Forward, Four
By Matt Crawford, RVC4
August’s column was about local social matters, this month I turn to national business. Now that I’ve got one whole AMC meeting under my belt, I can undertake to explain certain perceptions about those meetings.
As a long-time follower of the AMC, I had found that substantive discussion of motions during an AMC meeting was rare and usually brief. This turns out to be a natural, if unsought, consequence of trying to do the organization’s business in an efficient way. AMC members discuss most motions online before they go onto the agenda and perhaps after the agenda is published as well. This has two effects on the meeting: first, there is more likely to be consensus through ironing out flaws or points of disagreement in advance, and second, debate is often perfunctory even when there is disagreement, since arguments have already been made and answered. The first of these may lead to a perception of groupthink or conformity if the advance discussion led to consensus, and the second might seem like a lack of engagement.
There are exceptional circumstances, though, and one of those is when members have given well-reasoned input on agenda items. Agendas are published only a few weeks before meetings, so if you give your representatives new information or fresh arguments, the debate might be more substantive and an outcome may be changed.
Now, I won’t fault any member for not following AMC meetings, that isn’t the sort of entertainment most of us are here for. But I am gratified that some do. To them, my advice is to look for the agenda two to three weeks before the meeting, on the AML web site under Lead > Board of Directors > Meeting Reports. The first week of September should be a good time to look. Then, please do send words of opposition or support to your elected representatives.
I don’t wish to brush off executive sessions any more than I must, so I will just say that sometimes “personnel matters” are as simple as committee appointments, and that there was nothing in July’s executive session that I thought should not have been.
Elsewhere in national news, there are some changes to how the scholarship program is administered. This is in the bailiwick of the Mensa Foundation rather than American Mensa, and the information has been sent out. For the general member the main points to know are that if you volunteer to judge essays, they may come from any part of the country even though scholarships earmarked for recipients in your local area will still go to someone in that area; and if you have a scholarship fund that you have been administering locally, the Foundation is willing to be a conduit for the money, while still respecting eligibility conditions. This may enable donors to take tax deductions that they previously could not.