A Note to ASSC Members From Christopher Judge

Greetings to the membership:

We are off to a good start with the ASSC for 2012. James Stewart has put together a stellar program for the Annual Conference to be held in Columbia at USC on April 14th and we are in negotiations with SCPRT to hold Fall Field Day at Santee State Park in the second half of October.

An issue that has come back up lately is the relationship between the chapters and the main organization of the ASSC. In recent years I have witnessed two trends in the chapters that are a bit of a cause for concern. First several chapters have waned or met their demise. That is rather disheartening to me and if anyone would like to provide input on how that happened, how to avoid it in the future or better still how to breathe life back into those chapters I would like to hear from you. The second and equally alarming trend is the distance that some chapters have grown seemingly away from our overall organization. The current board and officers of ASSC are both cognizant and concerned, as previous administrations have been, about the declining numbers of memberships over the years. We are very interested in reversing this trend and wish to grow the ASSC over the next two years.

I need to hear from the membership on these phenomena in order to steer the course of the ASSC in a direction of growth and unity. Please contact your chapter presidents or me to bring your ideas and opinions to the forefront. At the May 19th meeting of the ASSC, I urge each chapter to send its President or a representative to the meeting in Columbia. We will have a forum dedicated to listening to the wishes and desires of the chapters as the main item of business on the agenda that day.

Finally, a reminder, all of our ASSC Board meetings are open to the membership. Please attend these meetings and provide your input. I think it is rather important that the Chapter Presidents attend these meetings. Obviously it can be a long distance to travel and take up an entire Saturday but we have successfully used Skype to bring board members and officers into the meeting across cyberspace.

I look forward to serving the ASSC as president and along with you striving to meet the goals of this organization as we approach our 50th year.

Christopher Judge