To my esteemed fellow participants on the Contest Reflector:
(I write this from the standpoint of one with considerable experience in
serving on boards of membership organizations, and not necessarily involving
amateur radio...)
It's a bad idea to expect that people you elect to boards will follow your
agenda, or even their own. In fact, it's a bad idea if they run with any
agenda at all. The truth is, in almost any organization, 10 minutes after
the person you support (or his opponent) gets elected, he is going to know
far, far more about the organization than you do. Now, you can and should
express your opinion, but you should have elected the person because you
trust him to exercise his JUDGEMENT independently, and you should vote for
someone else when and if you lose that trust. (However, with the exception
of financial chicanery or irresponsibility, there is rarely any one issue
that reasonably should make or break that trust.)
In this particular case, I disagree with the Board's action as much as
anyone on this reflector. I am going to convey my opinion to my director
(N2FF), who was elected and re-elected (twice) with my vocal and significant
support, but I fully realize and accept that after 6 years on the Board he
knows far, far, far more about the workings of ARRL than I do, and, even
though I think he and my other friends on the Board reached the wrong
conclusion about contest line scores (and Section News, for that matter), I
elected him to use his own judgement, which I think he's done very
effectively for six years, and I'm going to support him just as intensively
next year for re-election as I did the last 2 times.
Why not make our next project one to change the "Top Ten" boxes to "Top
Fifty" boxes, now that all this space has been released due to removing the
line scores?
Rich K2WR
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