Proceedings And Addresses
January, 2006 (Volume 79, Issue 3)

Draft Minutes of the 2005 Pacific Division Executive Committee Meetings

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Present: Brink, Lopes, Normore, Silvers, Smith
CALL TO ORDER: In the absence of Executive Committee Chair Goering, Secretary-Treasurer Silvers called the meeting to order at 5:00 p.m. She reported that Goering and her new baby daughter were very well but not yet ready to travel.
APPROVAL OF AGENDA: The Executive Committee decided to shorten the meeting and conduct only the most pressing business so as to enable Normore and Silvers to go to another site to attend a meeting on the hotel labor situation.
The Executive Committee agreed to focus on the announced intention of a Pacific Division affiliate to challenge elections held at the following day’s Business Meeting. To have time to discuss this matter, standard business such as the assessment and selection of mini-conference proposals*, the appointment of a nominating committee**, and the appointment of a new program chair and new program committee members*** would have to be completed over email during the next few weeks.
APPROVAL OF MINUTES: The Minutes of March 24 and August 7, 2004, were approved.
PROCESS FOR ELECTING PACIFIC DIVISION OFFICERS: Silvers reported on her discussion with the APA attorney about the prospective challenge to the elections. The challenge was included in a request to relocate the business meeting to comply with a labor union call not to enter the hotel. In response to this request (and in response to other members, who objected to moving the business meeting to a different hotel), the Executive Committee had decided to consult the APA attorney.
The attorney advised against changing the announced location of the business meeting. The challenge had been raised very recently. But moving the meeting required prior written notice sent by mail to members in sufficient time for them to alter their plans unless entering the hotel to attend the Business Meeting placed members in physical danger.
If the probability of danger could be established, there would be a ground to override the objections of those who did not want to move the meeting. Silvers reported that she called the Mayor’s Office and the police to determine whether a probability of danger could be documented. But these calls produced only denials of danger. Consistent with the information from these sources, members in fact had been entering the hotel freely and with no danger. The union was not on strike, and union members were at work in the hotel.
The attorney advised that members who did not wish to enter the hotel in support of the union’s call were making personal decisions with no claim on the Association. The attorney advised that, in contrast, members who wished to participate in the business meeting at the time and place announced in the printed program had a sustainable claim on doing so. The attorney noted that members wishing to engage in an economic boycott to support the union could use the meeting rooms (for which the hotel received no revenue), but stay at other hotels and eat and drink elsewhere.
Continuing her report, Silvers explained that the attorney advised the Executive Committee to distinguish between substantive business that had to be conducted at the Business Meeting and substantive business that did not. Only substantive business that could not be postponed should be conducted.
Section 3.4 of the Pacific Division by-laws explicitly requires holding the elections at the annual Business Meeting, so elections had to be conducted.
The Executive Committee then explored the options. On the one hand, the Executive Committee had an obligation to members who desired that the division’s business proceed as usual to comply with the by-laws. On the other hand, the Executive Committee did not want any member to be disenfranchised, even voluntarily. After lengthy discussion, the Executive Committee agreed to comply with the by-laws as required, but then suspend the election results and consult with the division’s voting affiliates by mail to decide the status of the candidates.
As for other substantive business, the Executive Committee decided to follow attorney’s advice and postpone substantive business not required by the by-laws to the 2006 business meeting. Doing so would avoid any members objecting that they had not been able to participate in deliberation on substantive decisions.
BUSINESS MEETING AGENDA: The Executive Committee approved the agenda for the following day’s business meeting. The matter of proposed revisions to the APA constitution and by-laws, defeated by Pacific Division voting affiliates in a 2004 mail ballot, remained on the agenda because the Executive Committee previously had promised that this item would come up. The Executive Committee decided to urge that any motions made be procedural rather than substantive, but of course the body could decide to consider substantive proposals if it wished to do so.
SECRETARY-TREASURER’S REPORT: The Secretary-Treasurer reported on the financial state of the division. Despite the difficulties created by the hotel labor dispute, it seemed as if the 2005 meeting would be a success. The program organized by Dom Lopes and his program committee was very exciting and largely remained in place.
About ten percent of the program committee’s program had been moved to other sites. She and Lopes had worked with the organizers of the alternative sites to facilitate moving those program participants who wished to do so. Sometimes, some participants in a session wanted to move and others in the same session did not, requiring various kinds of rearrangements to accommodate different preferences.
The time expended in this work had prevented some of the usual cost-saving practices from being put in place, however. Consequently, she could not predict whether the division’s 2004-05 operating expenses would push operations into the red. Further, there still were problems in getting full information about the division’s assets and expenditures from the APA National Office, even though some mis-assignments of 2003/04 income and expenditures to the wrong categories had been corrected.****
Silvers then pointed out that the labor situation had imposed a great deal of extra work on the 2005 program chair. Ordinarily, the program chair’s work was substantially completed by November, but Lopes had worked steadily through the following months up to the meeting. In view of the extraordinary circumstances, the Executive Committee voted to double the usual $500 honorarium given to the program chair. The Executive Committee also decided that the purchase of a .20 release time per semester for the secretary-treasurer, equivalent to eight hours of APA work per week for ten months of the year, was unrealistic, given the amount of work expended in 2004/05 on the labor situation and on implementing the APA national standardization policy. The Executive Committee therefore decided to provide for compensatory time equivalent to 16 hours per week.
Silvers also reported that she had implemented the Executive Committee’s earlier decision to contribute $500 in memory of former Board Chair Phil Quinn by encumbering this amount pending the establishment of a memorial fund.
AUTOMATION PROJECT: The Executive Committee examined a proposal to commission Dom Lopes to automate the program development process and to maintain the automation system. Lopes had designed a system for his work as 2005 program chair, and even in its rudimentary form the system had saved time for the program chair and program committee members. This project would save an enormous amount of time and grief for future program chairs and committees, and would reduce the time required to develop the program. The Executive Committee agreed to provide the resources Lopes projected to be needed for the project.
SUPPORT FOR SANTA ROSA JUNIOR COLLEGE PHILOSOPHERS: Silvers circulated a request for help from Joel Rudinow, chair of philosophy at Santa Rosa Junior College. A group of students at SRJC had nailed political accusations to some professors’ doors, and philosophy faculty there were seeking protection against intimidation. The Executive Committee requested Silvers to work with the APA Committee on Defense of Professional Rights to address this matter.*****
REPORT OF THE PROGRAM CHAIR: To save time, Dom Lopes made a written report (Attached as Appendix I).
2007 MEETING SITE: Silvers reported that she had received a proposal from the St. Francis for the 2007 and 2009 meetings, but had reminded the hotel sales manager that the Executive Committee would not enter into any new contract with the St. Francis as long as the labor situation was unsettled.****** Divisional policy decreed that the 2007 meeting be held in San Francisco, but to do so while avoiding the boycotted hotels most likely would mean using a hotel that provided less meeting space, and therefore curtailing the number of people who could be on the meeting’s program. Silvers thought the membership should be asked for preferences about the hard choices needing to be made in regard to the 2007 meeting site.
DEWEY FOUNDATION PROPOSAL: Acting Board Chair Karen Hanson had conveyed a proposal from the Dewey Foundation to the Executive Committee. The Dewey Foundation was interested in supporting a special lecture series at the divisional meetings. Executive Committee members are positive about this proposal and agree in principle, but await more details from the Dewey Foundation.
ADJOURNMENT: The meeting was adjourned at 5:40 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Anita Silvers
Secretary-Treasurer

