At the Pacific APA Annual Business Meeting (Portland 3/23/06), two motions were approved. The first motion was to direct the Executive Committee to create an ad hoc committee to formulate wording for amendments to the Pacific Division By-Laws. The second motion elaborated the charge of the committee as follows: "The ad hoc committee will consider amendments to the Pacific Division by-laws concerning procedures for nomination and election of all officers, the executive committee, and the nominating committee, and the terms of all such positions. It may but need not propose more than one alternative to preserving the current by-laws unamended."
Also, Anita Silvers informed us that the Executive Committee has decided to turn over the appointment of the next nominating committee to the ad hoc committee.
Several of us have requested that there be some kind of public announcement about these motions, so that members can volunteer to serve, nominate others, or simply try to follow the work of the committee and give input when solicited. The current goal is to have some proposals from the ad hoc committee by Nov. so that they can be printed in the Jan. Proceedings and voted on at the next Business Meeting.
At the meeting, I was allowed to elaborate the concerns behind the 2006 petition. I said something to the effect that, in an organization such as the APA where members have equal standing, our officers should serve at the pleasure of the majority of the members and not some designated sub-set of the members. Our By-Laws specify a procedure for holding elections, but they are currently too weak to ensure that our officers are chosen by the members rather than by the current officers. Our petition aims to strengthen the By-Laws so that we can have open elections for positions in the organization that involve policy and decision-making, both for the division and national organization.
I was also allowed to speak to the motion to approve “the Report of the 2006 Nominating Committee/Election of Officers.” I emphasized that my concern was not about the people nominated but the political and professional “back-scratching” reflected in the process used to select the nominees. All the people nominated are successful and well-respected philosophers. But we should not be asked to vote up or down on a single slate of candidates on the basis of their publication records alone (the only information about the candidates we received from Keith Lehrer, who gave the report of the nominating committee). We should be able to choose among different candidates who have provided members with some information about their ideas and qualifications for running the organization. I don’t remember the exact vote count, but roughly 1/3 of those present voted to abstain rather than oppose this year’s nominees, on the grounds that we need officers to run the organization while we revise our election rules.
Respectfully, Laurie Shrage
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