ANST - pay to play .... was: Kingdom membership

[Michael F. Gunter]

> when you you start mandating membership (pay-to-play) and/or creating
> tiered systems where you further stratify the SCA and create yet more
> ways to make one established class feel "superior" to another
> "lesser" one (the entry level folk tend to be the primary ones
> targeted here as "scadian scofflaws"), you are shooting yourself in
> the proverbial foot ...

Please forgive me but I cannot agree with this. If being a paid member
of the Society makes one feel "superior" then so be it. To be supporting
the Society by plunking down 35 bucks is all it takes then let it be done.
You are suggesting that new people who are not members will be looked
down upon because they are new or that they will feel inadequate because
they don't have their card. 90% of new people feel they are the bottom
rung because they are new. Someone with an AoA is hugely superior
to their eyes. Like it or not but this is a structured hierarchial group
and there will be circumstances of such class structure. Whether
or not you are a member has very little to do with it. And I would think
that if there were such a class distinction that a newcomer would welcome
such an easy "step up".

> all you will accomplish is alienate and drive
> away yet more people and create more barriers for gathering in the
> new blood that is required for the organization to remain healthy.

I'm not advocating total "pay-to-play". I am saying that having a
membership should offer other benefits. For example: You already must
be a paid member to fight in Crown. And as been stated, maybe some
of the other high level competitions. Queens, Gulf War A&S, etc...
You should be a paid member to be an officer.

How is this excluding a new person? How will this drive someone away?
Competitions and duties at these levels should be held by longer term
members who, by all that is right, should have become members by then.

> as an exercise, at your next event note who is setting up things,
> helping run events, working in the kitchens, serving the food .. now
> do a poll of who has their "card". do you really want to alienate so
> many and perhaps drive them away ????

And they are frequently working right next to barons, baronesses, Peers,
Royal Peers and paid up AoAs. There will be no "card check" in these
circumstances and shouldn't be. But maybe members pay something
like $5 less at the gate to an event. Even most newcomers realize that
in most groups "membership has its benefits". I fully doubt that something
like that would drive away someone who has found the joy of the SCA.

> the real health of the SCA is not tied to the number of paid
> memberships ... never has been.

I agree. And things like baronial status or kingdom status or rank or
anything else the SCA uses is simply an illusion as well. What matters
is that people go out, live the lives of chivalry and honor, and have fun.
But for the SCA to stay alive as an organization then it is important.
If it is important to the people of a barony to continue being a barony
then they will spent the $35 to keep the membership polls up. How
is this oppressing the masses?

> the day that it stoops to using the
> tactics coercion and extortion (as laid out in previous posts) to
> support it's existance at any level is the day to start planning the
> wake

I've seen things brought up to encourage membership but no tactics
of extortion or arm-breaking to make poor downtrodden newbies or
those for whom the SCA means so little as for them to actually become
members but still insist on having all the benefits be forced to hand
over their hard-earned cash.

> 'wolf

Yours,

Gunthar

(proudly a card-carrying member since 1983)
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