2050 Gotcha

Thursday, October 2, 2008

I confess that I am sometimes guilty of a very unattractive form of manipulation - the art of the "gotcha". That's when you know that someone is going to react in a certain way or take some action that is guaranteed to tic you off, and you purposely either set up a situation that will elicit that action and reaction, or you make no effort whatsoever to head it off. You sit back, watch it happen, and then say, "See? I knew he/she'd do that!" And then you get all pissed off because they did.

At least I do it only occasionally.

There are people who do it almost constantly to others to prove their own superiority, to themselves if no one else. They want you to sympathize with them, having to deal with all these stupid people.

There are people to do it to themselves, and it looks a lot like they're doing it to prove their own incompetence to themselves. They want you to sympathize with them, the way they're always taken advantage of.

None of them get any sympathy from me. If you knew this was likely to happen, why did you take no action to head it off? If you knew that something is going to go a certain way, but you made no effort to stop it or change the course, then it's partially your own fault. Don't come crying or complaining to me.

All of this is to say that in the case of the Mensa elections, I know I pulled a gotcha. I know I could have done something, and I didn't, so I am fully aware I shouldn't complain. I have no justification for my anger, other than the "it's not my job to make people do what they're supposed to do, when they know what they're supposed to do" excuse.

But I'm going to complain anyway, because I'm pissed.

The local Mensa governing board consists of five people. The elections are every two years. There's supposed to be an independent three-member nominating committee who gets out there and drums up candidates. This being a small group, the bylaws allow that if the nominating committee can find only five candidates, then there is no balloting. The five are simply declared elected. The bylaws also allow for petition candidates if the membership is not happy with the proposed slate.

Back in the days when the editor typed up the newsletter and made copies on an office copier, folded them, and stuck a first-class stamp on them, the lead time for the newsletter was only a week, and the bylaws schedules allowed for all the announcements to be made in sufficient time, and we had actual elections. But now, with all the "help" we get from computers, professional publishing, and arrival delays because of second-class mailing, the lead time for the newsletter is three weeks, which means that the membership gets announcements only a few days before the next step in the process has to be completed.

The result is that there have been no elections in the past ten years. The Nominating committee asks the current board if they want to run again, they might have to find a replacement for one who wants to bow out, so they've got their five, there's no time for petitions, there's not even time to publish a ballot!, and the five are declared elected.

This has created a lot of grumbling, because the same people are "elected" all the time, and the few replacements we've had have every appearance of being hand-picked by the current board. Like, "If I had been aware it was an election year, maybe I'd have run, but I never saw a call for candidates ...." There was never an opportunity for "outsiders" to get inside.

That has thoroughly pissed me off for years.

So this year I got onto the bylaws committee, and took the election procedures and notifications as my personal project. I was proactive! I tried to fix this! I stretched out the process to allow time for proper notifications, and pegged it to newsletter issues rather than months, specifying what information was to be in what issues (ballot-5, ballot-4, ...), and so on. Everyone who saw it agreed that it was good, and the current board even unanimously passed a resolution to use the proposed schedule for this fall's election, even if the new bylaws were not yet approved by national.

The steps, to be published in the monthly newsletter:
- June - call for volunteers for the nominating and election committees
- July -announce makeup of the nominating committee and call for candidates for election
- August -pause to allow for volunteers to come forward or be coerced
- September - announce slate and candidate's statements, and publish procedures for petition candidates if one is not happy with the slate
- October - publish full slate, statements of petition candidates, and ballot
- November - pause for return of ballots
- December - publish results of election

There wasn't a call for committee volunteers until early September (note that we were supposed to have a slate by then), and then it wasn't in the newsletter. It was on the chat group, to which fewer than a quarter of the membership subscribes. I volunteered for both the nominating committees and the election committees, specifying that I did not want to chair either. Then I sat back and waited.

They way I figure it should happen is that the chair of the nominating committee should ensure that a call for candidates is in the newsletter, the committee should meet and discuss any volunteers who have come forward, get a copy of the full membership list, see if there are any people who might serve if only asked, get on the phone and ask people, and drum up MORE THAN FIVE people, even if it requires some twisting of arms and pouring of guilt.

So I volunteered, and then I waited. Three weeks later, I was still waiting for someone to tell me that my offer had been accepted, and that the chair of the nominating committee was so-and-so.

I didn't find out I was on the committee until I got a panicked email from the person I assume is the chair, freaking out because he discovered that two of the current board members do not intend to run again, and we have to find two more people, and WHAT DO WE DO NOW!!!???

I just received my October issue of the newsletter, containing a call for candidates. The October issue was supposed to contain the ballot. Ballots are to be counted the first week in December. But of course, there was never any intent to issue ballots. There was obviously no attempt whatsoever to ensure that there was a real election.

What @#$^&.

I don't care. If we don't have at least five, national will disband the local group, folding us into probably the Albany group, or maybe the NYC group, and I don't care. We deserve it. I'm done.

Now, do I deserve any sympathy for my frustration with these stupid people? Or should I be blamed for knowing exactly what would happen, and instead of standing up and pushing, making sure things happened as they should, should I be blamed for just sitting back and watching it happen?

What @#$%^.
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