21 August 2011

The meeting commenced by teleconference at 2000 EDT. Present were Galloway, Voorhees, Schwehm, McNeil, Kehoe, Kovel, Faulkender, Stevens, Golden and Gadd. Stephenson was absent.

1. Galloway presented the final draft of forthcoming reunion correspondence, consisting of a cover letter, schedule and registration form, for review and approval. Modifications made to the cover letter included an expansion of the description of the West Point tour option and the addition of a reminder that time and space can be available for company gatherings. He will confirm the room availability with the hotel and obtain a contact point for publication. A line on the registration form will be added for respondents to enter their expected dates of arrival and departure. This information will be helpful for early estimates of meal requirements.

Kovel asked for the Board’s position on how to charge for the souvenir CD. The Board preferred that the cost be included in the registration fee. Kovel will contact the two photography studios for proposals of services and costs.

2. Schwehm reported receipts of balloting to date. More than 50% of the Class has voted and returns are overwhelmingly in favor of both the gym hallway upgrade and the constitutional amendment proposals.

3. Galloway reported on aspects of his recent trip to West Point that he did not include in his email memo. The Academy is being hit very hard with budget cuts, and upkeep of facilities is noticeably deteriorating. A large backlog of work orders exists, and work is stagnating for lack of funds, or labor, or both. The Academy is looking more and more to graduates for help. The condition of the Honor Plaza is particularly worrisome to us. He met with the Director of the Simon Center and made some headway in persuading them to assume some responsibility for monitoring the Plaza and its upkeep. He noted that the AOG is the holder of maintenance endowments given by various classes, ours among them, and has thoughts about assuming maintenance contracting responsibilities for gift structures.

4. Kovel discussed the conversion of Assembly to electronic publication, in particular the "Class Notes." Access to them will require logging in, but there remains a concern over personal privacy. Accordingly, scribes have been advised to not include personal contact information or details of health problems. Those eligible for access must register on the AOG website. Printed notes will be available for a small fee.

5. Schwehm introduced details of a looming problem with Regional Groups. Our Constitution requires Groups to hold elections at five year intervals, near the time of the election of the regular officers. The prescribed process for certifying the elected representative represents at least 10% of living regular class members must be concurrently accomplished. Because of attrition among their members, two existing Groups may not be able to meet the requirement. He presented a scheme to geographically reorganize Groups to increase their pools of resident classmates and insure that this difficulty would not recur. The regular officers of the Board noted that the Constitution is very restrictive of the Board’s authority over the Groups. Accordingly, the Groups themselves must take whatever action in the matter they deem appropriate.

The meeting adjourned at 2120 EDT.