|
Post by schlager7 on Mar 20, 2006 12:50:20 GMT -6
At the request of the Secretary of the Gulf Coast Division, I have established a discussion thread here for any of our members who wish to declare their desire to seek office. This thread will NOT be used for endorsements of others or to campaign against anyone posting here. There will be a separate, more open forum elsewhere for that. It can be found here: campechesteel.proboards15.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=Division&thread=1142653658&page=1If you wish to put down or endorse a candidate, go there. If you post your endorsement or rebuttal here it will be deleted as soon as I note its existence. This thread will strictly be fore those who are seeking to hold office, themselves. For those wondering why, it is simple. the Division Secretary, Matt Delavoryas, who would normally set up a system to handle this on the official site, will soon be out of state for an extended period of time. Since he cannot administer a part of the official division site to accept campaing statements, I am providing a niche on our forum for that. I encourage debate, but that debate must be carried on within the parallel thread. This thread is reserved to serve the Gulf Coast Division adminstration proper. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Since I posted the above the campaign thread spawned questions about the process, which still were not campaign statements, so... I have created yet another thread, one for QUESTIONS
|
|
|
Post by schlager7 on Mar 20, 2006 12:53:39 GMT -6
Originally posted by MTD
------------------------------------------------------------------
With considerable embarrassment at being the first to do such, but having no other chance besides right now to post this, I declare my candidacy for the office of Secretary. I offer my biography and statement, heavily plagiarized from my own writings of one year ago.
I began fencing in 1995 at the advanced age of 37. I compete in two weapons, and fence casually in the third. Despite competing, I see myself primarily as a recreational fencer. My support of fencing includes club committee and officer posts (including secretary and currently vice president), referee (three weapons), tournament planning, tournament administration (having been invited to do this by about half of all clubs in the Division, and others outside the Division), armoring (certified) and armory education, and volunteer coaching (although I will vigorously deny any allegations that I have any certification as a coach). I am the incumbent Secretary of the Division. I was elected Secretary for a one year term after having served a half term by appointment in 2003 by Chairman Andrey Geva. I was reelected to serve the following term. Much to my own surprise, this makes me currently the most senior Division Officer. I also serve the Division in some appointed roles (and my services would continue to be available to the Division without regard to the election for Secretary). Outside of fencing, my strengths are in science, mathematics, and computer programming. My experience includes service for a Texas not-for-profit special interest corporation with a membership slightly smaller than the Division (and finances an order of magnitude larger) as a director, treasurer, secretary, vice president, and president. I have served officially and unofficially as parliamentarian to that and to other organizations. My non-fencing recreations include astronomy, backpacking, photography, and sailing.
My goals specifically as Secretary are simple and unsurprising. There are few actual choices available to be made by the Secretary, other than whether to do the job or not, whether to be prompt or not, and whether or not to use the knowledge and the personal contacts which go with the office to try to solve any problems relating to individual members and the USFA. Of course I intend to do all of these. But, the Secretary is also a member of the Executive Committee. The Executive Committee has considerable choice available. My goals for the Executive Committee are modest. To such extent as the USFA will allow, I see the true source of the vitality of the Division to be its membership and the members' clubs. I see the true calling of the Executive Committee to be even-handed facilitation of the activities of the membership, arranging what might not be possible without a sufficient economy of scale, and handling and guiding the bureaucracy of fencing life to minimize burdens for the members and the clubs. The Executive Committee is held responsible by the USFA for the tournaments of the Division, and as such has a role in assuring that the USFA is not disappointed. But, beyond that, I do not want the Executive Committee to dictate how fencing will be in the Division. Rather, I want it to accommodate, facilitate, and extend the umbrella of any needed official sanction to the desires of the membership of the Division.
|
|
|
Post by schlager7 on Apr 2, 2006 6:39:07 GMT -6
With minimal campaigning, the results are:
Chair: Louise Lepie Vice-Chair: Rachel El-Saleh Secretary: Matt Delevoryas Treasurer: Nicole Trojanowski
|
|
|
Post by kd5mdk on Apr 3, 2006 0:26:55 GMT -6
Congrats to all of them, especially those as post here.
|
|
|
Post by schlager7 on Apr 3, 2006 10:55:15 GMT -6
That would be about 50%.
