Phone Chain:

· Tell people to write resolutions

· Encourage people to take CGIII survey

AGENDA

Thursday

3pm OBGLTC comes to chat

4pm Phone Chain and Job Jot report backs

5pm Book it to the Anti-Bush PARTY!

7pm Dinner a la Megan

8pm At-large Selection

Later Worship with Segan Melby

Friday

9am Opening Spirituality Minute

9:05am YPS and YPD Reports

9:35am “Jesse talks about stuff and things”

10:00am Energy Break

10:10am YPS Selection

12:00pm Lunchy Munchy

1:15pm YPS Selection continued

2:10pm Energy Break

2:30pm CG3

Thursday March 25, 2004

Present: Jova Vargas (POCC), Kyle Butler (PNWD), Jason Lydon (YPS), Jesse Jaeger (YPD), Tim Murphy (Adult At-Large), Annie Powell (TJD YCR), Asha Philar (Canadian At-Large), Meggie Dennis (POCC), Laura Manning (Jr. High TARR), Megan Selby (YPS)

Absent: Katie Whitworth (POCC… arriving at 3pm), Jazmin Sandoz-Rosado (POA… arriving at 4pm), Hannah Eller-Isaacs (PSD YCR… absent entire weekend), Jose Ballester (BOT rep to YRUU… absent entire weekend)

Check-in

Kyle lights the chalice by showing us all his new tattoo… a really nice chalice on his back.

Break until 3pm when OBGLTC comes to present

Simona Munson and Keith Kron from OBGLTC join us

The Office of Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Concerns work on Queer issues. Lately they have been Marriage central. They also work on Welcoming Congregation stuff and providing direct service to congregations: preaching on Sunday mornings, workshops, and consulting. Also do referrals to other organizations. Currently working on The Welcoming Congregation 2.

The Welcoming Congregation program is a volunteer program that congregations can begin to intentionally become welcoming to bisexual, gay, lesbian, and transgender folk. 14 workshops revised in 1999. They give suggested action steps to become more welcoming but the only thing they have to do is vote to become a welcoming congregation.

The office was created at General Assembly in 1973, the first staff person didn’t start until 1975 and she was only ½ time. Kiersten Homblette is an intern in the Washington Office that is working on BGLT Concerns.

On Monday March 29^th there will be another go at making a Constitutional Amendment to make marriage an act between a man and a womyn. Keith and Simona let us know about what is going on all over the US, and Canada, and the world around same gender marriage: Massachusettes, New York, San Francisco, Oregon, Ottawa, Quebec. 4 states: Hawaii, Alaska, Nebraska, and Nevada currently define marriage as between a man and a womyn.

How could the Welcoming Congregation model be used in YRUU groups: youth groups, districts, YAC/DYSCs, Youth Council.

What ways can YRUU and the OBGLTC work together?

Welcoming Congregations/groups- OBGLTC could work with representatives from districts to get a program together to apply to districts
SATUURDAY
getting a queer youth pamphlet updated for OBGLTC (there could be 2: one directed at youth and one to adults)
there could be youth readers to review the Welcoming Congregation program.

Check out www.uua.org/obgltc for more info.

Review covenant

What did we have a hard time with at the last meeting?

Step up, step down

Listen

Stay present

We should work extra hard on these pieces of our covenant this time.

Review Job Jot

Annie

· Sending a photo ready image of design to the Youth Office to be sent to printing company

Asha

· Keeping the Canadian at-large application the way it is right now

Meggie

· POCC application is done

Laura

· Has the note for Synapse about selling art at GA

· Seattle Young People’s Project is not really an option because they don’t do that kind of training.

· Will work with the next TARRs to create responsibilities of TARRs

Katie

· Went to RCRC meeting in DC and would like more time to talk about it later.

Jazmin

· ConCon staff selection has happened, and she gave a good letter of how SC will support her. The theme will be Putting Our Faith in Action.

· Put CG3 survey together.

· Nothing has happened with the ConCon Revisioing Taskforce

Jova

· Nothing has happened with Special Events since last meeting but the group will meet this meeting

Kyle

· We can’t use the money from PNWD

Tim

· Redid the adult at large application and sent out notes to encourage specific adult to apply

· Wrote a job description of adult on Steering Committee

Youth Office will report in later

Phone chain

· Metro New York (Jodi Slezak)- will have social action and AR at every conference.

· Central MidWest (Gareth Smail)- doesn’t call people back. That BITTY!

