After years of resisting various efforts to broaden the Association's membership base, the Council at its December 1982 meeting took definitive steps to provide a permanent membership category for all graduates of accredited institutes. It stopped short, however, of offering them any vote, rejecting the proposal of its own Ad Hoc Committee and, instead, approved a Board-sponsored motion to permit nonvoting Associate Membership of unlimited duration.
The unusually close crucial vote of 24-20, coming after several hours of intricate parliamentary maneuvering but little substantive debate, was greeted by many weary Councilors as a compromise solution to a controversial issue that threatened a polarization of the Board and Council.
On the day before, the Board had debated the precirculated proposal of the Council's Ad Hoc Committee on a Form of Membership for Graduates of Accredited Institutes, chaired by Herbert Gaskill, M.D. The Gaskill proposal had recommended that the current category of “Active Member” be renamed “Certified Member” and that a new category of “Member” be created, open to all graduates in good standing who did not become certified. Screening of such prospective members for adequacy of ethical and professional practice would have been conducted by a Membership Committee of the Council. Such members would have had the right to vote for officers and councilors of the Association.
At the Board, strong warnings were sounded that “the barbarians” were at the gate and, if admitted, would lower the standards of the Association by voting for officials who would abet or allow such deterioration. It was predicted, moreover, that enactment of the proposal would remove incentives for obtaining certification.
A competing recommendation was presented to the Board by Rebeccah Solomon, M.D., chairing an ad hoc committee that had been appointed by Chairman of the Board Homer Curtis to develop alternatives to the Gaskill proposal. This recommendation was embodied in a motion by Ernest Svenson, M.D. He moved that the existing category of Associate Membership be altered to permit such membership to be of unlimited duration and that the Membership Committee be retained under Board jurisdiction.
Given a choice between the Solomon/Svenson proposal, the Gaskill proposal, or retaining the status quo, the Board decisively chose the Solomon/Svenson proposal.
It was essentially this proposal that was presented to the Council as a substitute motion for the Gaskill proposal and narrowly passed. An effort was made to move that the membership be given the same opportunity to choose between the two, as had the Board and Council, but this motion was challenged as out of order. President Reiser ruled the motion to be acceptable “in the interests of fairness,” but the ruling of the Chair was itself challenged and overturned. The Council then finally voted 36-9 to present the proposal to the membership as an amendment to the bylaws for their approval.
It was noted by several that the measure just passed with Board approval is virtually identical to the “Chicago” proposal, which failed in the Council years ago after bitter opposition from the Board. Said Past-President Arnold Cooper, a leading advocate of the defeated Gaskill proposal, “The motion approved is, of course, very similar to the one proposed some four years ago to the Council and Board.”
“It is good to see,” he continued, “that the discussions we have held have led to a reversal of the initial Board opposition. I regret only that the debate was characterized by a degree of acrimony, which, in retrospect, seems not to have been necessary or helpful.” Nonetheless, Dr. Cooper declared that he was “delighted that the issue of a change of membership rules has arrived at a decision in the Council.”
Chairman Curtis, whose opposition to any form of voting membership for noncertified graduates prevailed, asserted that “the concurrence of both Board and Council … makes it possible to turn our attention to other pressing matters before the Association.”
“I am hopeful,” he added, “that, by providing a permanent place for all graduates, we can continue to provide incentives for the further development of their analytic interest and competence by a progression through certification to Active Membership and full participation in all educational and scientific activities of the American.”