[Artemisia] Reply to Morgan's Original Question

[Allen Hall]

Hello All,

I sent the following to someone who had asked me about Morgan's question.  Here it is, you can contact me _privately_ if you have further questions.

First of all, read Kingdom Law and Corpora.  Kingdom Law has very good
job descriptions, Corpora is the ground rules for the SCA "Game".  My
replies in red.

Now, on to Morgan's original question:  "Kingdom
Officers, when your Warrant/time in office is coming to an end, say 3
months prior to the Warrant's expiration, if you want to continue in
the office, what do you do?  

Typically,
the Officer will know well ahead of Morgan's 3 month suggestion,
whether they want to stay on or not.  If they wish to step down, they
probably will have made that known on something of the order of 6
months ahead of time.  Usually they will inform the Crown and Seneschal
of the fact.  In cases where they are a deputy to a great office,
they'll let that person know.

If that person wishes to stay on,
they typically let the Crown and their Society counterpart know that. 
If the Crown or Society counterpart wants to let them continue, that's
pretty much about that.  However, if the Crown or Society counterpart,
for whatever reason, wish to let the officers warrant expire, and them
step down, then that will be communicated to the officer.

Realistically, given our severe lack of officer candidates, this is extremely uncommon.

Do
you simply privately ask the Crown and your Society superior to renew
your Warrant, or do you publish/announce that your Warrant is ending, 
that you would like to continue, and that you welcome/request input
from the Populace, to see if someone else is interested in stepping up,
or if someone has an issue with you continuing in the office?  

This
would depend on the officer.  However, I believe it is completely
insane to solicit comments about their renewal.  There are ALWAYS
someone who is a gadfly or has an agenda, and will have negative
comments.

If someone is interested in stepping up, they should
notify the Crown, Seneschale and the Officer that they are interested in
taking the office.  This should be done well ahead of time.  Then the
person can spend some time being the primary person's deputy and learn
the job.

Someone who wishes to take over a job, but has no
experience, wishes to get no prior experience as a deputy, etc,
probably would not be selected by a reasonable Crown or Society
Counterpart.  Stepping directly up into a Kingdom office, with no prior
experience, is a disaster in the making.  It's happened, and
experience, across the known world has shown what a really, really poor
idea it is.

What do our various Governing Documents, i.e. Corpora, Kingdom Law, etc., say regarding the end of a Warrant period?

To the
best of my knowledge (without doing the research), there are no specific rules about how this is
done.  The rules do talk about warrants being 2 years.  It is a widely
accepted practice for Officers to stay on for a year, or even a
complete second warrant term.  That is what I am just completing.

For
example, in my case, at the end of my 1st warrant period, there was NO
ONE who had expressed any interest.  I was still enjoying the job,
doing a adequate enough job that the Crown and the Society Earl Marshal
were more than happy to renew me.  Then I started soliciting a
successor.  I hit up the Knights and let them know that I would be
stepping down in Dec. 2009, and that it would be MUCH better if a
knight were to take over the office.  We have had a non-belt Earl Marshal, and other Kingdoms have as well.  But truthfully, they run into "barriers" that make them less than effective on a Societal level.  Not saying it's right, just saying it's so.

Do any of our Kingdom Offices have a Warrant that runs longer than 2 years?"

The
short answer is all Kingdom Warrants are 2 years.  As I said above, in
many cases Officers have extended for a year, and several others for a
full second 2 years.  In a couple of cases, Officers got "stuck" in
jobs longer than 4 years.  Not a good situation, and it burned them out.

I
hope this help explains how the system has worked, and continues to
work (as I have seen it and experienced it, over a long time and over multiple Kingdoms).  It has a good foundation, but allows for enough flexibility to work in the real world of people.

Alan