agenda items

[Mary Bucholtz]

I'd like to propose a few agenda items (as a participant, not a facilitator):

- The technical legal requirements for becoming a nonprofit organization,
managing finances, and other dull but necessary matters. Contacting other
organizations for information and suggestions on how to proceed. (I'm
anticipating here that we may need to create some ad hoc committees for
issues like this, but this remains to be discussed.)

- Making GALA (or whatever name we end up with) an organization that is
inclusive of graduate students, scholars beyond academia, and other groups
that are often marginalized in professional organizations. I have one
suggestion for at least a small part of this: Perhaps GALA could institute
an annual prize for the best graduate student paper in language and gender,
in honor of D. Letticia Galindo, a pioneering scholar of language and
gender among Chicanas who recently passed away. There are obvious practical
matters to face, but I'd like to explore the idea further.

- It might be helpful to have a very general discussion of why we're doing
this at all--what we'll gain (and perhaps lose) as a result of
professionalizing ourselves at this level, and what we hope the
organization will (and won't) look like. Maybe this could happen early on,
so that we can formulate some common goals before we proceed with
specifics.

That's it for now,

Mary





Mary Bucholtz
Texas A&M University
bucholtz at tamu.edu