· Alicia Gladman- region is having difficulty getting events together. Fundraiser:a t-shirt series having one principle on each t-shirt

· Trevor- Saint Lawrence is good. Had their first SDC in a real long time and it went real well. They have a new YAC but we don’t know who it is yet. There is poor communication between Saint Lawrence and QuOM

· Dale- QuOM has 2 new YAC members. Daffney Volante is the new SAC. Trying to get youth to the AGM

· Western Canada (Rachelle Rickards)- having problems with the current age rage (12-22) but the national age range is 14-20 so youth on the ends of the spectrum can’t go to national events like CanUUdle. Power dynamics here.

· Sylvia (director of Lifespan Development)- doing well. Working hard. She’s working on the Renaisance module.

· Mass Bay (Genevra Bucklin-Lane)- LDC went well. Could really benefit from an AR/AO training. Massive con is being planned for Memorial Day weekend, and may be changed to a greater New England event.

· Erica Lantz (POCC)- no report

· Clara Barton (Brianna Rioux)- no report

· Florida (Katie McCauly)- no report

· SouthWest (Amy Leyenberger)- Anti-Racism conference is happening next weekend. Amy made an AR packet to hand out at conferences and hyping up the AR Con. There is a new YCR who has been elected and she and Amy are having a transition period right now. New YCR will take over this weekend.

· Mary Ellen Morgan (adult)- no report

· Jessica Akhavein (POCC)- no report

· Hope Johnson – ministering to folks and did the AR training at the DRUUMM conference

· Molly Freeman-lynde – sad that term is coming to an end. Suggested to apply for post high TAR

· Marissa – no report

· Jerry Franklin – no new report

· Lance – no report

Liaison

· Freedom School- had a talk about their relationship with YRUU. They want our communication to keep happening and think it’s exciting to have them doing trainings at our events. Would be interested in getting YRUU’ers down to Freedom School for this summer.

· LUUNA- Jazmin hasn’t talked with them, but has heard that there are a couple of chapters open and met a few members at the AR Welcoming Congregation meeting.

Go to the Anti-Bush Party!

[Note: At this point SC goes to a rally where people are protesting George W. Bush’s presence in Boston]

Why are we going?

· To be in community with other people who are pro-humanity, it’s nice to know that other people share your views

· To put our faith in action, speak up for/support the issues we believe in (ie: pro same gender marriage, spending money on education not war)

· It’s good for us as a Steering Committee to go together, to take advantage of being in community with one another beyond the Rice Room in Picket and Eliot.

We should chat about it when we come back.

PROCESS of the Bush Protest:

Some of it was very “us against them”. Yelling at folks on the “other side” and that is not always the most effective thing, and leads to more hurt for self. It was pretty funny to see the pro-Bush folks there. Much different from protests in New York that Jova has gone to in the past. Fun to see folks one knows. Meggie loves Bush and plans to vote for him so she felt a little marginalized at the protest (jk). It’s always nice to be in a big group of folks yelling and agreeing. It’s rejuvenating. The protest was very negative, anti this and anti that. It was hard to find anything to support. This was Kyle’s first protest like this and it was good to feel supported. How can we share this with YRUUers? It would be cool if we supported FUUSE more and supported different protests more and promoted social activism more. These protests could be interesting to write about in Synapse for the Steering Committee Speaks.

At-Large Decisions:

Jr. High Rep. Nora Lindsay

Adults – Nan Moore and Rick Roehlk

Post high TARR – Gregory Boyd

Friday March 25, 2004

Jazmin absent until 4pm (had to go to school)

YPS and YPD Reports: Any questions about what we wrote? No? Good.

Jesse gives us the goods on the budget

Review budget and how YRUU and Youth Office spending is going. ConCon continues to lose money. Steering Committee needs to help out by getting people to attend this year. One of the ways to help get people to ConCon and to get people to apply for staffs and other positions (CLDC, at-larges) is to do better outreach.

Addition to the covenant

“ turn cell phones off or to meeting mode”

YPS Evaluations

There used to be a YPS evaluation that involves steering committee that has fallen apart. And the evaluation that the YPD does 3 times a year with YPSs is bogus for our purposes because it imposes things for people that will be at the UUA long term and it doesn’t apply to YPSs. Jesse proposes that a few people work to create a new evaluation process, maybe YPD, 2 SC members, and a former YPS. Jazmin could be on the group. Asha volunteers to do it. If Jazmin is not interested Laura will work on it.

It might be helpful to have a conversation among Steering Committee about what would be helpful to have on a YPS evaluation.

