The Delegates' Voice

Newsletter for the House of Delegates of AAPG

SEPTEMBER, 2000

Chairman's Corner

by Lowell Lischer

Have you ever ridden a roller coaster? This is how I feel my experience as Chairman-Elect and now Chairman of the House of Delegates is shaping up. My sense of what it is like is that Chairman-Elect is like climbing that first hill. It is long and has a certain degree of anticipation. Then July 1 rolled around - WHAT A RUSH! The ride is certainly not uneventful, but with Ed, Sandi, Donna Riggs, other AAPG staff, Rick Fritz and a host of well qualified and dedicated committee chairmen and members as participants, it sure promises to be memorable. It is almost hard to believe I'm two months into my term as your Chairman at this writing.

The standing committees and three ad hoc committees for this year are now all up and running. A listing of all of the chairmen and members appears elsewhere in this issue. I have had personal contact, either by phone or e-mail, with every one of these people. What makes this job fun is the fact that of all that whole long list of committee members, I had only two turndowns from the original selections. Everyone is busy; everyone has more than enough to do, but still is willing to take on some additional responsibility for the House and Association. Even those two who had to turn me down -- well, if I were in their shoes, I’d have turned me down too, there is only so much any of us can take on.

This year promises to be a busy one leading right up to and most certainly including our meeting in Denver. New developments in communications efforts with the Delegates will be a big help in getting everyone up to speed on the issues and keeping you informed of any updates. By the time you receive this issue of the DV, members will be able to look up their Delegates on the AAPG website and there will be a fully operational Delegates’ Forum online (more about that from Sandi) to provide further assistance to the already high quality newsletter in disseminating information. I will have already attended the Rocky Mountain and Eastern section meetings as you read this and am anticipating the opportunity to meet and discuss House issues and concerns with more of you at the GCAGS meeting.

The Constitution & Bylaws Committee will have a busy year. First of all, there are the five resolutions passed in New Orleans: Bylaws Amending Time Period Equivalency Amendment, Legality Requirement Elimination Amend ment, Election Results Release Amendment, Eliminate “suitable” Amendment, and International Region Delegate Election Clarification Amendment. So far, there are also three Bylaws Resolutions for consideration: A “super majority” vote requirement by the Executive Committee in order to change the order of or reject any officer candidate nominee as presented by the Advisory Council; restriction of members from holding multiple AAPG positions or offices; and allowing alternates for selected Advisory Council members. There is also a resolution for a Constitutional Amendment known as COCBAP 3 (history included on page 1) for consideration as well. These are the known items for consideration to date.

The Rules & Procedures Committee is no less busy. From New Orleans, they have the following to consider: No HOD Honors and Awards Committee member shall receive a voted HOD award during the period of their service to that Committee; no individual shall be allowed to receive more than one House award in any one year; incorporation of a “disaffiliation” authority and process within the Rules and Procedures as a part of the Resolutions Committee responsibilities; and nine (9) separate recommendations for consideration from the Ad Hoc “Procedures” (aka Operations) Committee report. In addition, there will be consideration for incorporation of a resolution notification procedure already passed by the Executive Committee for the cooperative effort of the Executive Committee, Advisory Council and House of Delegates. There may be one additional item for consideration by this committee as well.

So if I haven’t lost you having to read through all this rather dry legislative commentary, how are we going to get through all of this, this year? The House leadership is committed to keeping you, the Delegates and alternates, informed on the issues. The House committees will not only be encouraged, but expected, to assist in apprising you of their activities and deliberations on the issues. This information will be disseminated through every means available whether that is by direct mailings, The Delegates' Voice, online through the AAPG website, Delegates’ Forum, articles in the Explorer, and even through e-mail, as appropriate and if deemed necessary.

We will make every effort to keep you informed. But, it will be the obligation of you, the Delegates and alternates, to read this information. Through this cooperative effort, all of us can serve the best interests of the membership who have placed their trust in us as well as fulfilling our obligation to one another that the Denver meeting stays on the issues and on task so that our meeting isn’t a marathon.

