======================= Grand Council Chronicle ======================= Issue #24 -- July 19, 1995 Contents of this issue: Hossein: Problems with the Chronicle & GC Caroline: Grand Council Report to the Board Alysoun: accountability Caroline: Grand Council Gathering at Pennsic Catrin: Nordmark This is the Grand Council Chronicle, the proceedings of the Grand Council of the Known World, a body chartered to examine the structure of the Society for Creative Anachronism, Inc., and make recommendations of changes. The contents represent the opinions of the contributing authors, and do not necessarily represent the official policies of the SCA, Inc. ---------------------------------------- >From the Secretary's Desk Just one comment this week: I'd appreciate it if people would read and *think* about Hossein's message this time. While I think that there are some potential drawbacks to his proposal (I'll review them next time), I think his basic point is sound -- we're moving too damned slowly, and may well need to do something about it. Please think about his suggestion, and respond either publically to the list or privately to me (I'll summarize letters sent to me)... -- Justin ---------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 21:20:55 -0400 From: greg@bronze.lcs.mit.edu (Greg Rose) Greetings from Hossein! Over the past few weeks I have become increasingly concerned about the state of our work and the procedures under which we are working. All we have to show for nearly three months (six months since the Jan. Board meeting where our charter was approved) of work is one affirmative vote on a resolution (outsourcing) and one negative vote on a resolution (territoriality). I do not think that our current operating procedures are meeting the mandate which the Board and the Society has given us. If we continue at the same pace in the same way, at the end of two years we're all going to look like schmucks -- and much more importantly, the hopes of thousands of participants in the SCA will have been shattered -- with the snail's pace at which we have tackled questions fundamental to our Society. I attribute the situation to three problems: 1. Some of our colleagues do not have net access and so cannot participate in a timely way even with the current system. This has the additional consequence of effectively excluding voices from our discussions. 2. The current _Chronicle_ system is inadequate to encourage and sustain consistent and rapid communication. If we are to seriously complete our mission, we have to have a more rapid means of conducting debate on these issues which will spur all of us to keep current and respond in a timely way to salient issues. 3. We are operating in a leadership vacuum. I mean no offense to Caroline, but she is clearly very busy with her mundane work -- and none of the rest of us have picked up the ball. We having been talking about committees for a long time. We haven't even agreed on a set of issues which we believe are pertinent to our mission -- how can we have committees without knoing how to task them? _WE_ have accepted responsibility to advise the Board on fundamental issues of what we are about and how we do business. _WE_ have to get the job done in a timely manner. We have to resolve what work we plan to do and how we plan to do it _now_. And then we have to make the commitment necessary from our time to see that it gets done. It isn't going to happen if we wait for someone else to do it. I propose some preliminary solutions to these problems: 1. Only a handful of our colleagues do not have net access. The Board has said it is serious about wanting our recommendations in a timely fashion. Renting equipment and obtaining net access for these people is a reasonable and prudent expense if the Board wants its expectations met. If the cost is prohibitive, then let's go to the kingdoms and the populace and solicit donations of equipment and mobilize our academic colleagues to try to get internet access at their institutions for those who do not have it. 2. The _Chronicle_ should be changed to a LISTSERV so that we can have daily interchange; the messages can be archived and distributed as frequently to those not on the Grand Council as the _Chronicle_ currently is. The ability to have instantaneous communcations will surely encourage us to communicate more frequently and more quickly. We need to make communication easier if we expect our colleagues to get the work done in a reasonable period of time. Justin's original objections to this sort of arrangement sounded sensible at the time, but the test of actual praxis has shown that the current method introduces too much delay. 