[MR] Triton on Laurel's Decision regarding the Queen's Arms Change

[E L Wimett]

I would agree with Triton that the best path is to repoll rather than 
appeal to the Board of Directors.

Not only is there a long tradition of the Board supporting Laurel decisions 
in general, this is a decision that was made well within a long-standing 
tradition of the College of Arms and the Society in general.  To be frank, 
if there was a non-traditional action, it was that of the Laurel Office in 
allowing the change in 1999 with only a little over 10% of our membership 
responding and thus only about 10% supporting the change.  In fact, with 
the exception of one instance when the Board explicitly directed the Laurel 
Office to register kingdom armory without going through the normal 
commentary or support process so that a prematurely scheduled first 
Coronation would not have to be postponed, the requirement for support has 
been uniformly supported by both the Board and the Seneschalate since it 
was first put in place.

As someone who was intimately involved with the change of royal armory for 
the East (consort, heir and heir's consort) back in the early 1980's before 
the petition of support requirement and also a witness to the events that 
led to the requirements for evidence of support, I will say the requirement 
for support is a good idea.  The reason for not specifying a particular 
number or percentage in the administrative regulations was to allow some 
flexibility, while still assuring that the change has the support of a 
substantial proportion of the populace so that the armory is not changed 
randomly depending on who wins the Crown.  For instance, if a new 
principality polled and had 70% of the active membership as that kingdom 
defined it (e.g., by subscribing members) respond but with only 49%  of the 
active membership actually supporting the armory, this still gives the 
Laurel Office the ability to assume that the responses if all had responded 
would be prorated similarly so that more than half of the active membership 
would support.

That being said, I'd make the following practical suggestions:

1. Announce the poll in Acorn, in the August issue if possible, even if a 
petition form could not be included.  Petitions can be provided by mail 
and/or posted on the kingdom web site very easily.

2. Have an appropriate petition of support signed by all four members of 
the Royalty and as many kingdom officers as soon as possible.

3. Have appropriate petitions of support at every event (including Pennsic) 
between now and the middle of September.  Each petition should have a 
picture of the desired armory and its blazon and a place for putting the 
date of signatures at the top or bottom.  Such petitions should have 
columns for Society name, mundane name, signature and membership number if 
people desire to include that.  Make sure that the person responsible for 
the petitions for a specific event is known to Golden Dolphin and Triton, 
if possible.  Also, make it clear verbally and in the notice in Acorn that 
each person should sign only ONE petition to make sure that the numbers are 
not skewed.

4. Have a central location to which all petitions should be sent as soon as 
the event is over.  The person to whom the petitions are to be sent should 
keep a running tally of the response and make sure that the Royalty, Golden 
Dolphin and Triton are kept abreast so they can reinforce appeals for 
response as necessary. If that individual could do some sort of checking 
for duplicate names, that would also impress the Laurel Office.

5. The goal should be to get at least a thousand responses which would be 
well over the simple majority using the paid membership numbers that Laurel 
used in the return.  With Pennsic, Coronation and several major regional 
events between now and 15 September, this should be more than possible.

Alisoun, Metron Ariston

Been there, done that, both sides of the problem

On Friday, July 04, 2003 12:51 AM, BATCOK at aol.com [SMTP:BATCOK at aol.com] 
wrote:
> Greetings to Your Majesties, Your Highnesses, and My Fellow Atlantians.
>
> This morning Gorm of Berra, Golden Dolphin Herald, announced the decision 
of
> the Laurel Herald regarding our petition to change the Arms of Her 
Majesty the
> Queen of Atlantia.  Several hours of debate could be spent in analyzing 
the
> whys and wherefores of the Laurel Herald's decision, but that would be
> pointless in deciding the course to be taken from here.  Golden Dolphin 
has pointed
> out three paths to take at this juncture which I would like to expound 
upon:
>
> 1. Accept the Laurel Herald's decision as final and move on with life,
> reverting to the use of the previous design (gold shell).
>
> 2. Re-conduct the polling to hopefully gain the show of support needed to 

> convince the Laurel Herald of our desire to make the change.
>
> 3. Come up with a new design from scratch for submission and go through 
the
> whole thing again.
>
> The first and third can be easily set aside as the Laurel Herald's dec  
ision
> is not based on the conflicting or illegal status of the submission.  If 
this
> were a matter of bad design or someone beating us to the idea, I would
> recommend either sticking with what we have registered or designing 
something else to
> use.  However, this is not the case, as Laurel has stated that his 
decision
> was based on an interpretation of how much support is enough support to 
change
> Important Kingdom Armory.
>
> To address that clause we should examine the statistics of the last valid 

> change to the Queen's Arms, in the reign of Stephan and Niobe AS XXXIII 
(Summer
> 1999), when the escallop shell was changed from Erminois to Or (gold 
ermined
> black to plain gold).  For the sake of the argument (and because waiting 
for SCA
> Corporate to respond to a query on the subject would delay this missive) 
we
> will assume that the kingdom's populace has remained fairly constant from 
that
> period to this and use the rounded up number of 2100 to represent the 
populace
> of the Kingdom.
>
> The polling of that time had 242 responses, of which 227 were in favor of 
the
> change and 15 were opposed.  That gives us 11% of the populace showing 
93%
> support of the change for an effective 10% of the populace being in favor 
of
> changing the Queen's arms.
>
> The next polling regarding the Queen's Arms was in the previous reign of
> Logan and Isabel (Summer ASXXXVI, 2002) to restore the ermine spots to 
the
> escallop shell and had a total response of 122.  Of those 38 were in 
favor of the
> change and 84 opposed, giving 5% of the populace showing 68% opposition 
to the
> change (an effective 1% of the populace supporting restoration of the 
ermine
> spots).  Based on this result the idea was abandoned by Their Majesties 
and
> another suggestion that came from the commentary was proposed as the next 
immediate
> polling.
>
> That polling, the one referred to in the Laurel Herald's response, had a
> total return of 93 with 74 supporting and 19 opposing the switching of a 
Crown for
> the Escallop Shell.  That gives 4% of the populace showing 79% support 
for a
> total of 3% of the populace wanting the change.
>
> The reason for this declining response is most likely apathy combined 
with
> confusion generated by the back-to-back pollings.  It is quite likely 
that
> members of the populace may have believed that their first polling votes 
and
> commentary would count toward the second polling.  Unfortunately, such is 
not
> possible as each polling must be conducted as a separate action.
>
> My recommendation to Your Majesties, Your Highnesses, and My Fellow
> Atlantians would be to conduct a fresh polling with every effort taken to 
maximize the
> response to meet the Laurel Herald's 10% minimum approval rating.  With a 

> desire to ensure the validity and integrity of the polling, both myself 
and the
> Golden Dolphin Herald must remain impartial arbitrators.  This does not 
preclude
> the Populace of Atlantia (including the remaining members of the 
Atlantian
> College of Heralds) from doing everything they can (within the boundaries 
of
> legality and reason) to maximize the response to the polling.
>
> Alternately, there is another option available.  The Laurel Herald's 
decision
> could be challenged and taken to the Board of Directors.  In so doing the 

> Laurel Herald would be obliged to define exactly how much of the populace 
must
> respond to a polling and how much of that response must be in favor of 
the
> proposal to make such a polling valid to support an Important Kingdom 
Armory
> change.  However, I would point out that the BoD has a tradition of 
backing Laurel
> in matters of administrative interpretation.
>
> Baron Michael Batcok
> Triton Principal Herald
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