Several readers have asked row2k to do a review of the events and issues surrounding the adjournment of the USRowing Annual Meeting at the convention last week in Towson; here is a brief attempt to do so. Many of the issues involved are longstanding and complex, but here is my best attempt at a snapshot of where the situation stands at the present moment.
There are four amendments up for a vote by the organizational membership of USRowing; three of them are fairly critical in nature but mostly related to the governance structure of the organization; the fourth is an amendment written by Steve Tucker and proposed by Mariner Point Scullers that would require, in part, that "e) All crews of five or fewer persons representing the United States at the Olympic Games, Pan American Games, or FISA Senior World Championship shall be selected through trials..." See Text of Proposed Amendments here.
Added 12/16: Letter from the President Regarding Amendment #4
However, the amendments never came to a vote due to the lack of a quorum. Here is a very quick version of events:
1) Prior to the meeting (apparently considerably earlier), it was discovered that USRowing's definition of a quorum did not conform to Pennsylvania law, where USRowing is incorporated (dating back to the USRA's days on Boathouse Row). Pennsylvania law requires that one-half the membership plus one is required for valid vote; since a quorum of this size was an extremely, even non-existent occurrence, USRowing's bylaws were changed some time ago to require that a minimum of 50 clubs vote. The great expansion of the membership, likely due in large part to insurance issues, has complicated this effort, as the number of member organizations stands at over 1100.
2) Clarification 12/15: Note that the problem is not the bylaw itself, it's that the bylaw was never adopted by a vote of the membership as required by PA law. The association can define a quorum to be whatever they want, but that definition has to be adopted by the membership.
3) In the absence of a quorum, Pennsylvania law prescribes the following: First, those present may adjourn the meeting to a later time. If at that second meeting there is still no quorum, those present may adjourn to a third meeting, providing the membership has been given 10 days notice of such meeting. At the third meeting, those members who attend may conduct business, even though they do not constitute a statutory quorum.
Thus, the Board adjourned and reconvened after five minutes in Towson to fulfill the requirement for a second meeting, and set the reconvened third "Annual Meeting" to take place on December 17 at an airport hotel in Chicago. All previously and newly submitted ballots and absentee ballots will be valid and counted at that time.
Additionally, voting is still possible; you may find details and instructions here. Also, USRowing's outline of events can be found here.
The timing of the announcement of the quorum issue raised a red flag for several supporters of the amendment, who wondered if legal maneuvering and brinksmanship was involved. In an interview this week, USRowing president Don Langford conceded that Amendment 4 in part triggered the quorum review, but not as an attempt at legal brinkmanship.
"It was not the content of the amendment, but the scrutiny we knew it would bring," Langford said. "We felt that either way (the results went) we would get challenged, so we said we better try to do this right. Almost no matter how it went we get sued."
USRowing executive director Glenn Merry concurred. "It would have opened up USRowing to huge litigation problems," he said. "The timing makes us look silly, and I thought we were making some headway with our reputation among the athletes. This is egg on our face, I know, and puts us in an awkward position, but it really wasn't the gameplaying some people have made it out to be."
Tucker was resigned to the adjournment, but wondered about the lack of information on the quorum issue, and the timing of the announcement; Tucker was notified the day before the convention. "It seems like you would tell the public, and tell the people submitting amendments, about a problem like this."
At the time of the adjournment, no board member knew the results of the absentee ballots, and will not know until Saturday, Langford said.
Addition 12/15: A related issue stems from the fact that the Board has conducted business on the erroneous concept of a forum for 12 years, as I understand it, which affects many of the operating assumptions of the Board and staff. Merry said that the association will be addressing the problem immediately. "We're now in the position that we need to review all of our documents," he said. "We are going to work to get this together and put it to a vote for the membership to approve at some point, sooner rather than later."
The amendment itself is straightforward in its intent; to select the fours and quads by open trials. The positions and ideas of the folks on the various sides of the issue - and the issue is arguably faceted and not singular in nature, rife with compromises and accommodations - this is a debate that has been raging for the past 40 years and more, and is not something we can address here at length; I will try to outline some illustrative examples below. The intent of this dispatch is to figure out the why and what for of the adjournment, and to address some of the immediate issues it presents. (Hopefully I can take a long look at the trials vs. camps issue in the future.)
Since the amendment became public, some observers have noted that certain problems may come about precisely because it is a constitutional amendment, and not a debate, recommendation, or decision by or to a selection committee (which in USRowing's case is the High Performance Committee, or HPC). The Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act specifically requires that selection procedures be determined by a group that includes not less than 20% athletes - "athletes" being defined in this case as those who have competed on the national team some time in the last 10 years. It is unlikely that either the general membership or the organizational membership of USRowing fulfills this requirement; as a result, selection procedures that are determined by a membership vote may not meet the requirements of the Ted Stevens Act.
Tucker suggested in a phone conversation this week that USOC bylaws may allow the possibility of weighted or proportional voting, according to the number of national team athletes in each club. It is not clear at this writing if this might apply here. HPC chair Jay Feenan said he has spoken to the USOC informally on the issue. "They said 'Wait a minute, you can't have the general membership voting on particulars of selection,'" Feenan said.
The implications of the Ted Stevens Act still remain unclear, but due to the quorum issues, many people involved apparently felt that, if the amendment passed, it would not be allowed to stand, either by USOC or legal stricture, or by the filing of a lawsuit from within the membership, on either side of the issue. Whatever the result of the final vote on Saturday, the quorum issue, at least, will have been addressed, so that, ironically some would say, the verdict of all of the amendments probably have more legs than they would have without the adjournments.
Tucker said his goal with the amendment was to bring the trials issue to a vote of some kind. "I hoped to get the process out of the mode of everyone just complaining to each other, instead of addressing the issue through some official channel," he said.
Despite the problems with a constitutional amendment, USRowing executive director Glenn Merry supported Tucker's approach, and his right to address the board, even if he disagrees with the position the amendment takes. "There is a group that disagrees with the selection process, there are others who don't, and I'm not sure that the former group is in the majority. But Steve really is going about it in the right way," Merry said. "He disagrees with parts of the system, and he is trying to address those issues directly."
The issues raised by the "trials vs. camp" arguments are legion, ranging from the allocation and even availability of funding, to perceived losses and gains in athlete flexibility on either side of the equation, to more results-driven arguments such as the hope for an immediate correction to recent lesser results in four-person boats vs. a plea for time to give the current system, in place since 2001, another quadrennial to produce results beyond the eights, which did end long medal droughts in Athens. Additionally, the anecdotal evidence to support one approach or the other probably results in a stalemate, or perhaps more appropriately a quagmire.
An example from the more complex quadrants of the argument:
And one of a far less complex nature:
Open-minded folks probably see all or most of the above as reasonable, valid and important considerations; it is worth noting that these are not "what-if" scenarios on either side, but originate in actual real-life precedents. Additionally and importantly, underlying the whole issue is funding allocation; what is and isn't available, whether and how USOC funding will atrophy or shift under a different system than currently in place, and who gets what, when, and how much.
Up or down, it is not clear what will happen to the amendment after the vote. It will probably have to withstand scrutiny from the USOC as well as from any interested parties who disagree with the amendment. Langford's assessment may prevail; this may be a "sued if you do, sued if you don't" scenario.
All of these issues notwithstanding, the amendment goes to a vote this Saturday.
Updated 12/16