roddy@topaz.decus.org (04/24/91)
The following letter was submitted to the Editor of Digital News and was
printed in a shortened form in their April 15 edition. Since I feel that
this information needs to be diseminated as widely as possible I am
submitting it to several electronic forums.
I am not currently on INTERNET, therefore please send replies to:
RODDY@DCSA1.DECUS.ORG
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To the Editor:
In your March 18th article, "Too much DEC in DECUS?" by Joe Panepinto, I
couldn't help being struck by the comments of DECUS Board of Directors
President, Bill Brindley's remarks. I feel that these remarks are a classic
case of speaking the truth in the strictest sense but leaving an absolutely
false impression to readers that are who are not very familiar with the
events going on within DECUS.
According to the article Bill Brindley is quoted as saying that there
are only a few people out of the entire membership of approximately 50,000
that are against the DECUS reorganization. I feel that this statement will
leave the impression in many people's minds that most of the rest of the
50,000 members are behind the reorganization. NOT TRUE. To my knowledge the
only documentation as to who backs, and who is against, the reorganization is
on the computer system that handles the electronic mail and NOTES for DECUS
leadership. From my reading of this system I have only seen a few people who
are for the reorganization. Furthermore if I were to make an estimate of the
relative sizes of these two groups I would say that the number of people
against the reorganization is somewhat larger than those for. I would also
strongly suspect that until articles started appearing in publications, such
as "Digital News", discussing this issue there were probably close to 49,000
DECUS members had little idea of the possible changes within DECUS. In other
words, the large majority of DECUS members that are not part of DECUS
Leadership, the DECUS customer base, probably have little knowledge of the
impacts of this possible reorganization and should not be construed by any of
your readers as being on one side of this issue or the other.
Furthermore, Bill Brindley stated that the only hope of the people
against the reorganization, "... is to whip up a lot of emotions and hype
against the board." I would guess that from Bill's perspective this is a
true statement but from almost all of the people that I have been in contact
with the strongest emotions are the convictions that the possible
reorganization would be harmful to the "DECUS Culture;" would have a negative
impact on the time commitment of the middle level DECUS Leadership; would
give almost total control of DECUS to as few as four DECUS Board of
Directors; and, would probably make it very easy for DEC to make DECUS little
more than another marketing tool. I feel that the people that are concerned
about a reorganization have a real reason to be. I think that every one of
the concerns mentioned above are true.
In the next paragraph of your article there is another statement that
may be true but leaves a false impression with any readers not already
knowledgeable about "DECUS politics." Yes, there was an E-mail message put
out to all of DECUS leadership requesting comment on the proposed
reorganization; yes; it only had 144 responses; and, yes; there were 32
against the reorganization; but this left out some very important aspects
that effected these numbers. What were they? First, when the task force was
publicly announced at the Las Vegas Symposia it was publicly stated that the
task force would be collecting input until about May of 1991. Then the week
after Symposia, about December 17th or 18th, the E-mail message went out
stating that input would only be accepted until December 31, 1990. Think
about this! The DECUS Leadership comes home from a week long effort of
putting on a Symposia thinking that they have about 5 months to give input to
the task force. They come home with barely a week left to prepare for
Christmas. They come home knowing that they have to catch up with all of
their office work. They come home knowing they have only a few days to finish
all of their submissions for all of the seminars and sessions to be given in
May in Atlanta. AND, they come home to find out that the time frame they
were given for their input on the possible reorganization has been reduced
from 5 months to 2 weeks. It doesn't take the intellect of a nuclear
physicist to see why so few people responded to the task force. Many people
within DECUS leadership, and some within Digital, requested that this time
frame be extended. These requests were ignored! Some people even stated
that if the time frame was shortened so severely then it would be a waste of
time commenting because they felt that the decision had already been made.
It might be of some interest to your readers to know that when the task force
report finally came out in support of the reorganization there was only a
side comment about a minority opinion. When the task force was only made up
of 3 people I had to wonder how 1/3 of a task force can be considered in such
a way. In addition, to my knowledge, the specifics of this minority opinion
were never distributed to the Leadership.
One of the most important recommendations made in the ADL report, the
one that suggested the reorganization, was the necessity to have an "informed
electorate." Several people have pointed this out and suggested that some
effort be expended to define who would/could be part of the electorate, and
to then inform/educate this electorate before attempting a reorganization.
These suggestions have fallen by the way-side. Why? Is it because the Board
of Directors suspect that if they send something out to the "masses" saying,
"This is a good thing for you; vote for it" they will? (Note: It is my
understanding that the Board is allowing the opposition a statement of only
400 words to completely make their case. Considering the time, money, and
effort that went into devising this reorganization I question the fairness of
a statement limited to only 400 words.)
I have listened to 2 complete ADL presentations, and the ensuing
question and answer period, and I have listened to part of a third. In every
one of these presentations ADL presented some of their findings then went
directly to their recommendations without stating what the process was that
lead them to make the recommendations. On repeated direct questioning, all 3
times, ADL would not, could not, or were not allowed to, answer questions
about the process on how they reached their conclusions. When asked why they
would not answer these questions the best answer I ever heard was they were
only requested to make one recommendation, not a range of recommendations.
Again I don't know one person that felt that that answer was a satisfactory
description for making the jump from collected data to a full blown
recommendation for the reorganization of DECUS.
When I first heard about the ADL work I thought that this was a good
chance to make DECUS even better than it was already. When I first read the
ADL report and found it to be totally lacking in the descriptive prove
necessary to explain the "whys" of their recommendations I started to be a
little concerned. When I discovered that ADL would not explain this process
even on direct questioning I became worried. When I saw, what appeared to
me, as the Board making a headlong rush toward the reorganization and a
stonewalling of the opposition I became alarmed.
I think that everyone who is a member of DECUS should make a real effort
to understand the issues before DECUS and its volunteer leaders before voting
to change its structure. As is obvious from this letter I am not in favor of
reorganizing DECUS but I feel very strongly that before anyone votes for, or
against, these changes they should talk to as many people as they can and
find out as much information as they can about all of the things surrounding
this issue. Who is going to be impacted? What is going to be impacted?
Whatever you do be knowledgeable before you vote.
Sincerely,
Robert F. Roddy