3. We need to immediately begin agenda-setting for a new round of discussions leading to resolutions; from such an agenda we can organize committees and proceed apace. In the remaining year and a half we have we will surely have to continue this process as the implications of issues we raise are clarified and new issues are submitted from within and without the Council. We need to be leaders. We need to organize our work. We need to get it done. This isn't a solution which can be imposed from without. It has to come from renewed commitment to our responsibility. I think we've been coasting for too long. Hossein Ali Qomi Baron, Lion of Ansteorra (Gregory Rose) ---------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 12 Jul 95 16:06:16 cst From: "CAROL L SMITH" Subject: Grand Council Report to Board Greetings from Caroline! Below is the report sent to the Board for the July meeting. Note that I sent it via the Internet to the Internet-connected members, since the fax machine wasn't working in Milpitas on the 30th. (Perhaps it knew the report discussed outsourcing??) Please let me know if you have any questions on the report. Caroline clsmit@ccmail.monsanto.com --------- Greetings unto the Board members on the Internet from Caroline. I have tried since last night (the 29th) to fax this report to Milpitas, but the fax machine does not pick up. Therefore, I am sending you an electronic copy of my report. I will mail copies to AJ and Jane, as well as send one to Renee for the file. I hope this does not cause you any inconvenience. If you would also like a paper copy, please let me know. I remain, ever in Service, Caroline clsmit@ccmail.monsanto.com ---------------------------------- TO: Board of Directors, SCA, Inc. FROM: Carol L. Smith (Lady Caroline Forbes of Oxfordshire), Grand Council Coordinator DATE: 29 June 1995 RE: Grand Council Report for July 1995 Board Meeting This report covers the time period from 9 April 1995 to 22 July 1995. ACTION REQUIRED BY THE BOARD Approve and begin to implement the outsourcing proposal passed by the Grand Council. Further details are below. SUMMARY OF PROGRESS OF THE GRAND COUNCIL Outsourcing The Grand Council passed (by a vote of 23-2, with 1 abstention), a proposal to ask the Board to investigate for the October 1995 meeting the possible outsourcing the functions of the Corporate Office. The proposal read: I [David Schroeder/Master Bertram of Bearington] propose, for the consideration of the Grand Council, that we recommend that the Board of Directors of the SCA, Inc., as soon as possible, should find out just how much money might be saved by outsourcing the clerical and administrative functions of the SCA's Registry and Corporate Office. This proposal is not TO outsource those functions, but to investigate outsourcing in more detail and to find out, specifically, cost savings and other benefits outsourcing might bring to the Corporation. This proposal specifically recommends establishing a Board-designated Task Force to investigate outsourcing at the July Meeting and return with a report and recommendations at the October Board Meeting. We reaize that the Board has asked someone to investigate outsourcing at a recent meeting. This proposal affirms the need to do this investigation and asks that the Board elevate the urgency of this work. Dave Schroeder is heading the GC's work on outsourcing. He provided additional information on how to implement this proposal in Grand Council Chronicle #17. Also, more detail is available in a paper he wrote for the Board in March, 1994. I will not repeat all of that information in this report. Briefly, the Board should appoint someone to work with the Institute of Association Management Companies to develop a request for quotes. This request will detail the work that the Corporate Office now conducts. Through this organization, the Board will receive a number of quotes and proposals for the work we currently do. This information should then be compared with the costs we now incur, plus the oversight work we currently do, to see if hiring someone else to do the work makes sense. The Board should ensure that the information from the Corporate Office is collected and provided in a timely manner so that the quotes and proposals are received in time for review at the October meeting. Dave will be at the Board meeting. Please ask him any additional questions you may have. The Grand Council respectfully requests that you implement this proposal. Territoriality The Grand Council voted on a proposal to change the geographic branch structure of the Society (which we termed territoriality). This proposal was defeated as written. A committee has been formed to address this issue further. Other Committees and Interests A number of additional committees have been formed, including ones on membership and the workload of the Board members. We are also investigating further the impact of Canadian tax laws on the Society's activities. Finally, we are planning on trying out the Delphi method to discuss some philosophical issues. OTHER AREAS OF INTEREST The discussion through the Grand Council Chronicle is lively, but some members do not participate as often as they are expected to. I am following up with them and, where applicable, with their Kingdom Seneschals. Overall, the GC is going smoothly, and I expect more proposals to you at the next meeting. Finally, we are having a gathering of the Grand Council and the Board at Pennsic. The date and time will be announced, but it will be later in the week, probably in the evening, at the Town Hall tent. Please let me know if you have any questions. Carol L. Smith 14713 Mill Spring Drive Chesterfield, MO 63017-5654 (314) 694-4655 (days) (314) 530-1836 (evenings) (314) 693-4655 (fax) clsmit@ccmail.monsanto.com ---------------------------------------- Sender: Carole.C.Roos.2@nd.edu (Carole Roos) Subject: GC: accountability Greetings from Alysoun Maire has sent me an