Change of Meeting Dates to February

Following its 2007 meeting, the Executive Committee was presented with an offer from the Palmer House for a multi-year contract, at significantly reduced rates, if the Division moves its meeting dates to February. Such a change carries with it obvious costs, most prominently the difficulties of winter weather in northern locations such as Chicago, but it also brings significant benefits to the Division and to the APA, including reduced room rates, moving the Central Division farther from the Pacific Division’s meeting times (a major issue for the National Office, which must staff both meetings), and avoidance of conflicts with Easter and Passover. After negotiating with the Palmer House and conducting an email poll on April 24 of all Central Division members for whom the APA had email addresses (80 percent of the total members), the Executive Committee decided by mail ballot to adopt this change of dates. Beginning in 2010, the contract institutionalizes the Central Division’s past practice of meeting in Chicago in alternate years.

Below is the text of an email message sent to Central Division affiliates in May 2007 giving the background and details of this process.

The Executive Committee of the APA Central Division wishes to announce to members that it has approved a change of meeting time to late February for the years 2009 through 2012:

2009: Feb. 19-21, Chicago
2010: Feb. 18-20, Chicago
2011: Feb. 17-19, location to be determined
2012: Feb. 17-19, Chicago
2013: Feb. 17-19, location to be determined

In 2011 and 2013, our plan is to meet somewhere other than Chicago, yet to be determined (cities under consideration include Cincinnati, New Orleans, and St. Louis).

The Executive Committee made this decision because of (1) chronic problems with meeting rates at our current time of late April, (2) difficulties in avoiding conflicts with Pacific Division meetings and with the dates of Easter and Passover (which it is Divisional policy to avoid as meeting dates), and (3) substantial fiscal advantages in the move. A major incentive was an offer from the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago for a multi-year contract providing substantial concessions to the Division, including: a lower room rate in 2009 than our rate for 2007; a graduate student room rate fixed at $129 through 2012; and credits towards audiovisual costs and other meeting expenses totaling as much as $20,000 per year. The Central Division has chronically had fiscal difficulties, and these incentives will help us to reverse that, which we must do if the Central Division meeting is to continue.

If the financial benefits of the change of dates measure up to our expectations, the Division expects to have annual surpluses, rather than annual deficits. While it would be unwise to plan for the spending of money we do not yet have, the Division’s goal is not to accumulate cash but rather to use its revenues to support annual meetings and other activities that benefit our members. These could include increased graduate student travel stipends, other support for travel to meetings or services to members, the establishment of Divisional prizes in support of philosophy, or modifications of meeting registration fees.

Since the change of dates is a major departure from past practice, we conducted an email poll of Central Division members on this question between April 22 and April 28. This was an opinion poll, not a formal vote. Nevertheless, the results show strong support for the proposal. Messages were sent to all the 1601 Central Division members for whom the National Office has a recorded email address (this is over 80% of all Central Division members). The response was as follows:

Total CD members 1977 (according to APA National Office)
Messages sent 1601 (email addresses provided by National Office)
Responses:
Yes 602 (86.9%)
No 87 (12.6%)
Undecided 4 (0.6%)
Total responses 693
Bad addresses, etc. 79 (estimated)

The total number of messages sent, 1601, was 80% of the total number of Central Division members. The total number of responses, 693, is much greater than the total number of votes in any of the last five APA Central presidential elections (2006: 338; 2005: 443; 2004: 481; 2003: 520; 2002: 443). The response was over 7 to 1 in favor of the change of dates.

The Executive Committee also discussed this change with the Chair and the Vice Chair of the Board of Officers and with the Executive Director of the Association, all of whom saw this as on balance a good idea. In general, the National Office has indicated strong support for this change and expects that it will not have a major impact on the operations of the Placement Service. Modifications will be needed in the schedule of publication of the APA Proceedings (most likely a December issue for the Central Division program instead of the current February issue), but again the National Office does not see any problem with this.

There are of course costs as well as benefits to this change, most prominently the elimination of a late-April job market meeting and the winter weather of February. In our opinion, neither consequence is sufficient to override the benefits of the change to the Division and the extremely strong sentiment of members in favor of the change.

There is no denying that a move to February will eliminate a placement opportunity for some departments. However, according to the National Office, the number of departments interviewing at the Central Division meeting has been declining steadily in recent years. This may be the result of changes in the way departments carry out searches, especially for late-opening positions. Consequently, this does not appear to us to be a sufficient reason alone for continuing to bear the costs of trying to run a meeting in April.

There is also no doubt that February is a colder month than April, but many academic organizations nevertheless do meet during winter months, including February, and in cities where February is cold, such as Chicago (the Modern Language Association’s 2007 meeting, for example, is December 27-30 in Chicago). Winter weather does have an impact on air travel, but the same is true of spring weather, when thunderstorms and severe weather are actually more likely in the midwest.

The Executive Committee made a similar, though less substantial, decision in 2003, when we changed the deadline for submission of Colloquium papers from September 1 to July 1. The principal reason for making this change was to alleviate the problems caused for the National Office by having the deadlines for the Pacific and Central Divisions both fall on September 1. At the time, some members predicted that the July 1 deadline would prove to be unworkable: no one would submit a paper during the summer and program committees would be unable to work during the summer. In fact, none of these problems has materialized, and the switch to July 1 has been a clear success.

Finally, we should emphasize that this change is in the nature of a trial. While we believe that the benefits outweigh the costs, we will monitor the results, and especially the reactions of our members, carefully. If it turns out that February is not on the whole a good time to meet, then we can revise our plans for future years. Our expectation, however, is that this change will in the end be good for the Central Division and for the APA.