[mou] Vice-president resigns, part two of three

[Jim Williams]

This is part two of an explanation of the resignation of MOU vice-president
Jim Williams.=20

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MOU membership is declining. Membership has gone up and down in small
increments over the 11 years I have been on the board, but experienced a
drop of about 15 percent last year. If the MOU were a bird, given its
population fluctuation and last year=B9s sudden decline, and if it experience=
d
one more year of significant decline, similar to last year, it would go on
the species watch list. It might even be considered a threatened species. I
think that several MOU policies contribute to this problem.

The MOU is not always a member-friendly place. We do not do enough to
encourage broad participation in the organization by members. We restrict
the content of MOU-net e-mail messages. We restrict participation in the
listing supplement, and discriminate against many members by doing so. We
have created new opportunities for people to serve the MOU in various ways,
but then given those jobs to the same small cadre of people already holding
one or more positions. We coerce listers into providing bird records by
requiring certain of their records to be vetted by the records committee.

We have committees that function without direction from the board or withou=
t
board oversight. Several committee chairpersons, members of the board by
virtue of holding those positions, rarely attend board meetings. Yet,
no-show committee chairs are routinely allowed to continue in their posts.

I have made attempts to bring change by discussing these and other problems
with committee chairs, with the listing supplement editor, and with board
members. My concerns and suggestions have not been well received.

Had I become president there are other issues I would have hoped to address=
.
Our mission statement says we foster the study of birds. Yet, the vast
majority of scientific papers written by ornithological researchers in
Minnesota are never published or republished by the MOU. Our members,
arguably an important audience for this information, never see this work
unless other journals are read.

Our data collection efforts, basically our seasonal reports, are for the
most part anecdotal accounts randomly gathered. While this information has
value, because it is the only such information available, we do not adhere
to any scientific method in its collection, limiting the data=B9s usefulness.
Nor have we made any effort to take several decades of records and put them
into a form that is readily accessible to and usable by the scientific
community.

And the MOU records committee has yet to find a way to conduct its business
without offending many of its customers. Consequently, there are a number o=
f
active birders in the state who no longer contribute records that would hav=
e
to be routed through the committee. That is a loss to all of us. The record=
s
committee recently has begun to revisit our historic bird data. Records wit=
h
which present members disagree are being removed. I think this is
presumptuous at best.

continued in part three