organizational chart (Thank you!), but it is very streamlined. I am trying to fill in some details and will get it to the rest of you as quickly as I can. If your mailing address has appeared in the Chronicle I will mail it to you (let me know if this won't work for you). Those of you who are an ocean away--know anyone with a FAX number? While the smaller committees are gathering their wits, can we discuss accountability in the overall structure? The way I understand it we are set up as a hierarchy such that it is the job of each superior to hold their inferiors accountable (see that they do their jobs or see that they are replaced). The Board is at the top of the pile. Some things are kingdom-related so they don't actually go to the Board as a matter of course, but the Board, by having responsibility overall, would be able to hold the kingdom accountable should it abuse matters within its domain. There are a number of areas which need to be considered. One which has been voiced in the Council is the fact that the Board is not accountable to anyone and there is reason to believe that this has contributed to difficulties in the past. Another is the problem of reporting both because of difficulties in getting good reports and because of complaints about the amount of reporting required. Another is communication/training, which is one my pet complaints. Yet another, which we have not taken up, is of the lack of political will--administrative wimpiness. I would like to discuss this last matter in brief. Since I understand that there are lawsuits pending, I will use a fictional example to illustrate the type of problem the SCA faces and what we must also consider in evaluating our structure. I ask you to consider the hypothetical case of Katie the Catskinner. Learning that the practice was period and violating no local ordinances, Katie made a catskin coat. Some members of her group were uncomfortable with this, but for one reason or another, the local group tolerated this practice. That is to say, they failed to discourage it. Catskinning caught on. More cat fur garb appeared in the area; catskinning households formed. Some people, delighting in the shock value, taunted the squeamish with detailed reports of the process. Possibly cat-haters in the area joined just for this activity, although it was not sponsored directly by the SCA. Rumors of late night cat hunts and disappearing pets began to circulate. The ASPCA and cat fancier groups began to organize opposition to the SCA. Kingdom seneschals asked the populace at large not to wear fur to demos--much to the confusion of the rest of us who mostly wear synthetic pile. If the scenario does not strike you as serious, consider the possibility of a major cat food company joining the crusade with a nationwide media campaign. In a nutshell, what has happened is that tolerance in one area of the Known World has endangered the reputation of the whole society in a way which may hamper the participation and good efforts of members in other areas. How did this happen? What structural weaknesses does this case demonstrate? How can we protect ourselves from future problems of this sort? ---------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 17 Jul 95 10:08:10 cst From: "CAROL L SMITH" Subject: Grand Council Gathering At Pennsic Greetings from Caroline! I have scheduled the Grand Council Gathering at Pennsic for Friday, 18 August, from 7pm - whenever, at the Town Hall Pavilion. All members of the Grand Council, the Board, and anyone else who wants to come are welcome! Please come by and meet the faces that go with the names! See you there! Caroline clsmit@ccmail.monsanto.com ---------------------------------------- Subject: Re: Nordmark / Grand Council Chronicle From: Janna.Spanne@kansli.lth.se Date: Mon, 17 Jul 95 17:40:25 +0200 (The following is a *personal* comment. It presents *one person's* view of the recent development in Nordmark. It is by necessity incomplete, as it is impossible for one individual to give a complete account of a year's actions in and around a group in one hurriedly written and comparatively brief text. Also, although I try to make a reasonably impartial analysis, I do have an opinion on the matter.) When I recently came home from a ten-day vacation trip, I found two messages on my answering machine: one from my local seneschal, calling me to a meeting that took place while I was away and that was to treat Nordmark's "liberation from the SCAInc", and another one from my sister in a different canton, asking me about my canton's, Torsheim's, alleged secession from the SCA. This means that things have happened in our Barony, and happened fast. I believe that an attempt at analysis of the current development in Nordmark can help to shed light on some of the problems the SCA faces in an international context. Nordmark has a double structure - it is a Barony within the SCA, but it is also SKA-Nordmark, a Swedish non-profit group. The separate incorporation is as old as Nordmark itself, i.e. about ten years, and is a legal necessity in our country: we need a national non-profit with the right to open a bank account and to function as a legal entity in various ways that a foreign association isn't allowed to. Based on this double identity, in the ten years of its existence, Nordmark