Minutes of ASFAR General Meeting of Sunday, September 28, 2003

Location: IRC server irc.webchat.org, channel #asfar
Time: 7:00 pm eastern time

Members Present:Tevi A., Aaron B.,Woty F., "imnotristan", Andrew J., Jacob K., Alex K-P, James L.,Justin M., Kevin M., Ben P-S, Stan S., David S-J., Oliver T., Rachael V., John W., Susan W.

Visitors Present: Becky, Naomi, "rastajames", "starjustice17"

The meeting was called to order at 7:13 pm eastern time.

Minutes of the annual meeting of 2002, found at <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/asfar-announce/message/151>, were approved 6-0.

Reports of Officers

The President, David Schneider-Joseph, reported that he had represented ASFAR at the International Democratic Education Committee (IDEC) conference, and was working on arranging a TV appearance to debate lowering the voting age.  He reported that membership was up and expressed optimism about next year's planned voting age protests.

TheVice-President, Oliver Traldi, was not present when reports were given, but arrived later to report that he was pleased with the recent activity of the demonstration committee.  He did not plan to serve as Vice-President in the coming year, but would volunteer to fill any vacancy or role that needed filling.

The Secretary, Susan Wishnetsky, reported that the member database improvements by the webmaster had made the process of adding new members much easier.  Some data was lost for a few recently-joined members; the Secretary had contacted them to try to fill in the missing information, but with little success.  The Secretary further reported that she had improved the ASFAR buttons, added two fields to her own database of members,created four t-shirt designs, and was caught up on membership and mailing.

The Treasurer, David Schneider-Joseph, reported a PayPal account balance of $152.61, a bank balance of $619.35, and profits of $45.55 from Amazon.com book sales.  In 2003, ASFAR paid $12.95 per month for yrfire.com hosting, and had contributed $250 for the President's attendance at the IDEC conference.

The Webmaster, David Schneider-Joseph, reported an average of 25,000 pageviews per month for asfar.org in 2003.  He planned to continue to work to improve the member database.

Reports of Committees:

For the Zine Committee, Susan Wishnetsky reported that due to a personal matter, she had skipped one issue, combining the May/June and July/August issues, but this issue and the following one were 12-pages each, keeping the quantity fairly stable.  She proposed moving to quarterly publication, rather than bimonthly, with 2004; there was general informal approval.

Candidates for Board of Directors:

The slate began to be formed by official nominations, which were seconded individually.  Then the meeting was interrupted by visitors who disregarded the agenda and disrupted the business at hand.  After the meeting reconvened in a new chat room, the process became a more streamlined one in which a list of those willing to run was compiled.  David S-J's motion for the final slate of candidates, consisting of Tevi Abrams, Winston Featherly-Bean, Andrew Jennings, Jacob Kafka, Kevin McCormack, David Schneider-Joseph, Oliver Traldi, and Susan Wishnetsky, was seconded and approved 7-0 with 1 abstention.  Later in the meeting, Susan W moved to add James Landau (who had just arrived and agreed to be added); the motion was seconded and passed 6-0.

Ballot Proposals:

Susan W moved to place on the ballot a proposal to add a section 30 to ASFAR's bylaws, to read "Any officer who is granted access to ASFAR's membership information or other confidential data in the course of his or her duties is prohibited from disclosing that data to anyone not authorized to receive it."  The motion was seconded and passed 8-0.

After some discussion of the "discrimination in business" section of ASFAR's Declaration of Principles, currently reading "Businesses should not refuse to hire or serve people simply because of their age," several members expressed the desire to return to the former version which called for age discrimination to be subject to the same types of laws that prohibit discrimination by race or gender.  Tevi A moved to place a proposal on the ballot to revert to the former language; the motion was seconded and passed 4-0 with 3 abstentions.  Woty F then proposed a different version of the proposal, which was also seconded and passed to be placed on the ballot 6-0 with 1 abstention.  After discussion about what would happen if both motions passed, David S-J moved to place on the ballot the question of whether the section should be changed, followed by a choice of the two new versions (similar to the ballot question in the recall election of California Governor Gray Davis).  The motion was seconded and passed 6-0.

David S-J moved to add a proposal to delete section 6.3, "Until the rights of young people equal those of adults, they should not be subjected to adult punishments, such as the death penalty," from ASFAR's Declaration of Principles.  The motion was seconded and passed 4-0 with 2 abstentions.

There was discussion of possible changes regarding emancipation, the right to travel, nudity and pornography, and the spirit of the law.  David S-J moved to add to the ballot a proposal to move section 3.5, "The right to leave the country or travel between states should not be denied on the basis of age, and should not require parental permission," to section 10, but the motion was not seconded and was withdrawn.

David S-J moved to approve the entire ballot, which was posted at <http://www.asfar.org/ballot2004.html>.  The motion was seconded and passed 8-0.

The meeting was adjourned at around 9:58 pm central time.

Respectfully submitted,

Susan Wishnetsky
ASFAR Secretary