Delegate Assembly Update

At its meeting on 9 January in Austin, the MLA Delegate Assembly conducted elections for the Delegate Assembly Organizing Committee, the Executive Council, the Nominating Committee, and the Elections Committee. The assembly approved a motion to dedicate one slot on the MLA Executive Council to a part-time faculty member. The assembly also took up several proposed constitutional amendments stemming from the implementation of the new forum structure, which would affect the size and composition of the assembly. It voted that forum delegates would be elected by forum members rather than by the forums’ executive committees. The assembly approved an amendment that would give an equal number of assembly seats to each of the seven electoral regions, the number to be determined by the assembly, and voted to change the name of the category from “special-interest delegates” to “professional-issues delegates.” The amendments will go to the Executive Council for review at its February meeting and then to the membership for a vote. In response to a recommendation from the Executive Council, the Delegate Assembly approved increasing the years of MLA membership required for granting life membership to reflect that members continue to teach and work actively in the profession well past the age of sixty-five. Finally, the assembly approved an emergency resolution that the MLA “support faculty and students who challenge Islamophobic rhetoric and the increased militarism, xenophobia, and racism associated with the upsurge in Islamophobia.” The resolution will also be considered at the council’s February meeting. A longer summary of the Delegate Assembly meeting will appear in the Spring MLA Newsletter, and a complete report will be published in the May 2016 issue of PMLA.