has come to mean different things to different people: to some it is a branch of an international organization, to others a Swedish medieval recreation group that has accepted a certain amount of help from SCA people to get off the ground. Unfortunately, under its present structure, the SCA has no readiness to handle such cases. The relationship between SCAInc and SKA-Nordmark is not formally regulated in any way, other than a clause in SKA-Nordmark's corpora, saying that the purpose of the association is to support SCA's activities in Sweden. As long as it was too small for anyone to bother, Nordmark could play its own way and pretty much ignore SCA regulations. In fact, we *had to* ignore some of them that are totally irrelevant in our mundane context, as is the philosophy behind them. As a Swedish non-profit, we have to have our own financial guidelines. We have nothing to do with the IRS, but we need to be able to handle the Swedish tax authorities. The concept of waiver is foreign to our legal system - a well educated, law-conscious, Swedish academic person doesn't even have a word for it. Insurance normally goes with a site, not with the group renting it. We don't sue people over medical bills: we go to a public hospital and get the care we need, as all Swedish residents are included in the public health care system. And so forth and so on. And... if you are forced to bend some of the rules, and can't see the point of others, you get to feel you can bend all the rules. Many Nordmark residents have over the years developed the notion that the "American" SCA rules don't quite concern us. When we applied for Principality status and had to write a law proposal, things changed radically. Nordmark became visible and was required to confirm to SCA standard. What followed was largely a cultural clash between Nordmark's need for democracy and our Kingdom's, Drachenwald's, military subculture. The American SCA contingent in Drachenwald consists mainly of US military stationed in Europe. The military largely think in terms of orders and their implementation. To an American Drachenwalder, a Kingdom officer is basically a person who passes the Board's directives to the relevant local officers and expects their reports to confirm that the directives have been carried out. Nordmark was, together with Polderslot (the Netherlands), the first SCA group in Europe to consist almost exclusively of "natives"; we were not founded by the US military, but were a European group from the beginning. Most of us are, needless to say, civilians. >From childhood, Swedes are brought up to respect the democratic system, to expect it to work and to apply its forms in most areas of their lives. The childrens' guinea-pig owners' or stamp collectors' groups, the adults' hobby classes in English conversation, jazz dance or woodworking, the elderly's Canasta or antiques collectors' clubs, they all have their yearly business meetings where any member can propose changes in budget or in corpora, or run for office, and every member has a vote electing officers and deciding on proposals. For most Swedes, running a non-profit organization in any other way is short of inconceivable. To a Swede, a good Kingdom officer would not only remind the members of the current rules, but also inform them in advance of any new regulations, and be ready to pass on their opinions to those who make the relevant decisions. In the Principality law proposal, Nordmark's Ting included a championship system for Coronet tourneys, and legislative right for the Ting, where all Nordmark residents have a seat and a vote. The championship system was intended to give non-fighters a chance to become regents, while conforming to the SCA practice of choosing regents by heavy combat. The main reason for this is that many Nordmarkers feel that medieval recreation should place more emphasis on A&S activities and less on sports-like physical competition. Also, in the Middle Ages, Swedish kings were certainly more frequently elected than chosen by individual armed combat. - The Ting's legislative right, that a regent should not have the right to change the law or to pass a new one without the Ting's approval, is in accordance with not only the contemporary Swedish need for democracy, but also with period practice in Scandinavia. Drachenwald's seneschal summarily told the law group that Nordmark couldn't do this; there was no point in submitting the law proposal to the Board, it was certain to be rejected. The Nordmark seneschal believed herself to have the Ting's mandate; thus she didn't pass the directives on to the populace, but instead went ahead with the polling on Nordmark's principality status and the law proposal. As a consequence, the Drachenwald seneschal deposed her. This created much resentment among the Nordmark leadership and populace. In my private opinion, legally the Drachenwald seneschal was within her rights, but psychologically and tactically she made a grave mistake through her insensitivity to the differences between Nordmark and US/Drachenwald mentality. A member of the Nordmark law group took informal contact with the Drachenwald Ombudsman on the Law proposal, but her answer (to the effect that the Board won't buy it, supported by a recent Board ruling on Champions) was by some people, including