This blog will carry the views of Reed College alumni who believe that the proposal by the existing leadership of the Reed College Alumni Association to increase the centralization of control over membership of the Association's Board of Directors, limiting the ability of the 65% of all alumni who belong to the regional chapters of the Association to choose their own representatives on the Board of Directors, represents a serious mistake. Accordingly, these alums urge that the proposed constitutional amendments be rejected in the impending alumni referendum.
A 500 word statement from opponents is now online, along with a list of its authors and co-signers as of the December 3 deadline for submitting the statement
A point that I don't think has been emphasized is that, as chapter leaders, we had fairly frequent and certainly Reedie-like conversations with a number of alumni. As such, I considered myself a representative of my chapter as well as Southern California chapter leader. Although there was no formalized procedure for chapter members to provide input, I routinely informed members of the Southern California chapter of points that I thought were pertinent that I learned from AB meetings. It seems that, rather than reduce chapter representation so dramatically on the AB, it would have made more sense to formalize to some extent the degree to which we acted as representatives for our chapters thereby increasing the democratic input to decisions on the AB.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what that said I was "unknown." It's Elizabeth Jerison Terry, '82
ReplyDeleteoops *why
ReplyDeleteIt should be said that some of the writers of the statement were less focused on decentralization of power than on the separation of the chapters from the AB.
ReplyDeleteEither overcentralization of power or separation of the chapters is a sufficient reason to vote no. They are not independent of each other.
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