*Subsequently, the Executive Committee approved mini-conferences on “Secrecy” and “Scientific Images” to be held in conjunction with the 2006 Pacific Division meeting and mini-conferences on “Models of God” and “Philosophy and Wine” to be held in conjunction with the 2007 Pacific Division meeting.
**Subsequently, Keith Lehrer (chair), Rebecca Copenhaver, and Cindy Stark were appointed to the Nominating Committee.
***Subsequently, Fred Schueler was appointed program chair for the 2007 meeting and Mark Wrathall as program chair for the 2008 meeting. Sandy Askland, Kelly Becker, Joseph Campbell, Branden Fitleson, Pat Hanna, Philip Nickel, and Fred Schueler were added to the 2006 program committee.
****The 2004/05 audit report identified $19,438 that had been reported in previous years as assets to the divisions but never collected from exhibiters and advertisers.
*****Silvers contacted Debra Nails, Chair of the APA Committee on Defense of Professional Rights, about this case. Nails explained that such incidents appear to be increasing across the country. After investigation, both the APA Committee on Defense of Professional Rights and the Pacific Division Executive Committee wrote to the SRJC administration and trustees. And the APA Committee posted information on the APA website to assist philosophers who may become targets in such incidents.
****** In fall 2005 the union lifted the boycott against the St. Francis, but left the boycott against other San Francisco hotels in place.
Appendix I: Report of the 2005 Program Chair
The 2005 Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division is being held in San Francisco from March 23 to 27. The portion of the meeting organized by the Program Committee comprises 122 colloquium papers and 8 symposium papers. These were selected from a total of 429 submitted papers (for an acceptance rate of 30%) through a process of blind refereeing by a committee numbering 27 philosophers, assisted by 6 consultants. Papers were submitted and accepted in diverse sub-fields of philosophy. In addition, the meeting features 27 invited symposia, 4 invited papers, and 23 author-meets-critics sessions organized by 22 members of the Program Committee and two members of the Division’s Executive Committee.
Supplementing the portion of the program organized by the Committee are the Carus Lectures delivered by Tyler Burge, the Presidential Address of Hubert Dreyfus, mini-conferences on the emotions and Rufus of Cornwall, the sub-meeting of the Association for Symbolic Logic, and sessions sponsored by APA committees and affiliated groups. In many cases, members of the Program Committee worked with organizers of these sessions to ensure a degree of consilience.
This year three experiments were made to ease the work of the Committee. First, all submitted papers were scanned on a bulk scanner and saved in PDF format, so that they could be emailed to readers and also potential commentators. In addition to achieving a savings in postage, this cut the time needed for refereeing papers and securing commentators by many days, especially in cases where it emerged that a member of the Committee was unable to referee a paper. Second, taking advantage of the availability of the papers in electronic form, preprints of accepted papers were made available for three months prior to the meeting on the meeting’s web site, making it possible for participants to read papers before attending sessions. Finally, an automated web-based system was used to gather data on volunteers for chair and commenting duties and to present them in a searchable, organized format to Committee members. Several volunteers and Committee members commented on how useful they found this system. In all three cases, however, refinements are recommended for the future.
I would like to personally thank many individuals for their help this year and I recommend that the Executive Committee concur in expressing gratitude to the members of the 2005 Program Committee; to Professors Paul Bartha, Leslie Francis, Shaughan Levine, Steven Savitt, Ori Simchen, and Chris Stephens for refereeing papers; to UBC students Mr. Michael Falgoust and Ms Michelle Yau for scanning submitted papers; to the UBC Philosophy Department for the use of its web server; to Professors Christina Bellon, David Kim, Jeffrey Paris, and Ronald Sundstrom for organizing the transfer of some sessions to alternate sites; and to Professor Anita Silvers, for supererogatory efforts on multiple fronts.
Respectfully Submitted,
Dominic McIver Lopes