BRAINSTORM

· Working group of SC for each YPS

· Review selection notes and trust the YO

· Positives and deltas

· Megan says that she doesn’t think it will really be useful to YPSs to have SC help with the evaluation because YPSs have a pretty good grasp on what we do well and what we need to work more on and the YPD definitely helps with that. But it would be useful to review the evaluations with SC so that SC members would have a better idea of how YPSs are doing and it would help them have a more realistic idea of what to look for in selecting new YPSs.

· Improve and shorten YPS self evaluation form

Working Groups that need to happen for Youth Council

Special Events, AR/AO, Business- CG3, A-teams, Worship

AR/AO and Business will meet now and Jova and Meggie will look through the notes from previous SCs and see if we’re missing any critical pieces. Annie and Megan will revise this weekend’s schedule.

Report Backs from working groups:

AR/AO report back- We’re going to use Challenging White Supremacy this year. There is concern that there are only white trainers so we are either going to get someone from the AR ToTO or someone that Katie had been chatting with from Howard. They all need to work together so that we can address that concern this year. Jason has been emailing with Chris Crass so we wrote him an email to address his questions about what we want for the training and that we think it’s important for them to meet over the phone with this working group. We were thinking it would be good for SC folks who have experience leading ID groups to lead them at YC this year. We want the rest of SC to brainstorm how we can incorporate AR into all the different parts of Youth Council and if we want to do something like the hunger banquet.

Tim Fitzgerald shows up so now we have to deal with him

Last time we gave Tim the proposal on the choosing of the youth trustee and board observer. The working group from the board has endorsed the process and now Tim is bringing it to the nominating committee to figure out how to bring it to the rest of the board for a vote. Tim has been trying to figure out how to get the observer more linked to YRUU and possibly having the trustee on steering committee as a functional position. This could address some of the issues of accountability to YRUU for the observer. This could also help bridge the gap between the youth and adult communities. There is a Board meeting in April and Tim is SUPER PSYCHED about it, PUMPED really!!!!! Would it require a bylaw change to add the observer to the Steering Committee? The answer is, basically… The Board has offered to pay for the observer to go to youth council. It would be a lot of time for the observer to attend all of the SC meetings but maybe the observer could attend only half of the meetings. Tim wants to NOT be the observer again this year but encourages the position to be a two year position starting this year so that it runs opposite the Trustee position. Tim has been asked to write a proposal about the position of the observer being on Steering Committee. If they only came to half of the SC meetings that could complicate their role. It would make sense for them to go to Youth Council for sure. It has been really helpful for Tim to come to the meetings thus far, but because he lives in Boston it is much easier because he can come in for just an hour or so. It is also important to clarify the difference in role between the Board representative to SC and the youth observer. SC needs to invite the observer formally if that is the intention. Thanks for coming Tim.

Process check

Cross check of last year group:

Covenant group (talk about what the purpose of everything at Youth Council is) Plenary (which we call business)

Business:

First Plenary 2 ½ hour session with the last ½ hour over lapping SC. Cover how to do resolutions, what does SC do and what is the process, what is ex-officio, YPS reports and then folks will begin writing resolutions

Second plenary 1 hour session – YPD report, some district and region reports (what is the purpose of the district and region reports? Maybe we should put that out to the rest of youth council so that there is a goal in mind. Have a couple minute start off for folks at youth council about what they want to get out of these reports and then folks will tailor their reports to that Could push the discussion about purpose to the first session thus giving more time to tailor report. Maybe there could be a form in the pre-packet with questions for folks to answer. Have a big piece of paper at Youth Council for folks to look at and write their reports when they get there . Ideas for folks to address: what works and what doesn’t in district/region, greatest strength and struggle, what AR/AO/Social justice work are you doing, what trainings have you had and what trainings would be most helpful for your district, what went really awesome and why, what didn’t go well and why, how many cons/rallies, anything else you feel EVERYONE needs to know, SAC info and other important people the youth office should know.)

Second part 2 1 ½ hours continue writing resolutions and district/region reports

Third Plenary 3 hours 1^st hour be a Resolution Circus of the resolutions that had been put in the prepacket and try to deal with at least one or two of them in the rest of the couple hours

Fourth Plenary 2 hours deal with rest of resolutions

Fifth Plenary Deal with rest of Resolutions and do YFUUD reports and SC elections

Steering Committee facilitating the business meetings needs to be discussed and planned out before Youth Council happens. It might be helpful to have a facilitation team during the resolution discussion so that there can be a support person and one person can take the lead

More AR at Youth Council

How are we going to incorporate AR into all the different aspects of Youth Council? How are we going to clarify the role of all the different folks? Some event like the Hunger Banquet?