the Baron, considered a non-answer. It was said not to be sufficiently formal, as it wasn't an answer of the Board as a whole to a formal submission). The next Ting decided to change the law proposal to make it compatible with Corpora and to continue the Principality process. A certain number of people claim that the Ting was rigged and that the presence of the Crowns intimidated the opposition. These people decided to move towards a separation of Nordmark from under the influence of SCAInc. The way I see it, we have here two basic problems: 1) a long history of non-communication between Nordmark and Drachenwald/SCA, where the fault isn't all on Drachenwald's/SCA's side, and 2) Nordmark's double identity: some people see themselves mostly as part of Drachenwald and the SCA, others as belonging to a Swedish recreation group with some international contacts. What we all do have in common is a critical attitude toward the way the SCAInc is organized. The distinction under (2) wasn't all that important in the past, but in the present situation people are being forced to make a decision. The two possible solutions that follow from (2) are: a) Nordmark stays in the SCA and tries to influence the way the Society is run. b) Nordmark declares that we are still "doing SCA", but outside the SCA structure, and run things our way. Unfortunately, those who advocate (b) so far haven't been able (or haven't felt motivated) to tell the populace how, technically, this is to come about. We already have, and long have had, our own mundane legal structure to handle Nordmark's finances, so separate incorporation won't do the job. - The (b) people seem to think that Nordmark can either influence the SCA's structure by seceding from the SCAInc, or that the Swedish medieval recreation has no need for the SCA. My personal belief is that if Nordmark declares itself not to be an official SCA group, the rest of Drachenwald and the Known World will just shrug their shoulders. The (a) people feel that it is important to keep in touch with the rest of the Known World, and that we will run into serious difficulties on this point if we are excluded from the Kingdom and its newsletter. Also, they feel that becoming a principality with a Corpora-compatible law may improve Nordmark's chances to make our voice heard on those aspects of SCA's organization that we are unhappy with. What further complicates matters is that the Baron and Baroness of Nordmark have done very little to clarify the matter of Nordmark's mundane legal standing within the SCA. No official demands were made on the Drachenwald seneschal or the Drachenwald Board Ombudsman to examine, to discuss and to inform us about the international implications of matters such as waivers and insurance. To the best of my knowledge, Nordmark has made no efforts, on an official basis, to analyze and repair the communication breakdown between Nordmark and Drachenwald. When it would have been possible, when a Nordmark lady replaced the old Drachenwald seneschal, she was in some Nordmark circles promptly labeled as biased, Americanized and unreliable. Nordmark has two people on the GC and we certainly have made ourselves known, but so far we have received *one* constructive proposal to pass on to the Council. It did not come from one of the Free Nordmark people. Now, suddenly, the Baron and Baroness declare that Nordmark *will* proclaim its independence from the SCAInc at the Ting in Visby on August 7th, it *will* declare itself a Kingdom and it *will* elect its new regents and officers. Their claim at popular support for this is based on a vote they asked for in the local groups sometime between June 22 and July 1, i.e. the groups had less than a week, during vacation time, to call a meeting. From people who criticize others for lack of democracy, this is clumsy at best. In the present situation I truly believe that it's impossible to ascertain what Nordmark *as a whole* thinks is the right thing to do, and how it thinks it should be accomplished. I don't even believe there is such a thing as Nordmark as a whole. A part of Nordmark feels that "we" should let the "American SCA" sort out "their" mess, do things our way, and if others won't play with us, tough luck. Others (and I'm one) consider themselves a part of the SCA as a whole, we feel that it is *our* society, and if we aren't happy with the way it is run, "we", regardless of nationality or country of residence, should try to fix it and create a structure where the modern side of the organization will correspond to international legal realities, and where local variations in the ways of doing medieval recreation will be acceptable as long as they keep within generally accepted SCA landmarks. It is a matter of identity and communication, where the question of champions and Ting is a symptom. From Nordmark's perspective, it is certainly easy to see the Board and Drachenwald as rigid and unwilling to listen, but it may also depend on who speaks to them and how. Those in charge of Nordmark in the past year could have done considerably more, in a non-confrontational spirit, to communicate our needs and motives, beyond "this is the way we want it, because we're different, so there!". /Catrin Gwynystlum Janna.Spanne@Kansli.LTH.se ----------------------------------------