This will not exactly be giving away any secrets:
the Secretary posts (rarely) as MTD.
the Treasurer posts (more rarely) as Maupin.
As far as I know, neither Louise nor Rachel post, or even read the forum. (One should not take that as gospel, however, since anyone can post in a lot of places as a guest, anonymously and there are some registered members whose true identity I am not privy too).
|
|
|
Post by kd5mdk on Apr 3, 2006 13:24:25 GMT -6
Not to mention I know a number of people who read forums but do not post. For example, during the recall kerfluffle, highly placed people in the USFA mentioned discussions "on the internet" about things, which I clearly recognized from fencing.net.
|
|
|
Post by schlager7 on Apr 14, 2006 7:56:06 GMT -6
I was re-working part of my local fencing history and it got me to reflecting over our most recent election.
What I noticed, more than anything, was that attendance slid from just the last election. We held the meeting after Saturday's fencing at the diviisonal qualifiers. No doubt the rush of fencers (who rarely even stay to watch other fencers) departing swept them away.
There were clearly two camps (exactly two nominees on the floor for each post), but as before, most voting was by proxy.
While large, unwieldy and rancorous meetings are often less than constructive, they at least show an interst on the part of the membership.
If I may be allowed to hubris of quoting from my own work, here is what I have about the elections for our 1999-2000 season's officers. It was originally held in the spring:
The Gulf Coast Divisional Qualifiers were held at the Houston Table Tennis Center on May 15, 1999. The fencing was to be followed that afternoon by a meeting of the membership to elect officers for the 1999-2000 competitive season.
Dan Gorman, who fenced at Texas A & M and with the Bayou City Fencing Academy, was there. "We had 4 people (Mauro Hamza, Louise Lepie, Ted Yen and myself) show up at that time despite having notified all the clubs on the USFA list and felt we should reschedule so that we could get a more representative turnout (Liz and I both fenced for BCFA (which Mauro and Louis were with at the time) in addition to A&M)." The election was postponed.
They made a second try at elections in the fall:
On September 30, 1999, at Salle Mauro, the Gulf Coast Division finally held its long-delayed general membership meeting to elect its officers. The meeting was called to order at 7:25 PM. Despite the fact that the division included many of the fencers in the fourth largest city in America, as well as Galveston, the Beaumont-Port Arthur area and Texas A & M University, only 18 members of the division showed up. A single slate of candidates was nominated and they were unanimously elected. The new officers were Maher "Mauro" Hamza as Chair, Elsayed "Bakoko" Emara as Vice-Chair, Daniel Gorman as Secretary and Oliver Diaz as Treasurer. The first two came from Salle Mauro, the last two from Texas A & M University.
Bayou City fencer Bill Ashe brought up the issue of a Gulf Coast Division or Southwest Section schedule. Daniel Gorman advised that the section was waiting for the Gulf Coast officer to mail its schedule. Hamza said he planned to have a division schedule completed in a few days.
According to the minutes, the "issue of increasing membership involvement was briefly raised and discussed. Meeting adjourned by Daniel Gorman at 7:35 PM."
After a delay of four months, the entire meeting, discussions and elections had taken ten minutes.
|
|
|
Post by fox on Apr 14, 2006 11:13:21 GMT -6
I can only imagine the frustration at that level of apathy. I hope this division never slides to that level again.
Perhaps if the meetings were less over who gets to run things and more over ideas for projects for the upcoming year, people would get excited enough to attend and contribute.
OTOH I could be completely mistaken.
|
|
|
Post by Dan Gorman on Apr 14, 2006 13:09:17 GMT -6
Nope, I was aware of very few people who had issues with me as a chair, but no club would step forward to open calls to host qualifiers. We tried to get the by-laws amended a couple times, but never could get a quotum for the meeting or people to recommend changes. I never ran opposed for a division position and always tried to get some ideas for things that needed to be done. I never found any interest.
Dan
|
|