Salvete Tergeste et Orce,
Thank you for your responses.
I want to make it clear that I'm not blaming either of you for SVR's problems, or that I think you are even part of SVR's problems. When fulfilling a duty, you have both not let down the Societas and did very well. When not in office, you stick around and read or post. I'm fine with that, and it's even better if you enjoy yourselves, of course
.
I don't think that I am expecting too much of too few people, however. I did so in the past, when we started out, perhaps the second year too. But I've become very realistic after that, being one of the major forces behind the reform that made SVR's tree structure which reduplicated administrations for every collegium disappear, the transition from a plethora of mailing lists to one forum, three or four regulae reforms, simplified tasks for the officers and lastly, a great effort to bring together disparate collegia to ease administering even more. So, I am well aware of how limited time and resources can be within a voluntary association.
In fact, I want to bring in some of my experience as part of the students' club here (not unlike a fraternity, but much more open and accessible... it doesn't really have the same image anyway). I've been on the praesidium (the council that rules the club) for two years now, and next year I will be president (praeses) of it. Like SVR, our club has several aims, a sort of "regulae" (though called something else, of course), and officers who are responsible for various tasks. We have an officer who takes care of organising parties, another does cultural activities, yet another administers our funds, and so on. There's about 20 people on the council, and in total we have about 740 members. When someone joins the council and is candidate for a certain position, they usually know what their job is going to look like, or they will be taught the ropes by their predecessors and future colleagues with experience. Of course, this is a voluntary association too, so we do everything outside our work for college. Among 20 members of the presidium, you can invariably expect about three to five of them being unfit for their job, lacking in enthusiasm, lacking in organisational skills, or just... not being there when they should be. But that's normal.
In this case, SVR isn't normal. Not only have, over the successive elections, some familiars (like me) recycled themselves over and over, with a small influx of new faces, the problem I mentioned earlier, that about 1/5 members of your ruling council will be unqualified, a liability or will drop out sooner or later due to unexpected circumstances, is even more rampant in the Senate. I'm not saying this with glee. It's just that it turns out that best friends with a joint interest in setting up a new organisation may simply not have the skills and time required to do it. Then they (none of whom has replied here yet) should, I think, at least see that it can't go on like this. Perhaps Marius's and Piscinus's latest exchange in the other thread is part of this rescue operationt to lift us back up again as a serious organisations.
I don't think it's abnormal to expect from rectores to launch new ideas, projects and topics every once a year. Or some aediles to update the site, or consules to concern themselves with holding elections. Or some more effort by the Senate as a whole to get that old beast of burden that's the Societas moving in the right -in any- direction. These are not accusations aimed at the current administration, lest they get angry with me, but at all past administrations as well. I've seen too many good, friendly people over the years become bad magistrates or fossilised rectores. I wasn't and have never been asking them to work miracles or to show us great visions, but often even the most basic and minimal tasks were unable to be completed, or the person in casu simply abandoned us in silence.
I see now that Coruncanius has also radically questioned his own position in the Societas, and offered his and de facto the Senate's resignation in a dramatic move. For me, it did not have to go this way, and mi Coruncani, I feel just as bad about it as you do and hope that you might stick with SVR and see what the others will make of it. I value you a lot, even if your consulship did not turn out as you, I or we had expected it to be. It's a radical step you have taken now, and hope it might be one for the better of SVR, and all of us.
Optime valete,
Draco
Gn. Dionysius Draco Invictus