…I maintain that the board has full control as to what club philosophy they are going to follow

Paul, of course you are correct in that the board has full control of what philosophy the club will follow, but, unfortunately they have been operating under the assumption that a representative democracy is the same thing as a dictatorship. The United States Government, for example, is a true representative democracy, where the officials are elected to “represent” the interests of their constituents. If they don’t do this, they’re history, and because the primary goal of any politician is to stay in office and/or ascend to ever-higher levels, they generally do their best in this respect. Their best is done by constantly gauging the climate among their constituencies, using polls, etc. to do so.

The current board, or at lease the majority thereof, was clearly not interested in the climate within the chipping community which, I will again contend, could have been accurately gauged by simply reading The Chip Board. Whether this disinterest was out of arrogance or ignorance is still a mystery to most of us, but clearly this is why a good portion of the readers here feel betrayed by the board’s actions.

I find it interesting that Paul Garner, an outsider ignorant of the metamorphosis of our slab-free movement but obviously an avid hobbyist himself, naturally assumed that either a club-wide referendum had taken place or that the entire membership was debating the issue in a public forum, not realizing that the "List" has always been a grass-roots instrument that only been available to the readers of The Chip Board and has been signed by a HUGE portion of its readership. This outsider made the leap that the debate about this issue was important enough that it should be in the scope of the Club's operations, which is more than our own board has done to this day.

The slabbing issue is paramount to many but not to all as was apparent by the last election.

The slabbing issue will never be paramount to all for many reasons, but let’s not lose sight of the fact that the last election took place prior to the 2001 convention when most of the non-readers of The Chip Board got their first exposure to the slab-free movement. I feel that anyone who is not firmly behind this movement has little chance to get elected this time around. I also doubt that anyone who stands up and says that he (or she) is against slabbing but doesn’t see any need to do anything about it stands much of a shot either.

This is why we should press for all candidates to be crystal clear regarding their positions on important issues.