POCC report: Decided to accept Sean Jones, Buudha Quant, and Lehna Huie as people to be part of the caucus. Applications will continue to be accepted until June 1st with a roll over acceptance process. Katie will write up something for Synapse and the website. The relationship with DRUUMM YaYA is yet to be determined.

All of SC needs to be a part of the AR at Youth Council not just the trainers. It might be helpful to have a meeting with the trainers on the day before Youth Council. Really need to stay present during the AR training as a good example for everyone else. Really important to talk about the importance of doing AR during the business section so that people keep that in mind as they are making decisions that affect so many people. Need to share the history of AR within YRUU and hopefully that would encourage people to do the AR work more if they understand where our focus comes from and how they can influence it. Jenny Dunmore is working on the history and she’ll be at Youth Council. Any ideas for AR special events? School art project like at the New Orleans training, hunger banquet, movie and discussion, identity art work,

Later Working Groups: Common Ground III, People of Color Caucus

Sponsorship for Day of Silence and March for Women’s Lives

March for Women’s Lives is April 25 in Washington D.C. It’s about pro-choice issues, womyn’s rights, comprehensive sex ed., and more. There is also a gender conference being organized for Saturday night to Sunday morning and if we want to sponsor the march then Annie can bring back information from Kiersten and we’ll decide later. We will sponsor this march as we have already.

Day of Silence: Some issues about why queer youth should be “silenced” for another day as a way to resist homophobia/heterosexism/anti-queer sentiment. Annie and Laura have done it in their schools and it has at least brought up the issues to folks. Supporting this would be good and really encourage straight folks to be silent for the day and let our constituents know about some of the issues we’ve talked about. Steering Committee will write a letter to the Day of Silence folks and tell them that YRUU supports but has some concerns.

How to support RCRC: We need someone to replace Katie next year so if you know of someone let her know. The meetings happen in D.C. Maybe in the future there can be an application for someone each year or every two years and the decision could be made at the fall Steering committee meeting. It would be good if we worked on doing better at being clear about our liaisons.

Bike Rack:

Board of Trustee Observer attending Youth Council?

We don’t have to pay for this person. We have money for three folks to attend the board just has to pay for the travel. Steering reached consensus on bringing this person.

Funding for getting SC to GA:

Two folks are completely paid for. Those who did not register on time will pay the $50.00 more. It’s about $600.00 per person. Youth Office will reserve rooms for SC at the hotel.

Accountability:

SC has discussion about how to be more accountable to each other and to their roles.

Movie: A Long Way Home

Discussion

Break up into the working groups: Worship, A-Teams and Schedule. Report back will be in the morning.

Saturday, March 27, 2004

Practice Consensus: SC is taking turns facilitating discussions on Consensus applying it to pizza and then choosing dinner.

Process: Jason says y’all did a GREAT!!! job. We need to choose folks who will facilitate different parts of youth council. It would be good for there to be teams of facilitators as you can help each other.

Plenary Session: 1 Jova and Jazmin 2 Annie and Tim 3 Meggie

4 Kyle and Asha 5 Katie and Hannah 6 Laura

YFUUD discussion - Jazmin

Working Group Report Backs from last night

Schedule:

They chose times for pool going and decided that folks should go to the beach on Thursday for lunch. Switched worship to before Super Secret.

A-Teams:

Within each A-Team someone will be picked as the agitator after YC. The names of the groups will be after some cool-ass person. Buddy set ups with one older and one new person. Do the activity about school project that we did in New Orleans within the A-Team. A-Teams come up with cool ways to make anti-racist/anti-oppressive schools. Community building and karaoke and dance parties. Push folks past their comfort level a little bit

Worship:

Hannah has all the notes from last time and we have planned out the first and last worship and there will be a worship committee meeting at lunch time each day. There will be a main theme that will be in the pre-packet and it will tell folks to get in touch with the worship committee if they’re interested in being part of it.

Common Ground III:

THANK YOU JAZMIN!!!!!

Jesse and Jason tweaked the survey a little bit so that it could be easier to answer.

· -Y’all need to decide if there are any changes you want to make.

· -Also you need to decide if you want to go with the joint cover letter from SC and Bill.

· -Third thing is that we’ve gotten the active and inactive congregations and you all need to do your calls.

· -Survey looks great with some little changes (Jesse has the changes on a copy that SC edited). ---As for the letter that Jesse compiled of Bill’s letter and the SC letter there are also some minor changes that Jesse has as well.

· -Possibly the deadline could be right after GA so that we could get a last run of folks to fill it out.

