Ops in attendance: Amy, George, Memlock, Rob, Sassy, and Tim
Non ops in attendance: Chuck
Partial attendance: Golden1

George opened meeting with prayer at 11:09

Old Business

Approval of minutes
Amy moved that the minutes be accepted as they are posted on our website.
Jenel Seconded
The minutes were accepted
 

Committee Reports

Web Committee: The Web Committee Meeting did not meet this month.

Speakers Committee: Tim shared the following minutes from the speakers committee meeting

Minutes of Thu-5-Oct-00 meeting of SLAA Speakers' Committee
ChrisC (CLStan), Ella, TimF, and Van (C) were in attendance.  Tim introduced the background of the purpose and status of the committee.  One of the goals we set at a regular member's meeting was to have a monthly speaker.  He or she would share their experience, strength and hope.  This would occupy about 30 minutes, allowing some time for feedback.  We can draw on two major groups: Persons from S-fellowships who already have a substantial sobriety time, and guest speakers who are known in the field of sex, love, and codependency addictions and recovery.  Tim started some research some time back and came up with about 16 names of authors of relevant books.  Tim emailed those people and only got one response - and it was negative.  We did not yet email Dr. Weiss or Dr. Carnes.  Tim was hoping to have more background information about the time our room was created, etc. and maybe a few speakers under our belt to "get the bugs out" before we approached them.  What we are left with is about 33 specific email addresses of contacts from S-fellowships. This includes SARR, SRI, CoDA, COSA, SAA, SCA, SRA, SA, SLAA, RSA, and S-Anon.  Tim was hoping to start this off with JohnR - the founder of our current room.  Tim sent him one email over a month ago, and received no reply.  Tim hasn't seen him at one of our meetings in a very long time to approach him directly.  Tim's first goal is to resend him this invitation.  If we don't hear from John in a reasonable amount of time, we will ask someone from our own fellowship to volunteer for the first speaker engagement.  Another thought was toward anonymity of our six email addresses.  Just like we "created" slaa@mailroom for the officers, we could set up another email that would automatically forward any email to our committee without the sender knowing our individual addresses.  We were all in agreement and decided on slaaspkrs@mailroom.com for the address name. Van and Ella suggested that Tim send the list of authors who have already been approached to the committee so that we can see if we've missed any or if follow-up is desired. The committee agreed to meet again BETWEEN the next two members' meetings. The meeting was closed at 11:44pm EDT with the serenity prayer.

George gave a brief update on the Steering Committee meeting.  The committee did not meet this month but all of our current projects are in the works.  George has finished the changes to the guidelines but would like to have them broken down more on our home page.  He will be sending them to the web committee.

Feedback meetings
Rob brought up a concern about the feedback meetings.  Because of their size, he thinks that they are losing their personal touch.  He also mentioned that there is sometimes a problem of too many feedbacks for one share and a problem of the same people giving feedback to everyone.

The floor was opened for comment and several ideas were shared including splitting the meetings, adding an additional feedback meeting and establishing clearer guidelines for feedback meetings.

George asked Rob, Jenel and Amy to form a temporary committee to review procedures and come up with recommendations by the next member’s meeting.  They agreed to do this.
 

New Business

Ban of member
George brought up the ban of a member who was rude during meetings by making inappropriate comments and blaspheming God.  The infraction was discussed and everyone who commented agreed that his behavior was definitely not appropriate.

David moved that before this person be allowed to return to SLAA he must…1) Publicly apologize for his behavior.  2) Be willing to change his exit line.  3) Agree that if he has not positive comments, he will not give any comments at all.
Rob seconded
The motion was approved 7(+), 0 (-), 0 (x)

George also brought up the fact that someone had removed the ban without group consensus and expressed his concern about this.  He wants it to be clear that if someone places a ban, all should assume that there was a good reason for the ban and not remove it until there is a group consensus to do so.  David suggested that in the future an emergency meeting of all ops be held ASAP after any ban is placed.  This way everyone would be informed of the ban and the reasons behind it.

Elimination of non-supportive commentary during shares
George moved that we eliminate hellos, good-byes and any other non-supportive commentary during shares; that we modify scripts to enforce this and that leaders remind everyone during the meetings.
Amy seconded
Motion passed 7(+), 0(-), 0(x)

Tim requested the floor to bring up an item of new business.  George requested that he wait and bring this up at the next meeting since we were already over time.
 

David motioned to end the meeting
Amy seconded
Motion passed 3(+), 1(-), 1(x)
 

George closed the meeting at 1:08 with the Serenity Prayer