The recent proposed bylaw amendment vesting membership responsibility in the Executive Council reached my desk today and, of course, I voted for it. For the historians among us, I note with some wry amusement that, assuming the amendment is approved, it will have been a quarter century since, as president of the American, I proposed that the membership responsibilities be moved to the Council, where they clearly belonged. In 1980, the proposal was greeted with ferocious opposition, labeled an attack on “standards.”
Obviously, I welcome the prospective change, but the rate of change might give pause to the members. Caution and circumspection have regularly been used in our organization to assure that it is too little, too late.
—Arnold M. Cooper