The Truth House constitutional convention
Aug. 20th, 2012 04:05 amEdit next day: Corrected seniority note.
So Marquise pushed Nick[0] (our current board rep) to hold a "constitutional convention". See, the Truth House constitution is a complete mess, in several ways.
For one thing, new amendments are often not integrated with the rest of the constitution, terminology is inconsistent; it's kept in a Word document (yuck) and even the formatting is inconsistent. (Regarding the terminology -- apparently in one place the Work Manager is referred to as the "Operations Director", and #1 is referred to as the "Administrative Director", and is also the Vice President. No idea whose idea that was; I was here when Secretary and Treasurer were combined into #1, and I don't recall anyone ever using the term "Administrative Director". Nick tells me other houses have officers with titles like "Flight Attendant" and "Hunter/Gatherer." Of course the name "#1" is itself a joke, just a less obvious one, since it refers to the fact that the first mate of a ship is often addressed this way, or at least they are in fiction; I don't know about real life.)
For another thing, it turns out that nobody actually knows what the constitution says. By this I mean that in quite a few cases, house custom has diverged from the written constitution without anyone realizing it -- either to change the constitution to match, or to try to keep us on track with what's written. So, a bunch of rewriting to match what we actually do (and maybe a bit of adjusting what we do to match what was earlier written) is necessary.
For instance, as written, the house council is supposed to do much more than they currently do, which is just review the performance of house officers. A bit odd -- house council isn't even that old; it was introduced by Liam, I'm told. OK, I guess by the standards of house "generations" that's already pretty old (his last year was my first year, and I'm now tied with Mikel for second most senior person in the house, after Santiago). Though for as long as I can remember the house council's done what it's currently done, which includes when Liam was here, so...?
Nick emailed the house and suggested people show up because "the more people who attend the less I can be accused of making a unilateral power grab to control the house". Of course, this is Truth House, so hardly anyone showed up. Even Marquise didn't, since he had work. Of course it can't really be a unilateral power grab anyway since the "convention" is just to suggest changes; in order to take effect any changes would have to be approved by the house.
I guess my point is, maybe those not showing up had the right idea, because most of it was freaking boring. And there's going to be more, since we only got through at most 5 pages out of 23 -- and that's with having skipped stuff because we felt we didn't have enough people to sensibly discuss it.
I'm not sure where I'm really going with this. I guess this is a pretty boring entry. But hey -- at least you weren't at the Truth House constitutional convention! (Oh, who am I kidding. I'll probably go to the next one even so. Maybe just drop in every so often though, instead of just dropping out every so often.)
-Harry
[0]That's Nick Keen, not anyone else named Nick.
So Marquise pushed Nick[0] (our current board rep) to hold a "constitutional convention". See, the Truth House constitution is a complete mess, in several ways.
For one thing, new amendments are often not integrated with the rest of the constitution, terminology is inconsistent; it's kept in a Word document (yuck) and even the formatting is inconsistent. (Regarding the terminology -- apparently in one place the Work Manager is referred to as the "Operations Director", and #1 is referred to as the "Administrative Director", and is also the Vice President. No idea whose idea that was; I was here when Secretary and Treasurer were combined into #1, and I don't recall anyone ever using the term "Administrative Director". Nick tells me other houses have officers with titles like "Flight Attendant" and "Hunter/Gatherer." Of course the name "#1" is itself a joke, just a less obvious one, since it refers to the fact that the first mate of a ship is often addressed this way, or at least they are in fiction; I don't know about real life.)
For another thing, it turns out that nobody actually knows what the constitution says. By this I mean that in quite a few cases, house custom has diverged from the written constitution without anyone realizing it -- either to change the constitution to match, or to try to keep us on track with what's written. So, a bunch of rewriting to match what we actually do (and maybe a bit of adjusting what we do to match what was earlier written) is necessary.
For instance, as written, the house council is supposed to do much more than they currently do, which is just review the performance of house officers. A bit odd -- house council isn't even that old; it was introduced by Liam, I'm told. OK, I guess by the standards of house "generations" that's already pretty old (his last year was my first year, and I'm now tied with Mikel for second most senior person in the house, after Santiago). Though for as long as I can remember the house council's done what it's currently done, which includes when Liam was here, so...?
Nick emailed the house and suggested people show up because "the more people who attend the less I can be accused of making a unilateral power grab to control the house". Of course, this is Truth House, so hardly anyone showed up. Even Marquise didn't, since he had work. Of course it can't really be a unilateral power grab anyway since the "convention" is just to suggest changes; in order to take effect any changes would have to be approved by the house.
I guess my point is, maybe those not showing up had the right idea, because most of it was freaking boring. And there's going to be more, since we only got through at most 5 pages out of 23 -- and that's with having skipped stuff because we felt we didn't have enough people to sensibly discuss it.
I'm not sure where I'm really going with this. I guess this is a pretty boring entry. But hey -- at least you weren't at the Truth House constitutional convention! (Oh, who am I kidding. I'll probably go to the next one even so. Maybe just drop in every so often though, instead of just dropping out every so often.)
-Harry
[0]That's Nick Keen, not anyone else named Nick.
