April 11, 2005
| Spring Conference Minutes Wichita Airport Hilton |
In attendance: Anne Christiansen-Bullers, Johnson County Community College; Mike Swan, Butler County Community College; Gerard Attoun, Pittsburg State University; Stacy Sparks, Dodge City Community College; Janet Hallford, Hutchinson Community College; Dave Bostwick, Cowley Community College; Steve Workman, Benedictine College; Randy Brown, Wichita State University; Kevin Page, Benedictine College; Kara Cunningham, Pratt Community College; Laura York, Garden City Community College; Karen Roth, Garden City Community College; Gwyn Mellinger, Baker University; Dawn Mermis, Fort Hays State University; Lillian Martell, Friends University; Malcolm Gibson, University of Kansas; Anita Reed, Seward County Community College; and Regina Cassell, Washburn University.
Meeting was called to order by President Steve Workman.
Janet Hallford, secretary, passed out copies of the minutes from the fall meeting to those in attendance. The minutes were approved.
Dave Bostwick, treasurer, passed out copies of the treasurer’s report (see attached). He reported there are a few schools that still have to pay for conference and contest fees. Dave also said the Student Press Law Center accepted the $4,000 check from KACP on the third attempt, after Laura York hand delivered it. The CMA defense fund received $2,000 of this donation. Dave asked any member that had KACP invoices to be paid to give them to him.
Janet Halford then announced the KACP officer election results. She reported that ballots were sent by postcard and by email and there was a good response. New officers are as follows: Stacy Sparks, president; Gerard Attoun, 1st vice president; Kevin Page, 2nd vice president; Kara Cunningham, secretary; and Dave Bostwick, treasurer.
Kevin Page, 1st vice president, thanked the members that helped him with this year’s contest. He reported that the judge for the yearbook feature writing contest had not returned the 23 contest entries in that category. Kevin said he had attempted to contact the judge numerous times and will keep trying. When he gets a response he will send notices to members. Kevin also reported that 23 students from 14 colleges had entered the Journalist of the Year category.
Randy Brown, 2nd vice president, reported there were 219 attendees at this year’s conference including 27 advisers. He said this is 11 more attendees than were at last year’s event. Randy said the dates for the 2006 spring convention are April 9-10, 2006. A contract has been signed with the Wichita Airport Hilton for next year that guarantees a $78 room rate for KACP attendees. This year there were 52 rooms reserved by KACP members which is up from the 2004 conference.
Many members reported problems with the convention hotel this year. Problems reported included slow check-in process (only two staff at the front desk), rooms not being available on time (4:45 p.m.), not charging the guaranteed convention rate, and charging sales tax despite schools providing a tax-exempt number. Randy Brown said he would look into the problems with the room rates and sales tax to get those corrected. Randy also reported KACP was losing money on this year’s convention as the cost per attendee was a little more than the $40 registration fee.
Anne Christiansen-Bullers, Jackie Engel Award coordinator, reported there were three candidates for the award this year. Alen Wilheit, Humbolt High School, was the 2005 winner; he will be attending this year’s convention to accept the award. Anne asked the members if it would be appropriate to speak a few minutes about Jackie Engel’s life at the banquet before the award winner was announced. Members thought this would be appropriate. Anne will also be presenting the award May 7, 2005 at the Kansas Press Association Convention in Lawrence. Steve Workman announced that KACP sent flowers and made a donation in honor of Jackie Engel this year when she passed away. Anne volunteered to again be the award coordinator for the 2006 convention.
Kevin Page reported there was good participation from KACP members serving as judges for the Oklahoma Associated Collegiate Press contest. He said OACP donated $700 to KACP this year for serving as judges. Kevin reported that Brooks Garner, OACP contest coordinator, thought OACP would be adding a few additional categories next year. Kevin will give the information about judging the OACP contest to the new 1st Vice President Gerard Attoun. KACP has already committed to judging the contest again in 2006. This year, KACP used OACP members to judge some contest categories.
As KACP has already signed a contract with the Wichita Airport Hilton to host the 2006 convention, Steve Workman asked for suggestions regarding the convention location in 2007. Laura York suggested getting bids from various other hotels/convention centers in the Wichita area since there were problems with the hotel service this year. Kara Cunningham mentioned she thought the bid process should include the new hotel/convention center in Hutchinson. Randy Brown praised the Airport Hilton staff for being easy to work with this year and last year. Laura, Malcolm Gibson and Stacy Sparks all mentioned having problems with the Hilton this year. Laura praised the Wichita Marriott for hosting a good convention in the past, but did mention it was an inconvenient location for media tours. Janet Hallford praised the convention center in Hutchinson mentioning that it had an indoor water park. Randy and Stacy suggested the new convention center in Old Town, adding that there were many things for students to do in that location. Kevin Page, new 2nd vice president, will get the bid process ready to be sent by the fall retreat.
Steve
Workman opened discussion for the 2006 fall retreat. The
dates were discussed with the preference being October 1,
2005. Many members thought Lindsborg would again be a good
location for the meeting. Laura York suggested seeing if
one of the hotels bidding for the 2007 convention would
give reduced rates to host the fall retreat so KACP members
could assess the location and service. Gwyn Mellinger agreed.
Kevin Page will evaluate different locations and rates,
and book the event.
Randy Brown asked members for suggestions regarding how
to handle the Wichita Airport Hilton charging sales tax
to many attendees.
Gwyn Mellinger suggested adding two additional categories to the 2006 KACP contest. She thought an on-site, timed copy editing contest would be a great opportunity to recognize students with great editing skills. She suggested having winners at all levels: community college, private universities and public universities. Many members praised this suggestion. Gwyn will develop a proposal for this category and bring it to the fall retreat. In addition, Gwyn suggested dividing the news writing categories into two separate categories including spot news and interpretive/in-depth news. Laura York thought this was a good idea but that the second category should be for investigative reporting. She thought many other competitions had a similar category. Gerard Attoun thought if a change was done the category definitions would need to be very specific so different interpretations of the category title would be reduced. Laura suggested looking at category definitions from other contests. Gerard will do this and report his finding at the fall retreat.
Anne Christiansen-Bullers reported that Greg Harrell, former KACP member and officer, was having trouble with his pacemaker. Laura York suggested sending a card to Greg. Kara Cunningham will send a card next week.
Kara Cunningham reported seven students representing four schools submitted their resume to the KACP Resume Book. The resumes were sent to the Kansas Press Association and distributed to their members at the end of March. Kara mentioned she receives calls each year from newspaper editors with internship opportunities for students, and that many students submitting resumes had received internships in previous years. She encourages members to have more students submit resumes for the 2006 Resume Book.
Meeting
was adjourned.
Respectfully
submitted,
Kara Cunningham, KACP Secretary
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