The Council of the American Laryngological Association has proposed two changes in the bylaws that will be presented to our eligible voting membership.
The first change would be to convert the language of the bylaws to include gender neutral pronouns. This would be accomplished by replacing iterations of ‘he/she’ to ‘they’ with a goal to reduce unintended bias within the bylaws.
The second change is that of the definition of the Historian position on the Council. Currently, the Historian is a former member of Council who is serves one or two additional terms of 5 years each after a full term on Council. Thus, one individual could hold office (and a voting position) for 16 or even 21 years if re-appointed, almost twice as long as any other officer of the Association. The proposed amendment transforms the Historian position into a regular Council office, like the Secretary, Treasurer, and Editor positions. This will also even out term lengths, so that there is no longer the abridged so-called “fast track” position. Each Fellow elected to Council will serve the same amount of time and have an equal say in Association affairs.
Click ALA By-Laws – 2022, to review the current By-Laws.
Sincerely,
Joel H. Blumin
Secretary