To see my notes from the event, click here. The typed text went just over 7 pages in my notes.
What can I say? It was a political committee meeting. If you like that sort of thing, it was engaging. If not, well... why are you still here? I found it interesting (fascinating at times, really). Other times it was entertaining, even funny. The business portion got a bit confused at times. To start with, there was no agenda for the meeting. I was a little surprised at that. Halfway through, someone proposed that we use the notification cards people received in the mail as the agenda. I would have expected a bit more organization than that.
During the debate and discussion on the proposed amendments, someone pointed out that the leadership on the stand kept editorializing and commenting on other peoples' remarks. In some cases these were just explanatory comments, but other times they stepped over into the realm of justifying the proposal (effectively giving an argument in favor). Someone pointed this out from the floor and asked that the leadership refrain from making comments unless they were willing to let everyone else, also. This point of order was made right after someone had approached the mike to make a comment and was told that it was currently time for people speaking for or against, not comments. The point was well taken and the leadership refrained from further comment... mostly. In the end, two of the three proposals got bumped to "the next meeting." Because one of them (whether to make the Education Officer an elected position) has a direct impact on people filing for the organizing convention in April, we'll need to have a meeting in March.
Going through the process, I realized that it would have been nice to have a more in-depth explanation of exactly what would change with each proposal. The "before and after" examples were not very clear. Yes, I should be able to dig through and compare every change on my own, but it still would have been nice for the whole process to be more user-friendly. It can be. I hope I can attend the meeting in March. My Saturdays are pretty full that month.
