[SCA-AE] Change in Corpora Proposed

[Ireland-delfs, Orilee]

Myfanwy - But this was something that caused your membership to seem to be "not valid" for a period of time...not for a lapse of a few days.  Given the delay between when you renew your membership, the AEstel labels are printed, something gets returned to Milpitas, and the flags are raised, this wasn't just for a few days (I'm not saying it was right, I'm just pointing out that it was a little more complex and had a longer period of time involved).  I am sure that there are officers who have had their membership lapse for a few days and not been suspended or removed from office.

We have Crowns being suspended for a *one day lapse*.  Given that renewing on-line does effectively make your renewal instantaneous, it seems very silly to go to all the trouble for some thing that is that quick.

To answer a couple of other questions - if you renew prior to your current membership expiring, your new membership is just "added on" to your existing, so you do get credit for any remaining valid membership time.  There is no reason why you can't renew early.  And I am sure most officers and Crowns do their very best to ensure that their membership doesn't lapse.

However, officers and Crowns can be very busy people.  Most of them have mundane lives and jobs that they have to pay attention to as well as the amount of time and energy they need to put into an office or reign.  An occasional mistake should be taken into account here.
 
And SCA funds cannot purchase a membership - that goes against our not-for-profit status.

Orianna

-----Original Message-----
From: sca-aethelmearc-bounces+orilee.ireland-delfs=xerox.com at lists.andrew.cmu.edu [mailto:sca-aethelmearc-bounces+orilee.ireland-delfs=xerox.com at lists.andrew.cmu.edu] On Behalf Of myfanwy at nauticom.net
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2009 4:41 PM
To: discussion at aethelmearc.org
Subject: Re: [SCA-AE] Change in Corpora Proposed

Greetings from Myfanwy!

Orianna wrote:
> officers don't get booted out of office if
> their membership lapses for a short period of time.

Except that they can.  A couple of years ago my membership was suspended
(through no fault of my own, other than not noticing my newsletters hadn't
been showing up in the mail) because there was a discrepancy between my
mailing address and the barcode on my Æestel, and the issues were being
returned as "no such address".  As a result, my warrant for the College of
Heralds got (effectively) yanked (meaning that I could not personally
collect money at any consult table I worked).  Fortunately, I got a head's
up about the situation from Guilietta, who was Silver Buccle at the time. 
It took a good number of months, two more repeat incidents, and finally
the assistance of a Postal Inspector calling Milpitas to get it
straightened out.  (Because I had paid extra for 1st class postage, I
could go to the Inspector and say "I'm missing 1st class mail that I'm
*supposed* to be getting", rather than dealing with yet another go-round
of the Pgh Post Office and Milpitas pointing fingers at each other.)
The Crowns are acting as agents of the Corporation, like it or not.  They
should be following the same requirements as everyone else who is an
officer.  If you can't afford (or can't be bothered) to keep track of
something like renewing your membership in a timely fashion, how are you
going to be able to afford (or be bothered) to do the work required to be
on the Throne?  It's not like renewing is such onerous work -- you can now
do it online, and it just takes a few minutes (I did a three-year renewal
for Alastar and me this last time).
Lady Myfanwy ferch Rhiannon
Ruth Morrisson
myfanwy at nauticom.net

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