- Curious to see how the mood of the membership has changed over 5 years. (I was looking for a link to the results from the 2018 survey, but one didn’t jump out. The search function on the CAS website was especially unhelpful with this.)
- Really curious to see how the survey gets spun in a positive way if the answers aren’t positive. (i.e., “there were a lot of negative answers, but we’re ignoring them because we don’t think they’re representative of membership as a whole [and since a lot of the membership didn’t bother to respond, we assume they’re happy with how things are going].”)
- Anyone want to set an over/under on the response rate?
- I just wanted an excuse to use quinquennial.
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Survey is out and it’s long.
One question that caught my eye:
They also inquire about what they should be considering in selecting locations for meetings:
Annoyingly, there’s limited opportunity to provide freeform comments.
This question is so incredibly offensive – I encourage people to not take the survey.
If there is a move to not take the survey, folks so inclined may want to send an email or something explaining their intentional non-participation.
Otherwise the CAS will not think to consider the potential bias in the survey results.
I strongly encourage people to call the CAS Office at 703-276-3100 between 9am and 5pm eastern and remind them that human rights for LGBTQIA and disabled people aren’t subject to a vote.
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I had thought about declining to complete the survey on the grounds of my declining to engage with the CAS until they do something about having meetings in hostile jurisdictions…but then I realized the point I mentioned in my prior comment: Being silent would allow the CAS to be oblivious.
So I left many answers blank, and expressed concerns in every appropriate free-text field I encountered.
I also realized that a couple of the free text fields in the last questions of the survey don’t seem to have character limits…so I repurposed one.
I’ll also mention that we seem to be able to edit our responses after initially submitting the survey.
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The CAS isn’t oblivious to the harm they cause. They deliberately choose the harm they cause.
I feel like they tried that.
Plus, in general, discussion forums are dead with a capital D.
Bummer. I was hoping they’d mention how many people had completed the survey so far, as an enticement to everyone else who hasn’t completed it yet to go join all the cool kids.
Emphasis is mine.
Now I want to know what their idea was behind that question, but I’m bothered by “… whether we should select inclusive and accessible settings” because that now reads to me as “you know what, it’s really not a concern for us - if it happens, great, if it doesn’t, anyone excluded can suffer or do without.”
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Interesting. I’m genuinely surprised they listened.
Did they listen or did they just remove the question so they dont have to tell us about all the negative responses they got to it?
Actually, I’m pretty sure that it was just tone-deafness on the part of whoever put the survey together.
I can see them having had criticism of meeting location choices for multiple reasons, not just holding a few of them in Gilead, and someone thinking they ought to figure out “what matters”, as they work to promote attendance and make them fiscally viable.
If they had asked the question without mentioning accessibility and safety concerns, we’d be criticizing them for seemingly ignoring such considerations.
And if they had phrased it as “in addition to disability accessibility and LGBTQIA tolerance…” I suspect they would have taken flak from some for being “too woke”. 
It’s what happens when the room where the decisions are made doesn’t have any diversity it in. The CAS has a hostile culture that makes old white dudes hold the majority of committee positions, which contributes to the hostile culture.
For a start, our 3 appointed directors shouldn’t have titles like CEO, they should have titles like social worker or teacher.
Just a general question from someone is is still wet behind the ears:
Everyone loves to hate the CAS for a plethora of reasons. Why doesn’t someone run with the platform of reforming the CAS, adding diversity, a more transparent exam process, etc? It seems that there is enough resentment that such a platform should gain some traction.
The past couple of years, there have been folks who ran for the CAS board with DEI matters high on their apparent list of priorities in their candidate Q&As.
Keep in mind also that CAS members here are not an unbiased sample of all CAS members…
Broader member sentiment seems to be reasonably against anti-DEI folks…or at least an anti-DEI slate of candidates was pretty soundly voted against last year. However, despite that, the CAS still has been doing some pretty tone-deaf things.
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Actions come from volunteer committee, not just the board. Volunteers are mostly end of career consultants/retirees, which is still heavily skewed white and male. Unless the board makes it a priority to make things like the survey committee and the meetings committee more diverse, which might mean forcing long term volunteers away from roles they like, it’s not going to meaningfully change.
Remember: your likely to be ignored if it’s not complimentary always valuable feedback in the CAS Quinquennial Survey can still be submitted before the survey closes on November 3. Get your comments in before it’s too late!
When does the CAS release the results of the survey?