2010 Proposal to Change the Hierarchy
The 2010 Proposal to Change the Hierarchy was designed by a coalition of members in order to replace the confusing and redundant hierarchy in place in 2009-10. On April 12, 2010, everyone in the Spacesim Office who was not willing to work on hierarchy was ordered out for a period of 20 minutes during which Samuel Baltz, Ben Paul, Matthew Pelletier, Arrian Amir-Rafiei, and Lyra Evans drafted a new Spacesim hierarchy. For a period of about a week following April 12, Samuel Baltz bothered every member and alumnus he could find for their opinion on the proposal, and found that the coalition's efforts were almost uniformly approved of.
Contents
New Hierarchy
The proposal would have the hierarchy arranged under the following rank categories:
1. Teacher Advisor
2. Commander
3. SubCommander
4. Lieutenant
5. SubLieutenant
Explanation of the Ranks
1. The Teacher Advisor position will remain unchanged. This person has absolute power and veto over everything.
2. Commander: These two will check each others' power to ensure that no one person will be making decisions alone. They do not have complete authority over any one area of the club; rather, they are labelled "Mission" and "Education" as job descriptions. Commander positions will preferentially go to grade twelves, and the holders are executives.
3. SubCommander: Subcommander positions will preferentially go to grade elevens or twelves, and the holders are executives.
4. Lieutenant: These positions will preferentially go to grade elevens, and the holders are executives.
5. SubLieutenant: SubLieutenants do not count as executives, unlike every other category. These positions are mainly cleaning and organizing and should preferentially go to grade tens, or to responsible grade nines partway through the year.
Explanation of the Roles
Mission Commander: the same as in the 2009-10 Hierarchy; this person will serve as Habitat Commander on the mission and will be in charge of determining everything that will happen on the mission.
Education Commander: this person mainly does training for, schedules, and is in charge of EEPs and Planetariums.
Deputy Mission Commander: the same as Subcommander in the current hierarchy; they will serve as Mission-Specific Lt. Cmdr. This person is basically a general aide to the Mission Commander.
External Affairs SubCommander: The PR Director, back from the dead. This person will, in consultation with both Commanders and the Teacher Advisor, act as board liasion, get funding for spacesim, and, if the education commander wishes, will contact elementary schools for EEPs and Planetariums.
EEPs SubCommander: This person will be the backup for EEPs. They will know the EEPs procedures inside and out, will go to all of the EEPs with the Education Commander, and will be ready in case the Education Commander is deathly ill and cannot make it to a scheduled EEPs. Ideally they will also be able to do Planetariums.
Planetarium SubCommander: The same as EEPs but for Planetariums.
Director of Web and Archives: Webmaster for short, this is the same as the current position in the hierarchy. This person is in charge of all of Spacesim's ancient documents, and in charge of maintaining and adding to the website. The Wikimaster answers directly to the Webmaster.
Tech Director: The same as Engineering Commander in the current hierarchy, this member is listed basically as recognition that they know a lot about electronics. They will tell you why you shouldn't plug just any card straight into a computer.
Office Director: Also back from the dead, this position is for cleaning and organizing the office. The holder of this position does not have the full authority to throw people out of the office, but will count as a senior member for the purposes of staying in the office. They also get to be alone in the office during designated cleaning periods (suggested: half an hour after school on Fridays when everyone is going to the work session anyways).
Quartermaster: This member is in charge of cleaning and organizing the storage module.
Wikimaster: This member is in charge of cleaning and organizing this website, the Spacesim Wiki.
Criticism
The reaction to this proposal was overwhelmingly positive, with the following concerns raised:
- Perhaps too many positions to fill every year
- EEPs SubCommander and Planetarium SubCommander are redundant ranks
The proposal was voted upon at the lunch meeting on April 16, 2010. The vote was near-unanimous, with all but one voting for and zero absentions. This new system will be used in 2010-11.
- Some believed the rank of "Office Director" should be renamed "Office Master" to fit in with the other SubLieutenant positions
Next Steps
Following the adoption of the 2010 Proposal to Change the Hierarchy, it is necessary to commission a study of the following items in order to ensure the Proposal's integration into Spacesim:
- Further identifying the individual roles of each of the positions in order to provide clarity of purpose to all applicants
- Development of templates for the Position Application Forms
- Canvasing of members to locate potential candidates for each position
- Selection of members to fill all positions prior to May 21
- Current organisation administrators must train their replacements prior to the end of the school year
