[12960] in APO-L
Re: SUMMER CONFERENCES
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Deborah Nina Cherry)
Fri Oct 13 18:16:04 1995
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 18:12:38 -0400
Reply-To: Deborah Nina Cherry <dc30+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU>
From: Deborah Nina Cherry <dc30+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU>
To: Multiple recipients of list APO-L <APO-L@VM.CC.PURDUE.EDU>
In-Reply-To: <Added.gkTfsS_00Udb8XhU5M@andrew.cmu.edu>
>This isn't just a dollars and cents issue. This plan provides flexibility
>for all so that at one point or another everyone should make it to at least
>one conference. Safe travel, good weather, much fun.
Believe it or not, the average time spent as an active member in APhiO
is something like 2 years or less. So, for the average student*
member, they only have the chance to attend 1 National Convention
while an active brother (and eligible to be a voting delegate if they
desire and their chapter elects them). Although the Convention has a
lot for alumni, especially those who are sectional/regional/national
staff/board, the primary purpose of it is as a forum for the student
members of APhiO. Those are the only ones who ae entitled to a vote
without being elected to a small set of offices (National Board). The
National Board is elected by the STUDENT members. Saying that if we
move things around, everyone will be able to attend a convention
eventually doesn't help most people, because that time window has been
missed. Yes there are people (myslef included) who will attend
multiple Conventions who must make a decision about holiday family
commitments at least every 2 years, but for many people, this is a 1
time occurance (especially in their school years). This also isn't the
entire holiday period (not even the holidays themselves), and for most
people, they have at least 1 other week of school break either before
or after Convention to spend with family.
Another problem with summer conferences is trying to orgainze the
conference itself as well as organize the chapter's participation.
Most chapters are not regularly meeting in the summer. Just trying to
organize information for registration/logistical arrangements with
people scattered across the country is difficult enough (Some chapters
have difficulty just doing this with everyone on campus...). But if
you are the hosting chapter(s), you may loose significant members of
your planning committee at the most crucial time (last 1-3 months).
Should these chapters be forced to say that if you want to be on the
planning committee, you can't take an out of town summer job
(including Scout Camp, internships, co-ops, etc.) or go home to free
room & board? And what about those schools that are in session during
the summer? Guess those chapters don't get to be represented at that
Convention unless they have people who can skip classes.
People tend to have a much better idea farther in advance of where
they'll be between Xmas & New Year's than they do during the summer.
Some people don't know till Spring finals (or later) where they'll be-
summer school, internships, home, stay at school, etc. So trying to
make advance transportation arrangements (especially through the
summer special airfares, which frequently need to be purchased well in
advance and aren't refundable) becomes rather difficult when you don't
even know what city you're leaving from, or whether or not you will be
able to take those days off from work/school, etc.
And no matter how you try to arrange things, the weather can surprise
you (I'm not usually concerned about a blizzard in the middle of
March, but it happened), or other things can happen that you can't
plan for (train derailment, airline workers strike). Besides- having a
winter conference in the south still doesn't make travel that much
better for the people who have to travel _through_ an airport/region
that has bad weather. I'm actually less concerned about snow in areas
that are used to dealing with it: A few inches of snow in say,
Buffalo, barely affects people because the services needed are ready
to deal with it. If a freak (and they haven't been all that freak
lately, I think there's been at least 1/year) storm happens to hit
Florida and leave .5inches of snow, the entire state shuts down...
There will never be a single time that is ideal, but for a National
Student Conference, I don't think that there is a better time to give
the maximium number of people the possibility of going than Dec.
27-30. If people can't go, it doesn't matter how appealing the
fares/rooms/convention/city is...
*I use the term student, rather than undergraduate because in many
chapters, graduate students are able to be active members.
Yours in LFS,
Debbie Cherry
Life Member, Kappa Chapter
Carnegie Mellon University
St. Louis '90 (from Pgh via van), Boston '92 (from Pgh via van), and
Dallas '94 (yeah, right- frequent flyer miles :-)
Pittsburgh, PA
INTERNET or BITNET: dc30@andrew.cmu.edu
