CUUYAN 2008 Election Information
June 18, 2008
Dear C*UUYAN,
This letter reaches you with information about elections at the Pre-GA Meeting and as a call to anyone who may be interested in leadership, regardless of whether you are able to join us next week.
We are quickly approaching Fort Lauderdale! We are looking forward to visioning together ways to improve our organization, and appreciate that this may include making changes to our governance structures. We have prepared an elections process to accommodate this state of potentiality. The process is not perfect, but it is designed to be simple, efficient, and flexible; we humbly present it with the best intentions for the good of our community.
On Tuesday night at the Pre-GA Meeting, we will be examining what form of leadership will work best for C*UUYAN for the coming year as well as the future. Possible outcomes to this session include deciding to keep the Steering Committee and/or Conferences Planning Committee as is, forming a task force to address specific issues from the Meeting, or creating a brand new governance structure. Thus, the elections process and elected positions that follow are subject to change in accordance with the community’s decisions. If any changes are necessary, they will be announced at the close of Tuesday night.
Elections will be held Wednesday afternoon. As of now, we are planning to elect the Steering Committee Facilitator and two At-Large Representatives for the Steering Committee. Elections will run position by position. Each candidate will be asked to give a short speech (two minutes). There will then be a brief question and answer period, followed by voting. As in years past, we will use instant run-off voting (IRV). For an interactive explanation of IRV, see www.chrisgates.net/irv/. Barring any changes from Tuesday’s meeting, we will first elect the Facilitator and then the At-Large Reps.
Along with updates and minutes from the meeting, we will post an announcement of open positions online on Tuesday night at www.uuyan.org. Candidates are welcome to run in absentia. Anyone running in absentia needs to submit a printed “speech” to futureofcuuyan@gmail.com and to a meeting participant who will read for them at the meeting. Candidates are invited to be available by phone or online chat for the question and answer session. Unfortunately, due to logistics, voting is limited to those physically present at the meeting.
In preparation for the meeting, we invite you to continue thinking about these questions for C*UUYAN: Who are we? Who do we serve? What is our reach? What do we need? We look forward to discerning some of the answers to these questions with you next week. Please contact us with any questions or comments in the meantime. You can email us at ideas@uuyan.org.
In faith,
The C*UUYAN Steering Committee
Andrew Mertz
Anthony Severe
Liz Weber
Mary Manchester
Raegan Bricks