Program Committee

The Program Committee consists of nine persons nominated by the Nominating Committee and appointed by the Yearly Meeting, plus the following, ex officio: the Presiding Clerk of the Yearly Meeting, the Clerk of Ministry and Pastoral Care Committee, the General Secretary and Youth Secretary of the Yearly Meeting, the adult and youth Co-clerks of the Young Friends Yearly Meeting Program Planning Subcommittee, the clerk of Junior Yearly Meeting staff, and a registrar appointed by the Committee.

The Program Committee has oversight of all program plans for Yearly Meeting sessions, including Junior Yearly Meeting, the planning of the time schedule in detail, assigning places for all meetings, selecting guest speakers and special program events or delegating the selection to appropriate groups, and caring for the book room.

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Manual of Procedure, July 2004, p31

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This past year has been wonderful! We needed to have only four meetings this year, mostly because we did not have to find a new site at which to hold Yearly Meeting. The committee has been working hard on planning the annual session for this year. We feel that things went well at our 2007 annual session. Frostburg was a great place to be and Dave Treber, the Con7 ference and Event Manager for Frostburg State University, did everything he could to make our stay better and is working with us to make things even better this year. It also helps that he is a member of Langley Hill Meeting.

We fully expect, and know in some cases, that things will be even better at Frostburg this year. For one thing, we will have fair trade real coffee! We have asked for some changes in the menu and plan to have some maps showing the locations of stations in the dining hall. The Food Committee, comprising of Denny Hartzell, Mary Campbell, and Matthew Bacon, are working with the food service people to improve the menus.

Rebecca Rawls, our Registrar and ex-officio member of the committee, Mary Campbell, our Assistant Registrar, and Ann Whittaker, Administrative Assistant, are working on registration this year. We will be in two dorms this summer - Westminster and Cambridge. We have been told that all the beds will be of normal height so that no one has to stand on a chair to get into bed. The cleanliness of the dorm rooms has been discussed and will be improved.

Nancy Coleman will again be running the bookstore with a great selection of books, crafts, and information. Bring your check book and or cash to stock up on your reading material for the coming year. Jason Eaby is the sound person for all our plenary and business sessions. Workshops are under the care of Wren Becket and Margaret Stambaugh. Karen Cunningham, an ex-officio member as clerk of the Junior Yearly Meeting, has been hard at work getting people to staff JYM. Sam Horne and Alex Hayden-Wollaston are working on getting signs in place so that everyone can find their way around. They are also representative from Young Adult Friends and have been working on the Wednesday afternoon program. Julia Melby and Matthew Bacon, ex-officio members, have been busy planning the Young Friends program.

Howard Fullerton, ex-officio member, will be introducing Betsy Meyer at our Tuesday night plenary session. Don Gann will be introducing Clinton Pettus Friday night Carey Memorial Lecturer.

Lamar Matthew, an ex-officio member as clerk of Ministry and Pastoral Care Committee, has been working on Friends to sit on the facing chairs holding the meetings in the Light as well as working on the queries for worship sharing. This year the members of the Ministry and Pastoral Care Committee will have special dots on their name tags as they will be acting as listeners, people who are willing to listen to anyone who has a concern, a difficulty, or some other problem.

One sad point in the year was the resignation of Anita Bower as a member of the committee and who wrote the minutes of our meeting. She is missed. Almost all of our members make it to every meeting, which is wonderful. We have a job to do and everyone know that it takes a great deal of work to be ready for the annual session.

We have a subcommittee that worked on the finances of annual session: Riley Robinson, General Secretary, Rebecca Rawls, Mary Campbell, Margo Lehman, bookkeeper, and Sheila Bach, clerk. It was difficult to keep the expenses down so that we did not have to raise the cost of Friends coming to annual session by very much.

As you can see, everyone has a job. Everyone has worked hard at our meetings. The committee looks forward to a great week at Frostburg State University and we hope to see all of you there.

Sheila Bach, Clerk

BYM Annual Session 2007

“Cool summer nights . . . Warm mountain hospitality.” That was the promise from Frostburg State University, our new campus in Frostburg, Maryland, and it was true! The 400 Friends who attended Baltimore Yearly Meeting annual sessions in August found the campus to be beautiful and easy to navigate. Why not try it yourself next year if you couldn’t make it this time?

Our new clerk, Howard Fullerton, ably led us through the business sessions. The discussions were timely and meaningful – including our relationship with Friends United Meeting, our care for our youth, and new insights on our financial well-being.

Young Adult Friends presented living Quaker History, and then sent us on a treasure hunt! The all-age celebration gave us a chance to be creative with drafts amidst the delights of an ice cream social. Evening plenary sessions with Pendle Hill’s Niyonu Spann and Friends Committee on National Legislation’s Joe Volk were among the activities that enlightened us, nudged us to think differently, and led us to enjoy being in the company Friends, either well-known or new to us. The Junior Yearly Meeting (JYM) program was as lively and wonderful as ever, with a great many children who brought their parents to YM!

