The American Mensa Committee (AMC) is the board of directors of American Mensa, Ltd., no more, and no less. Its job is to assure the well-being of the society, to set policy for the society, to oversee the operation of the national office—our administrative wing, whose job it is to implement the policies set down by the AMC—and to take care of a certain amount of corporate business required by New York State corporation law. It's a big-picture group; it should have a 20,000-foot view of Mensa.

I often view the AMC as the steward of the members' trust. A steward, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, is "one who manages another's property, finances, or other affairs; an administrator, supervisor." I think that "trust" works well here, too, in both the sense of "the legal title to property held by the trustee" and "firm reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing; confident belief; faith." If we can say that the AMC is managing our society as we believe it should and that we have trust in its ability to do so, then likely the AMC is doing a good job of what it's supposed to do.

If we can't come to those conclusions, then perhaps we should look for reasons why we can't, and look for indicators that might help us to restore our faith in the AMC. When I agreed to write this piece for Going Forward, the theme had a familiar ring. I looked at my Chairman's columns to see what I might have said in the past, and this is what I found, from my first "Across the Table," published in the July/August 1993 Bulletin:

Without a clear vision of what we are and where we are going, we risk spending our energies and resources in misguided pursuits. As my wife Meredy has expressed it, "The ideology of the society determines its priorities, and its priorities determine how it allocates every kind of resource…"

Mensa is us. We are what we are. And Mensa is what it is. We can't lure new members with a promise of "services" more appropriately available elsewhere. What we can offer is the opportunity to enjoy the society of one's fellows in pursuits ranging from the serious to the frivolous, in activities as diverse as Colloquia, Gifted Children, MERF, the SIGs, and CultureQuest; RGs and AGs nationwide and worldwide; and a spectrum of publications filled with members' voluntary contributions.

The return to ideological soundness will not require yet another new and different approach or direction. All we have to do is remember what we are: a society whose purposes are to identify and foster human intelligence for the benefit of humanity; to encourage research in the nature, characteristics, and uses of intelligence; and to provide a stimulating intellectual and social environment for its members—just as defined in our Constitution.

Acting in its role as trustee of the members' resources, the AMC must provide sound administration of the society consistent with the desires of the membership. Mensa is a society of peers. It functions by shared responsibility, not by hierarchical dominance or by the tyranny of the individual over the group. This is the essence of the round-table society. Members of an AMC are peers to whom we have entrusted management of our society for a short period of time…

It remains my opinion, now as in 1993, that the way for the AMC to restore itself to a sound position as steward of the members' trust is to remember what Mensa is, what we are and what we do, and to remember that it operates from a basis of shared trust. It must also act consistent with the desires of the membership, which means that it has to be willing not just to listen to the desires of the membership, but to hear them and act on them.

Our role in the shared responsibility is to tell the AMC what our desires are, loud and clear, and as many times as necessary—and if an AMC member is not listening, then to elect one who will at the next opportunity.

—Richard Amyx
    dick@amyx.org
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