to nca or not to nca? part two: on crossing picketers

Music: iLiKETRAiNS: Elegies to Lessons Learnt (2007)

This week I've been publicly mulling over reasons for and against attending my professional organization's annual conference (for those of you who are not academics in my field, I suspect this week's blogging will be something to ignore). I am starting with reasons for avoiding the conference, and the first concerned the poor rhetorical choices of the current leadership. I suggested that Betsy Bach's parting column last December was a symptom of a larger, systemic problem at the national office: they think that the membership are rabble to be "managed." There is more to say here regarding the current leadership, which I will follow with the more pressing issue: labor disputes at the conference hotel.

My second issue with NCA leadership concerned the early registration policy. For a couple of years NCA has been requiring folks to register early---at first four months early, then two---to appear in the program. Their justification was that other academic professional organizations require early registration. The rationale---although at times denied---is to cut down on so-called deadbeat conference attendees: folks who come but don't pay the registration fee. There's a lot to say about this, but for brevity let me just say my problem with early registration is graduate students: they don't get paid much, and for most of them in communication programs around the country, the first paycheck arrives October 1. It's very difficult to pay a $100 when you are struggling to make ends meet for the three months of summer.

I submitted a post to our discipline's listserver, "CRTNET," that outlined my argument against the early-registration policy. It was posted in two days time, however, before my post this message was inserted as an attempt to inoculate readers against my criticism:

Dawn O. Braithwaite, NCA First Vice-President and 2009 Convention Planner and Betsy Wackernagel Bach, NCA President

We are writing to thank NCA members for a successful convention pre-registration period. We received a record-setting number of registrations last week, and the association received much positive feedback from members about the process. We sincerely appreciate your cooperation.

As many of you know, a great deal of thought went into developing this policy. As a reminder, below we have appended the Spectra article that we published describing the reasons for its implementation. When we implemented the policy in 2008, there was an August 6th deadline to pre-register. In response to concerns expressed by several NCA members, the National Office was able to extend the deadline this year from early August to September 17th to do our best to accommodate member needs.

The Executive Committee has scheduled an evaluation of the pre-registration process and policy. If you have any feedback that might help inform that evaluation, please send comments to the NCA Inbox at _______.

Thank you again for your consideration.

Spectra article:

New Registration Policy Announced in Chicago

A new registration policy was announced at the 2007 Chicago convention, and was debated at length at the Legislative Assembly. Beginning with the 2008 convention in San Diego, all designated presenters, panelists, chairs, and respondents must preregister for the conference by August 6, 2008 or be dropped from the both the printed and posted convention program. For multiple-authored papers, a minimum of one author, designated as the presenter, must preregister. Reasons for the policy change include:

---Quality of convention: Members are frustrated when they attend a panel and listed participants do not attend the convention. Respecting the time and financial commitment members make when they attend the convention, NCA is asking members who wish to be listed in the program to commit to attend and present.

---Ethics: Submitting a paper, panel or agreeing to serve as a chair or respondent in February signals that one has committed to attend the conference. With apologies to Johnnie Cochran, "When we submit, we commit!"

And on and on it goes. The problem with this inoculating message is that it is deceptive: it suggests that the policy was deliberated in the Legislative Assembly. It was not. It was a policy that was shoved through by the Executive Council; debate and protest in the Legislative Assembly was actually shut-down---and there was much protest. This is precisely why the policy was finally killed this year (at the end of its "probation" period).

So, coupled by Bach's insensitive parting shot in Spectra, the attempt deceive folks gives me no confidence in the current leadership. I actually had what I thought were productive and respectful conversations in private with the current and outgoing president about the problems with registration policy. When duplicity has been chosen over transparency, however, I just lose faith.

Finally, the third reason to avoid attending NCA this fall is this:

More information (as Bryan tipped!) is at this website. The conference hotel for NCA is one of the picketed hotels. I have not once crossed a picket line to enter a conference hotel---hell, I've never crossed one in my lifetime. Frankly, I don't want to do that this year either. It's possible the picketing could be over by the time the conference arrives, but there's no way to know for sure.

So, in sum, my reasons for not going to NCA this year are as follows. First, incompetent public relation strategies lead me to have no confidence in the current leadership. Second, the leadership chose to be deceptive about a policy. Attending the conference says I'm ok with the leadership---which I'm not. Third, attending the conference may entail crossing a picket line, which I am loath to do.

Other reasons, of course, include those Murphy has mentioned: I have an Obama conference next month; RSA in May; and a pedagogy conference in July. There may be a guest talk in September . . . . Shear exhaustion also plays a factor.

I'll be discussing reasons to attend the conference in the next post.