A Hypothetical Platform

Despite rumors to the contrary, I have no intention of seeking the office of CKI President come ICON. Of course, even if I did, I couldn’t say so here for several months yet. Take that as you may.

On a completely unrelated topic, there may be some of you out there running for the office of CKI President, but you’re looking for something to round-out your campaign platform. I’m presenting you, now, with a hypothetical platform that I think a candidate would do well to run on. There’s no catchy theme and no bullshit. So if you’re a potential candidate, read carefully:

1. Fiscal Responsibility: Full Disclosure – as members, we have a right to know exactly how every dues dollar is being spent by the office and CKI board, and we have a right to know how other funds are being spent in our name and on our behalf. Our next CKI President should work to see that the CKI staff fully discloses every single one of its expenditures and be willing to provide justification for every check within 5 business days of a request from a member.
2. Will of the Membership – It’s a true crime when the will of the House of Delegates is usurped by the CKI Staff and the KI Board of Trustees. As members, we have to respect KI’s decisions, as they are legally responsible for our actions. We should not, however, stand for measures that were overwhelmingly passed by our House to be struck down without warning or publicization. The next CKI President should work with the KI board to ensure that both sides of the amendments are represented at any debate. Allowing Staff unfettered access to the debate makes for biased policies, and KI should have a policy disallowing direct involvement of the staff. One possibility would be to have a “public comment” period during which any non-KI-Board-Member would be allowed to submit written arguments for or against the amendment. Furthermore, KI should not have the option to use a “line item veto.” Their approval should be required to be “all or nothing” to avoid the blatant bastardization of the will of the House as we saw this past year. Most all of this would require changes to KI policy.
3. CKI Judicial Branch – The CKI Board and Staff last year proved, beyond any doubt, that the bodies are incapable of serving objective justice in matters in which they are heavily vested. For that reason, the next CKI President should seek to establish a judiciary branch within the organization to adjudicate matters in which the International Board is the complainant or defendant. Further, this branch should hear appeals from the decision of the International Board in other matters of discipline or misconduct. My personal idea for how this would work is the election of an ex-officio International Officer that would serve as “Chief Justice” of CKI. the CJ would hear complaints and decide (based on set criteria) whether the issues were, in fact, actionable. If they are found to be with merit, then an independent and objective tribunal would be established of district and club officers in order to hear a particular matter. Decisions of the tribunal would be final and binding within the organization.
4. Eliminate Fully-funded Trustee Visits – I’ve served in various capacities at various levels of two different Kiwanis Family organizations, and I’ve come to the conclusion that Trustee visits are a tremendous waste of money. This is especially true with large districts subsidize visits to tiny districts through their sheer size. Clubs and Districts that wish to have visits from Trustees should pay for them. The CKI Board should have the option to subsidize these visits up to some pre-set percentage if the board decides that the cost-per-member would be prohibitive and the visit would serve an actual, predefined, and concrete purpose. “Feel good” trips by trustees should be prohibited, and visits by the CKI staff should be eliminated entirely. Visits by the CKI President and CKI VP should continue to visit districts on a rotating basis, but such trips should be at least partially funded by the district in question.
5. Eliminate the Print version of the CKI Magazine – Let’s face it, the magazine is largely unread and costs far too much. For clubs without access to the internet or email, they could request that print versions (printed out on a laser or possibly color-laser printer) be mailed to them. Further, payment for articles should be heavily discouraged and efforts to recruit writers from within the organization should be stepped up. Failing that, UWire runs a great many interesting articles on a regular basis.
6. Repeal the Alcohol Policy – There, I said it. The next CKI President should not rest until he or she has convinced the CKI Board, CKI Staff, and KI Board that the alcohol policy has. to. go. I’m not kidding. The silver bullet to most of CKI’s problems is a dramatic increase in membership, and one sure-fire way to get membership up is to allow clubs to market themselves effectively. The best way to do that is to allow them to, in an official setting, show that members aren’t a bunch of prudish, puritanical weirdos. Besides, a lot of the drama and bullshit would disappear if we could all just go have a drink together. There’s nothing inherently evil about drinking, and just allowing college kids to be college kids would go a LONG WAY to helping bring CKI back into the mainstream of college campuses.
7. Trim the IBoard; Grow the Council – One rule that holds fairly solid is that on any IBoard committee there are workers, and there are slackers. Very rarely do the workers out-number the slackers, and lots of the work that the committees do is lost forever by staff. Reduce the number of trustees to something like 5. Increase the decision making power of the International Council, allowing for online meetings, debates, and votes. The goal is to reduce the number of trustees on the board to the number required to get the committee work done, while delegating most decision making power to a group more representative of the membership. This would also save CKI a boat-load of money.
8. Voting Rules Must Change – Delegates MUST be forced to vote for every single open position. That is to say that if there are 9 trustee spots open, a ballot must contain 9 names. Failure to vote for every spot is pure idiocy, but the CKI delegates seem to need help to not be morons. The next CKI President should see that delegates are forced to exercise their vote — maybe more appropriately, CKI should change to an immediate-run-off ballot system, where delegates rank all candidates in order, allowing for immediate run-offs.

Questions? Comments? Additions? Speak now.