I have never liked how councilors are formally accountable to no one. (Keep in mind they are informally accountable to their own society. If the TDA elects councilors that are not society members, that is the TDA’s fault.) Society representation would fix that, to a degree. However, the TDA has, at every TDA that I recall, informally tried to spread representation across societies and regions. It has always been brought up as a qualification to consider.

There are other considerations to “each society on the council” idea. At the next TDA, if I have a choice between voting for a society member from Wisconsin who has never reached out and another reader who has sat on a couple committees and undertaken the “every day a contact” challenge, or is an accountant, or has computer skills, or has book publishing skills, or “big committee deliberation skills”, or has membership in multiple UB groups, and has the money to travel to meetings, I’ll be voting for the latter.

Keep in mind that if the societies want to get together, organize, there is nothing to stop us from doing that. Except a lack of a goal and energy and need.

Robert Arkens
Wisconsin

> On May 8, 2018, at 1:32 PM, Craig Carmichael <craig@saers.com> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> The general council was envisioned to be 27 councilors [somehow]
> representing "hundreds of societies". Instead we have 27 councilors
> for less than 27 societies, and they report to no societies and are
> accountable to no one.
>
> I think the idea of having a councilor for each society would be an
> excellent improvement. In fact I proposed it myself about 20 years
> ago, 1997 or 1998. I didn't push it very hard or very long before I
> came up with the idea that study groups should be part of the
> organization, because even back then many of the societies were pretty
> much inactive, while there seemed to be lots of active study groups. I
> didn't get any traction or comment from the Fellowship. But back then
> we weren't all interconnected. One could only converse with the center
> and not between members.
>
> Of course I fully support having the societies each elect their own
> rep to the council, which would be composed largely or wholly of such
> reps. It would be empowered to set goals and directions for the
> Fellowship in accordance with membership wishes.
>
> Craig