Minutes of Board Meeting of October 13, 1999

Location:  IRC server irc.chatnet.org, channel #asfar
Time:  7:30 P.M. CST

Board Members Present: Eric Anderson, Justin Mallone, Susan Wishnetsky

Members Present: Al B., Matthew H., Alex K.P.

Visitors Present: None

Reports of Officers:

The President, Eric Anderson, reported that he had written and submitted his
column for the 'zine.

The Secretary, Susan Wishnetsky, reported that, as of just before the
meeting, ASFAR had 223 members, many of whom were interested in forming
chapters.  She had sent chapter information to some, and planned to submit a
letter with chapter information to the board for official approval.

Reports of committees

For the 'zine committee, Justin Mallone reported that all of the text
submitted had been formatted for publication, except for some stray
characters that needed to be removed.  A "cover page" still needed to be
produced to provide an index of issues, along with the addition of any
articles not yet submitted.  Susan Wishnetsky reported that she had two
articles in the works, and was making progress on a list of libraries to
notify about the 'zine.  A quick method of sending e-mail messages to all of
these libraries at once was discussed.

Old Business

Eric Anderson presented a motion to approve the minutes of the meeting of
September 29.  The motion carried.

After some discussion and revision of wording of ASFAR's position paper on
education, a motion was made to approve the position paper as modified and
place it on the web site.  The motion carried.

The production of pens as promotional items was discussed.  The source of the
quote by Robert Heinlein which the board had wanted to include on the pens
had still not been found.  The possibility of producing a smaller quantity of
pens was raised and rejected, and it was decided without a vote to postpone
production and continue to search for the origin of the quotation, to
determine whether use of the quote might violate copyright law.  Susan
Wishnetsky had created an ASFAR button as well, but was unable to forward the
design to the board during the meeting.

New Business

Justin Mallone reported that the offices of President, Vice President,
Secretary and Treasurer for the New York City chapter had been filled by
members of ASFAR, and that the chapter bylaws had been submitted to the
entire board.  A motion was made to approve the New York City chapter bylaws.
The motion carried.  A motion was made to charter the New York City chapter
of ASFAR.  The motion carried.

The ballot was discussed.  A motion was made to approve the new ballot, with
the inclusion of a section number and heading for the proposed new section in
ASFAR's Declaration of Principles (4. Corporal Punishment), and to authorize
the secretary to issue the ballot, as revised, following the publication of
the results of the current ballot.  The motion carried.

Eric Anderson reported on a message he had received from a college textbook
company, Classbook.com, proposing that ASFAR place a link to their site on
ASFAR's site, and offering to pay ASFAR 5% of the amount received from any
customer linking to them from our site.  After some discussion of the
placement and wording of the link, a motion was made to approve this link
provided the appearance and wording could be left up to ASFAR's discretion.
The motion carried.

Other Business

Susan Wishnetsky reported on the results of her testing of the "child" and
"young teen" parental control settings on AOL, which almost completely
prevent these AOL customers from viewing ASFAR's web site or searching the
web for youth rights related topics.  Alex K.P. attempted this same test
during the meeting and reported that other youth rights organizations were
also blocked to people using AOL with these settings.  After some discussion
of the best way to proceed, Eric Anderson said that he would write to AOL to
see if they would reconsider their policy.

The meeting adjourned at 10:18 pm central time.

Respectfully submitted,

Susan Wishnetsky
ASFAR Secretary

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