House of Delegates Part 1

Today was the first day of the House of Delegates. I was really excited and nervous to see just how things were going to play out and what I would actually be required to do. When I walked in, the tables were set up from the front of the room all the way to the back of the giant ballroom with two chairs at each table.

The task of trying to find where myself and Mary Carney should be sitting seemed daunting to say the very least. There was clearly a method to the madness as their were charts explaining where a given number should be seated. However, I had no idea how exactly we were supposed to figure out what our corresponding number might be. Luckily, one of the STTI staff members, who had been following our twitter and therefore knew our chapter name (@GammaEpsilonNU if you haven't seen it yet yourself) pointed us in the right direction.

Apparently the chapters are seated in order of their induction into STTI. We were number 75! I had no idea. I was super excited to have such good seats though and was really proud to know that I came one of the first 100 chapters...

At every table there was also a set up with a few STTI mints, a voting machine with a card with the name of your chapter, and a little placard also displaying your chapter name. The yellow card that you can see if the "Golden Ticket" that gave every person who had one in their possession access to a ballot to vote in the 2013 delegation.

The machine, much like trying to find our place in the sea of tables and chairs seemed daunting, but after only a few seconds it became very self explanatory, 1= Yes and 2=No. Could it get any simpler really?

The meeting was called to order and things began to get real fast! We were quickly breezing through the agenda with very little discussion or questions about the candidates or the process. Before I knew it we were through the candidates and being handed a ballot to cast our votes via pencil and paper. Mary and I worked diligently to make the best decisions we could for the International part of the organization and were ultimately quite happy with the way our ballot turned out.

After lunch we returned back to the delegation room where we were introduced to the different resolutions and by-law amendments that would be discussed the next session. Nothing overly exciting happened here except for one rousing speaker who wanted a resolution to honor the male and female nurses who had served in the Civil War. The President, Suzanne Prevost, assured the speaker that a task force would be developed to look into the issue further and we were quickly moving through the agenda once again.

An introduction was then made to one of 30 credentialed Parliamentarians in the world who would be overseeing the next days discussions on the by-law amendments. We also got to have a little practice session with the electronic clickers. To be honest I was quickly transported back to my Anatomy & Physiology class where the professor use to use electronic clickers to determine if we were all paying attention. Fortunate for me I was paying attention more this time than I think I had been in A&P. Before I knew it we were heading out of the first session of the House of Delegates and preparing for a second field trip....more info to come!