[Linganth] Message from Leanne Hinton

[P. Kerim Friedman]

Message from Leanne Hinton:

Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2004 8:32 PM

Dear SLA folks and friends,

As you all no doubt know now, the decision for the AAA to go to Atlanta
in December is final. I plan to go to Atlanta, and we will have our
executive committee meeting, our business meeting and reception there,
as well as as many sessions as can keep themselves together.

I really want to encourage all SLA members who were planning to come to
the AAA to attend the meetings in Atlanta if at all possible, though I
certainly understand that it won't be possible for many of you. A
number of people have suggested that we hold our SLA sessions
separately from the AAA at the original time, here in Berkeley; but
remember that there are many students who are going to the AAA for
job-hunting purposes, and who therefore must present their papers at
the official meetings where they can be heard and interviewed by the
departments who are considering hiring them. Besides, irritated though
we might be by all this disruption, I hope we will support the AAA
executive committee, who are trying as hard as possible to do the right
thing by everyone.

The session I'm chairing, on New Writing Systems, is decimated (only 1
out of 7 presenters will definitely attend in Atlanta, and another
might send his paper to be read by someone else). If we were to hold
that session in Berkeley, only 2 would be likely to attend; so I think
we will just hold it in Atlanta, have the one or two formal
presentations that are able to be made, and have a nice long informal
discussion period -- and apply for another session on new writing
systems next year along with some additional participants joining the
ones who couldn't come this time.

However, there are some sections and some symposia who have already
made the decision to meet in the Bay Area, and I would be willing to
help any of those that are from SLA or otherwise language-related to
gather here at Berkeley. It would not be possible to keep the sessions
at their original times the whole week through; but I have tentatively
reserved the Dwinelle Hall conference room for the times I could get it
for, which are: Friday Nov 19 1-9 pm, and Sunday Nov 21st 8am-12pm; and
we expect to have a lecture hall Saturday Nov 20. We might also be able
to coordinate with some of the other sections that will meet at
Berkeley to make a reasonably rich set of offerings.

But we'll need to do some negotiating in order to make having sessions
here a workable enterprise. I was able to get the conference rooms for
free, but equipment has to be rented, and if we want a friendly
atmosphere with coffee and tea, we would need catering. Thus we'd have
to charge a registration fee in order to pay for these things.
(Depending on the number of people and the amount of equipment needed,
registration would probably be somewhere between $20-$50.) And we don't
accept credit cards. And I have to hope I can get student volunteers to
handle registration. There is one other problem: Saturday the 20th is
the "Big Game" between Berkeley and Stanford. This means hotels will be
packed.

So, session chairs, if your session simply won't go to Atlanta and
wants to meet here despite all this discouragement, let me know right
away. Also, if you don't plan to give a paper but would like to attend
the sessions here, let me know that too. I have another problem, which
is that I am leaving town Nov 4-11 and will probably not have email
access. Therefore, anything that is going to be coordinated here must
be coordinated by Nov 3; and then we can do final details starting the
12th, assuming there is enough interest to do it at all.

Best of luck to us all. The beautiful eclipse of the moon last night
reminded me that the problems we humans create for ourselves are really
pretty small.

Leanne Hinton
President, SLA
--
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
  Prof. Leanne Hinton
  Chair, Dept. of Linguistics
  1203 Dwinelle Hall
  University of California
  Berkeley, CA 94720-2650

  email: hinton at socrates.berkeley.edu
  fax: (510) 643-5688
  phone: (510) 643-7621