[Imc] Re: IMC Swiss site letter

[Paul Riismandel]

Thanks for clueing me in, David.  Nonetheless I have some concerns with it. 
Primarily, I have concerns with the fact that it is written to represent 
the entire IMC, which as I noted in my first e-mail, is not really 
possible, nor proper.  Secondly, the full message of the letter is not what 
I understood us to be communicating from what we agreed upon at last 
Steering meeting.  All I understood the letter to address was solidarity 
with the Swiss IMC, and so all the additional commentary is not something 
I, as a member of steering, consented to.

These concerns are not necessarily addressed to you, David, since I don't 
believe that you were at the last steering meeting, and were asked by 
Sascha to write the letter, and so I can see how the specificity of what 
was agreed upon at Steering might not have been clearly communicated to 
you.  These concerns are addressed to everyone.

Fundamentally, the IMC is about giving people an avenue and venue to speak 
for themselves.  It is antithetical to this mission for any subgroup of the 
IMC to have the conceit or presume that it can speak for the IMC as a 
whole, regardless the relative merit of the message.  In this case I'm 
certain that any such presumption was accidental, but that does not change 
the principle nor the perception of the letter outside our little IMC.  One 
only needs to read the comments on the newswire to this letter to recognize 
that it is not being received well by some in the IMC community.

I may be withdrawing my consent to this letter and I will bring this up at 
today's Steering Meeting.

--Paul

At 09:33 AM 3/3/2002 -0600, David Gehrig wrote:
> > From: Paul Riismandel <p-riism at uiuc.edu>
> > Subject: [Imc] IMC Switz letter on website?
>
> > I'm curious who this is who wrote the letter to IMC Swtizerland on the
>website:
> > "Urbana-Champaign IMC letter on IMC Switzerland
> > by gehrig 6:23pm Sat Mar 2 '02 article#4239
> > zemblan at earthlink.net"
>
>Paul -- I'm the guy who drafted the letter at Sascha's request, after a
>discussion with him on the principles involved -- based on my earlier
>post here on the same subject.  Sascha reviewed and approved the
>draft letter.
>
>@%<
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