Kevin Langdon, P.O. Box 795, Berkeley, CA 94701; September 29, 1992
To the Triple Nine Executive Committee:
My comments on the points in Cyd's memo of August 19 are listed under the numbers she
assigned to them.
1A. I'm very pleased that Tim Hardy has supplied us with a financial statement which lets
us know where we stand in terms of current operations. We still have not seen a report on
the Zaslove affair and the society's missing funds. I will have to vote to hold the voting
on Tim Hardy's confirmation until this issue has been resolved, either in the form of a
report on this matter from Tim or through the appointment of a special auditor to
investigate this matter and report to the Executive Com-mittee and the membership. I would
expect Tim to turn over all pertinent records to the special auditor.
As a matter of fact, I vote to hold confirmation of all three appointive officers. The minimum I want to see from each of you in the way of an indication of interest in holding office is a letter addressed to the Committee indicating the status of your office and your plans to correct whatever problems may exist in your area (e.g., Zaslove affair, prompt response to membership inquiries, Vidya publication schedule).
1B. I have no objection to delaying the mailing to Minerva and Cincinnatus members until after the financial statement is reviewed. Presumably comments on the financial statement will be included with the same ExCom memo as this letter; if no serious objections are registered, I think we can assume that our finances permit us to invest in this attempt to recover some of the members we lost during the battles of a few years ago.
1C. I vote for temporarily banning life memberships until we get around to permanently banning them.
1D. I vote to appoint John Kormes Legal Officer.
2. I'm glad that Cyd liked the ad that I wrote. If no objections have surfaced by this memo, I move that we run the ad (using 1470 as our qualifying score on the SAT, as recommended by the Psychometrics Committee) every other month, as Cyd suggests, but for eight months (four placements) instead of six, alternating between the (American) Mensa Bulletin and the Mensa International Journal, two placements each (Cyd didn't say where the ad should be run). The Bulletin ads are $1/word and the Journal ads are 50 pence/word (50 pence is about 86 cents); if we approve this motion, we are voting to appropriate $178.56. I believe that this is a modest sum for the exposure we'll be getting, which is likely to bring us in a number of new members.
3. Dan McElwain's welcome letter strikes a good tone, though I don't think we should even suggest to members that they use their membership numbers in correspondence with other members; it smacks of regimentation. Also the TNS logo should be reproduced more cleanly. This shouldn't be too difficult.
John Kormes' welcome letter is good, too, though it's very different from McElwain's. It's appropriate that a greeting letter to a new member should express the personality of the greeter as well as some indication of the type of organization we are.
4. I like Eric Hand's suggestion about putting the date on membership cards; it might make more sense, though, for the card to include the number of the last issue of Vidya paid for, rather than an expiration date, in case we continue to run behind schedule in publishing.
5. It's good to see the list of volunteer jobs. I can supply a list of people on my mailing list with the ``TN'' code. This doesn't go all the way back to the beginning, because I didn't start keeping track of this until 1985. My list does not differentiate between former and current members, but it shouldn't be hard to identify who's on the current list. Also, my list may include a few subscribers (following some of the lists TNS published) and some of the addresses will turn out not to be current (I try to keep the list updated, working from the rosters of all the high-I.Q. societies at the 99.9 level and above and other materials, but some people may not have been active in any of the societies for years.)
6. As I mentioned in my last memo, I have serious reservations about any procedure that would permit the Executive Committee to remove elected officers, even temporarily, but I would be amenable to a proposal that would allow the ExCom to put the question of removal to the membership (it should also be possible to initiate a recall election by petition of the square root of the membership). As I pointed out before, any such procedure would require a constitutional amendment to implement.
7. Yes, it would be useful if Kjeld could compile statistics on test scores submitted by those invited to join TNS, but his report should also include nonqualifying scores submitted; the additional data is there and would be helpful in understanding the real distribution of scores on various tests.
8. It's good that the Psychometrics Committee has been reactivated and has been active enough to review our admission score on the SAT, which has long been considered unrealistically high by many with an interest in high-range psychometrics. But the change of qualifying score should not have been phrased as a recommendation to the Membership Officer, who, according to the TNS constitution, ``shall . . . determine whether applicants meet the admission criteria established by the Society's psychometrician.'' The closest thing we have to a ``psychometrician'' is our Psychometrics Committee. Since the constitution is silent on this committee, addressing only the Executive Committee and committees in general, I believe that it is the Executive Committee which must formally ratify this change. Therefore, I move that TNS' qualifying score on the SAT be changed to 1470, as recommended by the Psychometrics Committee.
9. Cyd made some good points in replying to my remarks regarding the desirability or undesirability of having a ``chief executive officer.'' I don't mind having an official spokesperson and feather smoother. I do think that the present constitutional provision making the Regent automatically Chairman of the Executive Committee is a real problem. TNS has been practically paralyzed when we've had ineffective Regents; the Committee should elect its own Chairman, as was the case before the constitutional amendment which made the Regent Chairman.
There is a mistake in John Kormes' election report published in Vidya #122/ 123. Constitutional amendment #2 (to require that the Regent and Ombudsman have previously served on the Executive Committee) received 23 yes votes and 12 no votes. As a constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds vote, the amendment actually failed by one vote. Dennis, please announce this in Vidya.
Cyd mentioned to me that a question has been raised regarding the effective date of the amendments that passed. According to the TNS constitution, ``The assumption date for all offices and the effective date for all initiatives and for Constitutional amendments shall be April 1.'' Disregarding the chronic slippage in the timing of elections, it is clearly intended that amendments take effect with the start of the term of office of each newly elected Executive Committee.
Therefore, Financial Officer is now an appointive post and the term of office of the present Executive Committee is two years.