT) I was going to send a "yes" comment to Caroline or someone on the territoriality proposal, but after reading your comments in GCC #19 I'm glad I hadn't yet because you've changed my mind. The idea about fuzzy borders is a digression and a question better addressed by individual kingdoms and the Council should be working on the root problem of examining the bureaucracy and how it could be more responsive, and determining what are the necessary services and help them to be delivered at a reasonable price. Barbary de Folo / Julie Watkins ---------------------------------------- GC: I'm back and Territoriality Hi Folks; Sorry about disappearing for awhile. Mundane life sometimes forces reality upon you. About a meeting at Pennsic -- yes I'd love to meet more of the "faces" in the crowd. I would suggest that if one of the public places are to be used we be asking for time and space now. At the last Curia meeting the Autocrats said the schedules for all facilities were booking up fast -- largest class schedule yet. Alternative -- someone with big camp area could host or everybody bring a lamp and beverage and meet on the battlefield after dark. Onto Discussion Topic; Territoriality -- My vision; I think the membership's loyalty lies with the kingdoms and that's were the burden of the work should lie. We should still have the corporate office, as the umbrella to maintain the "really important stuff" like our tax status for the US corp, a central area for rules and covenents agreed upon by all the kingdoms (armor/combat standards, society-common recognitions, etc.). Such things as registries and labeling magazines would be at the kingdom level. TI would be published by the corp office and x copies sold and shipped to the kingdom TI office for distribution. I'll write more later. I'm going to be posting more often now probably in messages of roughly this length. John ---------------------------------------- From: ccjoe@showme.missouri.edu (Joseph Heck) Subject: Government Date: Mon, 26 Jun 1995 17:13:50 -0500 (CDT) The discussion has been floating about Calontir for a few days, and one of our citizens (Dongal) came up with an idea I'd like to present to you all for some commentary: -- -- -- -- -- -- It is my feeling that we have so many questions about the running of things because "SCA, Incorporated" SOUNDS like a business, when in most respects it is in fact more like a goverment. If you take that view of it, then those questions are much easier to answer. We are being ruled, in effect, by a dictatorship. The proposal to make the Executive Director subservient to the Society Seneschal doesn't change that, it merely changes the title of the dictator. The problem with dicatorships is not that the person in that position is necessarily bad, but that there are no means to control or replace them if they are. I think some sort of system of checks and balances is necessary. It doesn't have to be a democratic republic, but at least a constitutional monarchy is necessary to prevent the situation we have gotten ourselves into from happening again(and to fix it in the first place). There ought to be a member of the board for each kingdom, and each kingdom should be able to choose, and replace, their member. -- -- -- -- -- -- Aside from the problems of possibly having too _many_ board members to get anything done (should we eventually have 20+ kingdoms), I think it's a straightforward way to introduce checks and balances into a system that is otherwise a self-perpetuating oligarchy. Please, your thoughts? Terras ---------------------------------------- Greetings from Serwyl ap Morgan To Caroline Re results of votes: I am sorry you did not receive my votes, they appeared in issue #19. As my votes mirrored the final results this is not a problem. I apologize for not contacting you individually, but I was rushed to get my submission out and never gave my wife your E-Mail address. To Justin Re Territoriality: In GC #21 you state, "I would say that running events and holding office is far harder and less fun than it was a decade ago." That may be true, but you seem to suggest that this is the fault of the corporation. There are likely multiple factors, including (but not limited to) a vastly increased membership and new legal requirements (and more importantly- our awareness of those requirements). I'm not saying that the corporation has adapted well or quickly to the changes in the environment the Society operates in, but it's much too simple an answer to blame the corporation for the increased complexity of administrative end of the game. Later, you state, "I take it as fact that any amount of decentralization would require the individual Kingdoms to put in place checks and balances many of them totally lack today." I agree completely. I would like us to talk more about the responsibilities that could be pushed down to the Kingdoms. Once we have an outline of what we want Kingdoms to do, then we can tackle what structural changes will best assist the Kingdoms in accomplishing these tasks. To Alban on Territoriality Proposal: I was pleased (and surprised) to meet Alban at the Known World Heraldic Symposium this last weekend. We were the only two council members in attendance, and managed to squeeze in some discussion on his territoriality proposal. He indicated that any group officially 'recognized' by a Kingdom would have to submit to financial scrutiny like any territorial group. Two points brought up on the other side of the question (by myself and an interested bystander) were the issues of potential political problems in recognizing one household but not a rival one, and in allowing a household to officially represent the Corporation (especially since a household is registered to a single person under the current rules). We reached no firm conclusions but it gave both of us something more to think about. On the whole, I still agree with most of the proposal, but there are a few areas I'm not totally sold on. That's all for now. Serwyl ---------------------------------------- Greetings from Justin! Not much time this week, but I wanted to address one thing. Flieg writes: >Committees -- No private discussions! Committees are OK, but the discussion >should be in the open! My operating theory (not official yet -- I haven't had time to catalyze the discussion yet, and I'm not considering anything decided until the group has talked it over) has been that the members of the working group would talk among themselves, and collect the discussion into a public archive, along the lines of the way the GC "recruitment" committee worked. Do you think this is acceptable? I think that making the discussion completely open (along the lines of the Chronicle) would require a full-fledged mailing list, something I hadn't planned on, and which would be a good deal of extra work. Do you think that post-facto openness is adequate, provided it's planned from the start? BTW, I do now have enough people for the membership working group to start talking (eight, reasonably well-balanced I believe); however, I've gotten smooshed by a sudden proposal at work, and I'm going to be away next week. If someone wants to start the discussion while I'm away, I'll provide names and addresses; otherwise, I'll probably try to get that rolling once I'm back... -- Justin ----------------------------------------