· -we need to interview churches and fill out the survey for them: SC members need to pick churches they will call.

· -some people want to interview more churches: be accountable and don’t take on more than you can handle.

CG3 stuff at Youth Council

LET’S START USING THE TIMER!!!

· -Wayne Arnason can’t come come to Youth council to talk

· -other people who might be good to speak: Laila Ibrahim (sp?)

· -consensus on Leila being officially invited to youth council: Jesse will invite her

· -Bill at youth council?

· -concern over him taking ownership of CG3

· -SC needs to announce it and support it, not because Bill thinks it’s a good idea

· -we need to be intentional about our partnership with the UUA and the board

· -let’s have a conversation with Bill at GA about Common Ground and him coming to youth council

· -we should discuss about having a clear relationship around Common Ground

· -need to talk about history of YRUU and common ground 1 and 2 at youth council: Leila will talk about this if she comes

· -Jesse has been acting as a go-between for Bill and SC: Kyle will email Bill to invite him to youth council and ask about a meeting at GA with him

· -Laura, Jova and Jazmin will work on the CG3 resolution, using JumpDown’s draft

· -the resolution will be done by GA so SC and Bill can look it over before Youth Council

· -Katie, Jova and Meggie (with consultation from Kyle) will work out SC’s meeting schedule for GA.

And the fabulous…. TIM FITZ!!!!! Why does he always show up around lunch time…?? Oh wait! We invited him. He has an exciting proposal on green paper…. Sounds like amaaaazing fun!

Proposal about the Youth Observer to the board:

· -we need to go through youth council to change the bylaws

· -adds youth trustee and youth observer to youth council

· -it’s easier to change the policies and procedures than the bylaws

· -JJ: the policies and procedures of YRUU are a big fat problem… no one really knows what they are

· -it would be ok for the trustee to be at youth council as a non-voting observer because there would not be constituency issues then

· -proposal to finalize youth observer term and attendance at youth council are solid proposals and hopefully should be passed but the youth observer on SC has logistical issues

· -SC members in general support the bylaw change so it’s actually official

· -we can invite anyone we want to youth council, as long as we have money for it- and there is money for bringing the youth observer and trustee to youth council

· -since we are overbudget for youth council, we could ask the BOT to contribute 250$ for the YT and the YOB

· -Jesse says that officially inviting the youth trustee and youth observer could become a policy/procedure so it is more fluid and easier to pass

· -there are issues with Youth observer being a member on SC: big time commitment!

· -ideas: phone conference with observer during SC meetings, the observer going to some of the meetings or part of all meetings.

· -report or exchange of information between the board observer and SC

· -meeting at GA and at Jan meeting

· -CONSENSUS: we are inviting the youth observer and youth trustee to youth council

· -someone from SC is going to write the trustee and observer a letter officially inviting them to youth council and asking the board to pay for them

WE ARE ALL SOOO SAD THAT MEGAN IS LEAVING!!!! TEAR FOR MEGAN! :*(

Sunday morning:

Brian Kuzma will be the September YPS.

Three members of Steering Committee stood aside on this decision.

We are having a conference call on Monday, April 12^th 7:00pm EST

YRUU Steering Committee

March 25-28, 2004

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Decision: Sponsorships

Decision: BOT and Youth Council

Decisions: Common Ground III Actions

· The resolution will be done by GA so SC and Bill can look it over before Youth Council

Decision: GA

Job Jot:

Jova

Kyle

Jazmin

Thursday

Friday

Present: Jova Vargas (POCC), Kyle Butler (PNWD), Jason Lydon (YPS), Jesse Jaeger (YPD), Tim Murphy (Adult At-Large), Annie Powell (TJD YCR), Asha Philar (Canadian At-Large), Meggie Dennis (POCC), Laura Manning (Jr. High TARR), Megan Selby (YPS)

Check-in

Simona Munson and Keith Kron from OBGLTC join us

Review covenant

Review Job Jot

Annie

Asha

Meggie

Laura

Katie

Jazmin

Jova

Kyle

Tim

Youth Office will report in later

Phone chain

Liaison

Go to the Anti-Bush Party!

Friday March 25, 2004

YPS and YPD Reports: Any questions about what we wrote? No? Good.

Jesse gives us the goods on the budget

Addition to the covenant

YPS Evaluations

Working Groups that need to happen for Youth Council

More AR at Youth Council

Later Working Groups: Common Ground III, People of Color Caucus

Sponsorship for Day of Silence and March for Women’s Lives

Saturday, March 27, 2004

Working Group Report Backs from last night

CG3 stuff at Youth Council