March 2025

Proposal: that an amendment to the bylaws be presented to the membership with the ballot, as described below. Proposal passes unanimously.

Motivation:

The proposed amendment has two aims. The first is to have a consistent age requirement for the Board officer roles. Currently the role of Secretary has the same age requirement as a Director at-large, while President, Vice-President, and Treasurer all have a different requirement. This amendment would have the same requirement for all four officer positions.

The second aim is to reduce the age requirement for the four officer positions from 30 to 25. There are valid reasons to have a somewhat higher bar for election to these positions. Age can certainly be one indicator, though not guarantee, that a person has a higher level of maturity and responsibility. However, there are other factors which should also be taken into account by the nominations committee. We believe that the current requirement of 30 years of age is overly restrictive, and could be too limiting of the possible candidates for these officers, to the detriment of the organization. A requirement of 25 seems to strike a reasonable balance of ensuring some additional life experience, while allowing more candidates to be considered. (For comparison, 25 is the same age requirement that is required to be elected to the US House of Representatives.)

(Although we are not proposing any other change at the time being, for the sake of simplicity, we believe it could be useful in the future to consider additional requirements which could ensure well-rounded candidates, or at least recommended criteria for the nominations committee to consider. These could include criteria such as minimum amounts of time as a member, minimum levels of KER-competency, or individual membership in UEA.)

Current Bylaws Language:

§401. Any member who will be at least 18 years of age as of the date of the beginning of the term of office may be nominated for Director or Secretary.

§402. Any member who will be at least 30 years of age as of the date of the beginning of the term of office may be nominated for President, Vice President or Treasurer.

Proposed Bylaws Language:

§401. Any member who will be at least 18 years of age as of the date of the beginning of the term of office may be nominated for Director. [Remove ‘or Secretary’]

§402. Any member who will be at least 25 years of age as of the date of the beginning of the term of office may be nominated for President, Vice President, Secretary, or Treasurer.

April 2025

No Board Votes.

May 2025

No Board Votes.