Being in a new location is not always easy, but there were many who helped make it a very good place to spend a week. We found this campus to be very adaptable, with many, many thanks to David Treber, Director, Office of Conferences & Events, and his very capable staff. They did everything possible to make our stay there wonderful.

There are a great many who helped make this annual session as good as it was. It will be impossible to thank everyone, but here is a try. JYM program: Nursery (infants-pre-school: Ellen Arginteanu, coordinator, Stephanie Bean, Lydia Bedford, Mary Campbell, Dave Diller, Melanie Gifford, Darcy Lane, Nancy McIntyre, Jana McIntyre, Joanie Maughmer, Carol Seddon; Morning Program (grades K-1): June Confer, Susan Williams; Morning Program (grades 2-3): Linda Uberseder, Eric Uberseder; Morning Program (grades 4-5): Alessa Keener, Ann Marie Moriarty; Afternoon Program (grades K-5) Susan Vanderhoff, coordinator, Joe Chin, Linda Coates, Joy McIntyre; Junior Young Friends (grades 6-8): Anna Rain, co-coordinator, Marcy Seitel, co-coordinator, Julie Allinson, Jim Fussell, Michael Newheart, Bill Strein; JYM Photographer, Jenifer Morris. A hearty thanks goes to Karen Cunnyngham as the Clerk of JYM.

Others to whom we give hearty thanks are the members of the Program Committee, who worked diligently to find our new location and to get everything ready for the session. Liz Hofmeister served as clerk and did a fine job. Rebecca Rawls and Ann Whittaker worked for weeks in getting the database to work for registrations and Rebecca spent many hours at the registration table during the sessions.

We are grateful to the following list of Friends who helped throughout the year and stepped forward during the sessions: Virginia Schurman for leading the retreat; Hugh Fuller, David Ross, Jo Anne Schneider and others for providing transportation for those with difficulty in walking to and from the Lane Center; Eden Grace and Michael Newheart for leading the Bible study times; Nancy Coleman for the wonderful bookstore; Betsy Krome for the informative Daily Minute; Peggy and Walter Fry for leading singing; the many workshop leaders; the worship sharing leaders; the mike walkers; Jason Eaby for working the sound. Many, many, many thanks to each of you.

Many of you know, and many do not know, our wonderful staff who worked overtime getting ready for and during the annual session: Jane Megginson, Camp Program Administrator; David Hunter, Camp Property Manager; Margo Lehman, Bookkeeper; Ann Whittaker, Administrative Assistant, and Riley Robinson, General Secretary, who put in so many hours of overtime that he could never take comp time and still get his work done!

As you can see, there are many people who work to have a well-run Annual Session. Will you be there next year, August 4-10, at Frostburg State University? Please consider attending and meeting your cousins, aunts, uncles, and other “relatives” from other Monthly Meetings. If you have children, do them a favor and bring them along to Annual Session.

The Program Committee is responsible for all program plans for Baltimore Yearly Meeting’s (BYM) Annual Sessions, including Junior Yearly Meeting; planning the schedule for the six days; selecting the theme, guest speakers, and special events or delegating the selection to appropriate groups; assigning sites for workshops and other meetings; working with staff of the host facility; and overseeing the operation of the bookstore.

After five years during which the Yearly Meeting held its annual session at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA, the Program Committee recommended and Interim Meeting approved, a change of location for the 2007 Annual Session. As a consequence, a considerable amount of the Program Committee's time and attention focused on identifying a new location for the annual session. After reviewing more than two dozen possible locations, the committee settled in November on Frostburg State University in Frostburg, MD, as the site that best met the diverse needs of the Yearly Meeting. Members of the committee and staff made several site visits to the FSU campus to confer with the university's conferences coordinator and look at facilities to determine how they could be best utilized for our program.

During the year, the committee met six times, in September, October, January, March, May, and June. It also met daily during the 2006 session, primarily to deal with issues as they arose during the session and for some preliminary discussion of alternative sites for the 2007 session.

The work of the committee during the year proceeded as follows:

• October: Evaluated the session just concluded including preliminary financial data and the written evaluation of participants at the 2006 session.
• November: Began consideration of the coming year's session, reviewing themes and speakers tentatively considered at the previous May meeting.
• January: Reviewed the preliminary budget for 2007 session, necessary publicity, and possible workshops.
• March: Reviewed the proposed workshops submitted and gave the workshop coordinator authority to send the approved workshop information to the BYM web master and the Interchange editor.
• May: Tied up the loose ends for the upcoming August session, made assignments for tasks which will be ongoing during the week, and began looking at themes and speakers for the next year. Approved a clerk for the committee for 2007-2008.
• June: Reviewed further possible themes and speakers for the 2008 annual session. Finalized details for the 2007 session.

The work of the committee during the year benefited by the input of the Young Friends Alex Hayden and Avery Rain and Young Adult Friends Jason Eaby and Sam Flower Horne, who serve ex officio. Alex's presence on a tour of the FSU facilities and his observations on how particular campus facilities would meet YF's needs were particularly helpful as the committee thought about how best to make the transition to FSU.

