Advisory Council, again

[Mary Bucholtz]

In response to Sara's message, here are my own thoughts about the advisory
council. Although I do feel strongly that the council should take into
special account the concerns of underrepresented students and scholars, I
no longer think building this structure into the council itself is the best
way to go, given how controversial the idea has been. Instead, I think I
favor something like what Sara is suggesting (correct me if I'm
misrepresenting you, Sara): the seats themselves would be open, and people
would run for a position based on whatever platform they feel needs to be
represented on the council--political, professional, whatever. As for
representation of feminist positions, I think that would come out of the
platforms naturally, so it wouldn't need to be specified (but certainly
shouldn't be discouraged). Perhaps the way to frame this is simply to say
that the advisory council seats are designed to represent the professional
and/or political concerns of the membership, without further specification
of what "professional" and "political" might mean. Obviously, an
individual's platform might encompass numerous professional and political
issues, and I think that would be a strength of this approach.

Mary


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Mary Bucholtz
Assistant Professor of Linguistics and Discourse Studies
Department of English
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843-4227

bucholtz at tamu.edu
phone: (409) 862-3910
fax: (409) 862-2292
http://www-english.tamu.edu/pers/fac/bucholtz/
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