Bylaws Amendments, 2001 (proposed)


I've been slowly reading and considering the proposed bylaws amendments as presented in InterLoc #332, and now I find same in the Mensa Bulletin #443. Slowly, because that is some boring reading... not only boring, but one often wonders why the laws were written as they were in the first place... and at the same time, why anybody would want to bother changing them, except to make them clear, which is rarely the intent.

But enough is enough, and after slogging about halfway through, and deciding that I've wasted enough time, I've promised myself to study them no more and to post these thoughts to get them off my chest (thoughts... chest... somehow that doesn't sound right).

  1. Substitution of the journal for Mensa Bulletin, for flexibility - I find this rather odd. The only flexibility I see is that a name change would not then necessitate a change in the bylaws. Is a name change being considered? And if a name change was approved, then why not simply amend the bylaws to reflect that change? The name doesn't matter much to me, but I just might suspect that a name change is in the works and the Powers That Be want to avoid a situation like that of the headquarters being moved to Texas against the rules, after which they kept their fingers crossed while a proposed change to the rules to permit such a move was was put to the vote.
  2. ...we recommend that local groups keep the name of the local newsletter out of local bylaws, and the reasons are just as valid at the national level... - Hardly convincing, since these reasons are not stated! Thus it is impossible for one to judge them, or to decide whether just as valid means valid or invalid.
  3. The substitution of elective for elected and appointive for appointed - I may be wrong on this, but my ear agrees with all the dictionaries I've checked both online and off, which tell me that offices are appointive and officers are appointed. None of my sources supported the belief that appointive officer is grammatically correct. (Elective vs. elected is a different matter. A relatively small number of sources did allow for use of the term elective officer. Perhaps the usage of elective is changing, and the usage of appointive is being dragged along. Or so somebody in the Committee thought. Or maybe they just thought it sounded fancier. A few quick websearches also demonstrated that phrases like elective officer are far less common than those like elected officer, that phrases like appointive officer are far less common than those like appointed officer, and that phrases like appointive officer are far less common than those like elective officer.)
  4. Amendment 4 is poorly written. I approve of the outcome but also suspect that if passed, the passage will be amended again before long. The reason I approve is that, in general, the Powers That Be do not request member input or approval; they simply inform us of their decisions after the fact, and I don't like that. It's a little thing, but I'm glad to see them amending the bylaws to require notification even earlier in the process. But I also know that eventually they will realize that this amendment did not just clarify that the specific amount being considered need not be in the notice, and then we'll probably see another amendment. (What it really comes down to is the terms considered and proposed. Either the intent is for the two to be used synonymously (in which case, why change?), or not (in which case, they really are requiring earlier notification (not just of proposal but of consideration) (which is out of character (so what are they up to?))))
  5. And also in re amendment 4... protection against such things as typographical errors? Are we being overlawyered again? Couldn't they just be extra special careful when they type that number? And even if they did type it wrong, why couldn't they simply say so? Sheesh.
6 Aprilo 2001 modifita, de Ailanto verkita.