GALA and BWLG

[Alice Freed]

I read Suzanne Wertheim's posting with great interest and was
happy to learn first hand about the status of the BWLG. I was,
however, dismayed at the announcement of the merger of GALA with
BWLG because it seems to have been decided without a discussion
or vote from the people who are currently involved in GALA. As
long as the democratic process that we have talked so much about
is continuing, I think it might be more appropriate to have this
presented to the membership and then voted on.. The new
organizing plan that the facilitators of GALA described a few
days ago was to be based on a smaller "elected" group that would
continue the work of organizing GALA. But that smaller group has
not yet been elected. Despite this, Suzanne reports the
following:

     "Over the last year or so, it became clear to me, and some
others, that BWLG was no longer self-sustainable, that its mission
and reach had outgrown the resources (time and otherwise) of graduate
students in the Berkeley linguistics department. After talking to
Mary Bucholtz and some other GALA list organizers, I decided that
the best course of action would be to have BWLG merge with GALA.
After  some e-mail discussion and a vote, a consensus was reached
that a merge with GALA should take place. The first clear passing
of the baton, as it were, will be a co-run conference in Berkeley
in the spring of 2000."

     While I support the idea of GALA lending support to the BWLG
2000 conference (or holding a conference in its place,) I am not
sure that I like the idea of a "merger" of these two groups. This
merger is not presented as if it were just for this conference
but something of a more general nature. One of  my reservations
about combining these two organizations is that BWLG, like any
organization, now has a history and thus a culture of its own.
This may inadvertently modify the shape and practices of GALA..
For example,  I have mixed feelings about "the involvement of
graduate students at high levels" depending on how this is
defined. Although I am very much in favor of having graduate
student participation, I think there are some down sides to this
as well. Graduate students are usually under a considerable amount
of academic pressure and to give GALA (or any organization) the
attention it will need will force them to put their studies
aside. (Of course people can make this a personal choice but from
where I sit -- on the other side of the desk -- I must say that I
have some reservations about it.)  Secondly, I am not sure that I
think that the review process for papers at a GALA-sponsored
conference should be the same as the one used for BWLG. I don't
want to go on at length and I certainly do not want to seem
disapproving but there seemed to be some problems in this regard at the
last BWLG conference. I don't think the reasons for this were the
fault of individual students but due to the burdens of such an
undertaking and the collective interests of the students
involved. Finally, by making the decision to continue to hold a
gender and language conference at Berkeley, (an otherwise
beautiful place for a conference). the only graduate students who
can be easily involved continue to be the students at Berkeley.

     The most important two points of this message are the
following: In my opinion:

     1) Before any final decision is made, a GALA-L vote should
be taken about a possible relationship between GALA and BWLG.

     2) A separate vote should be taken about what sort of
conference should be held in 2000 and whether it will be a BWLG
conference that is held with the added support of GALA or whether
it should be a new and different conference that replaces the
venerable Berkeley Women and Language Conference.

     ---------------------------------------------

Alice Freed
Linguistics Department
Montclair State University
Upper Montclair, NJ 07043
freeda at alpha.montclair.edu
(973) 655-7505