The entire committee was mindful of the need to assure that the activities of YFs and YAFs at the session were integrated into the the overall program offered. The YAFs developed a intergeneration program on Quaker history which all participants should enjoy. For the first time, YFs schedule for the week was prepared in written form and included in the summer Interchange and on the website with other materials on the session.

Recognizing the substantial cost (nearly $100,000 in 2006) of holding a six-day, residential session with a rich program, the committee sought to be good stewards of the Yearly Meeting's resources in the decisions it made in preparing for the 2007 session.

Mindful of the limited means of some Friends and the considerable cost of attending, the committee established an ad hoc committee charged with reviewing ways to support Friends' attendance and to increase participation, particularly by new attenders, so that fixed costs can be spread over a larger number of participants. The committee decided to continue the popular “certificate program” that allows each monthly meeting to send up to three first-time attenders for two days at no cost to them. This is the third year that the committee has used these certificates as an incentive to encourage those who have never come to the annual session to attend. In informing monthly meetings of the availability of the certificates, the committee encouraged meetings to provide additional financial support for those wanting to attend for longer than two days. The committee also sought to more formally identify the various other forms of financial assistance such as work grants that are available.

Submitted: Liz Hofmeister, clerk of Program Committee

Annual Report 2004

Overall attendance

This year 374 people registered, compared with 384 last year. Two years ago (in 2002, our first year at JMU) we reported attendance as 400. In 2001, at Randolph Macon College, registered attendance was 380, and Laurie Wilner noted in her report that during the previous three years this number had fallen by 125.

As I noted in my oral report at JMU, we gave people a little more leeway about registering this year, allowing those who were at sessions only to attend a committee meeting or go to one evening program to do so without registering. Some Friends have always come to these things without registering, so I don’t know how much difference this policy change may have made in our registration numbers.

Last year, Laurie began a new calculation of “person days.” Someone attending Yearly Meeting for six days would contribute six person days to the count, while another coming for only two days would add two person days. By this measure, we had 1,500 person days for this year’s Annual Session, compared with 1,511 last year. Those numbers are so close to the same that I think the difference is not meaningful.

Age distribution

This year our attendance broke down by age as follows:

• Age 3 and under: 6
• Junior Yearly Meeting above age 3: 38
• Young Friends : 45
• Young Adult Friends (up to age 35, but identifying themselves as YAF): 16
• Older Adult Friends (OAFs): 269

In last year’s report, we grouped people by age slightly differently, but the overall pattern was about the same. We had 6 in the nursery and pre-kindergarten, 42 in JYM, 44 in high school, 10 Young Adult Friends (in their 20s only), and 287 OAFs.

The conclusion we have to draw from these statistics, I think, is that the efforts we made last year to increase attendance at Annual Session had no apparent impact on overall attendance.

First Time Attender Certificates

Thirty-six individuals from 19 Monthly Meetings used these certificates. When we packed up the office in Sandy Spring to go down to JMU, we were expecting 37 certificate–holders from 17 Monthly Meetings, and over the course of the week, I was alerted to expect 6 more, most of whom never came.

When it became clear that people from several Monthly Meetings were not going to meet our requirement to preregister in order to use one of these certificates, Frank and I decided that we would waive that requirement and accept the certificates any time they were presented. That change turned out not to cause significant difficulty from the registrar’s point of view, since we ended up with one fewer person using certificates than we had anticipated. However, certificate holders were quite prone to change their plans, and in several cases, we learned only informally, if at all, that people we were expecting were not coming. In several cases, the people they would have been sharing rooms with ended up, in effect, in single rooms, and JMU will charge us a higher rate for those rooms.

Here’s the detailed breakdown on certificate use by Monthly Meeting. The number in parentheses is the total attendance from that Monthly Meeting. As you will see, for some Monthly Meetings, the certificates made a big difference in total attendance:

The Committee should know that 17 of the 36 people who attended on certificates stayed more than two days. This group accounts for 115 people days of attendance, which means that the average stay for a certificate holder was a little over 3 days. Generally, either the people themselves or their Monthly Meetings paid for the additional days. In at least one case, there’s work still going on to decide who is going to pay for those extra days—the Monthly Meeting or whether BYM will allow one individual to use more than one certificate from their Monthly Meeting to stay for more than two days.

From anecdotal comments I’ve received from several Monthly Meetings and my own experience at Langley Hill, I’ve discovered that this program was very well received at many Monthly Meetings but turned out to be much harder to administer than anyone anticipated. Monthly Meetings needed time to work out how to take advantage of the offer. At my own Monthly Meeting, the Clerk first misunderstood the concept of the certificates; then lost them; then, because they were lost, couldn’t recall which committee was supposed to receive them. Once in the hands of the right committee, we found it difficult to agree on how to identify the appropriate people to offer the certificates to. We found it impossible to allow Friends sufficient time to consider whether to go to Yearly Meeting this year and still meet the July 9 registration deadline.

Rebecca Rawls, Registrar