National Convention Business: Not Business As Usual!

It’s free time at National Convention! We’ve got the entire afternoon and evening off! And where would I rather spend my free time than here communicating with you guys. Really though, this blog is a lot of fun.

This week, I feel like I’ve grown a lot closer to our district. We caucus every night for about an hour to an hour and a half, and it’s rarely a purely serious discussion. Last night, Jenny Hirt (our NCD President) made an analogy about elections with Big Bird and Snuffleufugus as candidates for National President. It was a tough choice, but I’ve decided to vote for Snuffleufugus. Seriously though we’ve interviewed each of the National Officer candidates during our caucuses, and it’s going to be a very difficult decision for the delegation. But that’s a good thing too, because there are several qualified candidates.

We’ve got some major decisions coming up to the national delegation this year. Due to recent hazing incidents, our current insurance company has decided to stop coverage on September 1st, which means that we’re going to have to find a different company. The chances are that this will increase National expenditures and require an increase in dues. Since we haven’t gotten a quote yet, the Ways & Means Committee (which I’m on) is having a very difficult deciding on how much to propose raising dues by.

There’s also been discussion on adding $2/member to dues for a savings fund for restarting the Chapter Field Representative program. Personally, I don’t think that the CFR is a useful program for our chapter, since the last time she visited she spent 6 hours in meetings just to let us know that we’re doing a good job. For those of you who remember the CFR visit, what is your opinion on the program?

Other topics that the delegation is going to vote on are an extension on the ritual moratorium (basically a lock on editing our ritual) as it is currently due to expire in 2011, and a mandate to use battery-operated candles at all rituals (which I’m strongly opposed to for obvious reasons.) Just like the Kadenza moved online this year, there is a proposal to move the Podium to an online format with a print edition available on request which will save the national organization approximately $9000/year.

Did you know that some chapters charge up to $100/per person in Chapter Dues? Those are dues in addition to the $75 (or $85 for candidates) which the National Chapter requires. I was totally shocked! Can you imagine paying $200/year to be in ΤΒΣ?

We had our “Ritual of Excellence” today, and although I can’t go into details right now; let me just say that ritual is so much cooler with our founder Wava in attendance. I’ll give more details about the experience in August.

Anyway, it’s time to go check out the 7 pools! :P If you guys have any questions feel free to log-in and post a comment here on the blog, or you can send me an email!