[Ansteorra] Subscribing vs Sustaining

[Sir Morgan Buchanan]

I've watched this discussion a long time... and I need to weigh in on a 
couple points.

1)  No... the example you listed below COULD be counted far below the 70 
bodies they show, not "would"...it depends on the types of memberships 
people OPT for, as has been outlined a number of times.  If every married 
couple had a subscription and an associate, I'm not sure how your example 
would fall below 30 with the married couples alone, but that's neither here 
nor there.

2)  The exact way memberships are counted is actually immaterial.  I happen 
to agree with you that adult associate memberships should be counted because 
that's the pool of bodies from which a group can draw upon to gather 
officers and workers.  However, in order to make the argument you have been 
making for some time on this subject, you must operate under the assumption 
that required membership numbers wouldn't change with the change in 
counting.

See, the organization KNOWS that with X number of Sustaining or Subscribing 
or whatever-you-want-to-call-them memberships will come Y number of adult 
associated memberships.  It's not a perfect science, but that ratio probably 
hasn't changed significantly over the years.  So, we (SCA, inc) could 
certainly just start counting all adult memberships, but that would probably 
cause a realignment in the requirements for a group.  So no, instead of 5 
"subscribing" members, they now require 10 or 15 "adult" members for a 
shire.  Instead of requireing 25 for a Barony, they'd require 50, or more. 
Net effect?  Very likely none.

The only time it seems people get concerned is at times like this when a 
group is having difficulty maintaining status, or when a group is trying to 
achieve higher status.  I've watched princepalities "go kingdom" and there's 
always a big push to get people to "upgrade" their associate memberships to 
buff the numbers.  Once that group becomes permenant, people fall back to 
the way they've normally done things, like 1 subscribing and 1 associate for 
a married couple which is common.  Not very many people seem to be concerned 
with upgrading when things are "normal".

Just some thoughts.

Respectfully,
Morgan


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Rose & Chad" <love at roseandchad.net>
To: "Kingdom of Ansteorra - SCA, Inc." <ansteorra at lists.ansteorra.org>
Sent: Friday, January 11, 2008 2:38 PM
Subject: Re: [Ansteorra] Subscribing vs Sustaining (was: Ansteorra 
Digest,Vol 21, Issue 36)


Hmmm.... It appears that you're correct... It seems that, at this point, the 
SCA needs to update it's language so that the same terms are used 
throughout.

  Also, our Kingdom needs to decide if the rest of us are members or not... 
I mean, at this point, a Barony with 30 married couples and 7 singles and 
misc. children (That would be darn near seventy people) would be counted as 
22 people and could lose Baronial status. And in some Baronies, alot of the 
members are married couples, esp. when you're near military posts/bases. You 
see the problem here? That's pretty screwy.