In closing, I want to encourage you to be in touch, not only with the issues, but also with your House leadership. Contact information for the various committee chairmen is provided in this issue of The Delegates' Voice. Sandi, Ed and I can all be contacted as well. I encourage you to contact me with your questions and comments either by e-mail at , by phone at 210/478-6856, or snail-mail at 15611 Cloud Top, San Antonio, TX 78248-1350, USA

Respectfully,

Lowell Lischer
Chairman 2000-2001

Chairman-Elect Column    TOP  

Delegate Voting Habits

It is not my intention to offend any of my fellow Delegates, but we took a survey recently (“The Super Majority Issue” found in your last Delegates’ Voice) and the voting response of Delegates was 75 of 268, or only 28%. Although this was a valid survey and the other officers of the House of Delegates said it was about what they expected based on historical voting habits, I thought this voting percentage was rather low.

We as Delegates represent the AAPG members from our districts around the world. To that end, I feel that they should be better represented by our votes, whether at the House of Delegates meeting at the annual convention each year or on a survey issue that could ultimately affect all of AAPG.

Food for thought ... isn’t it really our responsibility to vote?

Ed Dolly

This year will have 3 issues, including this one. The January issue will include more about the COCBAP resolution and the biographies of the House officer candidates. The deadline for submissions will be November 8.

The April issue will contain the committee reports and other pertinent information for the June House meeting in Denver. We intend to increase the time that Delegates have to study and to discuss issues prior to the meeting. Therefore the deadline for this issue will be in March. The House meeting will be followed shortly by an August 2001 DV issue.

Issues of the DV are posted on the AAPG website in PDF format (Website News). Delegates outside the USA and Canada who provide valid e-mail addresses will also receive issues in digital format, thus assuring prompt receipt of important information.

PDF document Files with the .PDF suffix represent Portable Document Format files, viewable using an Adobe Acrobat¨ Reader software. Adobe offers a free run-time license to users, the software can be downloaded at the Adobe Web site.

As promised in the June issue, a forum has been created to facilitate communications between the Delegates (see the Web Site News for the details). Through the forum, Delegates can discuss issues and receive speedy notifications from the House leadership and committees. This may become an important means of House communications.

Please note that access to the forum is limited to the Delegates only. The forum needs to develop and to stabilize before viewing by non-Delegates. Later it may be opened to browsing only by non-Delegates. However participation in discussions is limited to Delegates and past House Chairmen only.

If you have not recently visited the AAPG Web site (www.aapg.org), you might be interested in the increased information available on the House of Delegates (Web Site News). The list of Delegates by affiliated society and of House officers, together with e-mail addresses, are available to the membership and general public.

Additionally, the Ad Hoc Visions Committee (see This Year's Ad Hoc Committees) will be investigating other means of communications. Among its charges is to look for, and report on, cost-effective methods that would increase discussions among geographically distributed Delegates. Please forward any suggestions you have to me at sbarber<at>pdq.net.

While contacting Delegates over the past two months, we have found that the information in the AAPG Headquarters database is not always current. We need your current mailing address, phone number, and most especially your e-mail address. This information can be forwarded to Donna Riggs or at AAPG, P.O. Box 979, Tulsa, Oklahoma, 74101-0979, USA.

If you are located outside of the USA and Canada, inform me whether you can receive attachments to your e-mail, particularly PDF files. We are sending the DV electronically to those who might have difficulty receiving it promptly by mail. Therefore, it would ease our (read “my”) work if we can attach the issue as a PDF file. Otherwise, my work is increased by cutting and pasting all articles into an e-mail, versus just attaching the file.

Don Clarke, Long Beach, California

Terry Hollrah, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Marty Hewitt, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Brian Keith, Bloomington, Indiana

In this issue ...

Officers
> Chairman's Corner
> Chairman-elect
> Secretary/Editor
> HOD OfficerCandidates

Committees
> Officers, Standing and Ad Hoc
> Three Ad Hoc
> Constitution & Bylaws Committee

Web
> Website News
> Affiliated Societies

Information
> Contact Info Critical
> Survey Results

Articles
> History of “COCBAP”
> Earth Science Week 2000
>  28 Years Ago
> News from Affiliated Societies

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