wfn.org | Some Fear YADs are Harassed, Manipulated at General Assembly

[PCUSA NEWS <pcusa.news@ecunet.org>]

12-November-1999 
99383 
 
    Some Fear YADs are Harassed, Manipulated 
    at General Assembly 
 
    Youth Delegates called `ground zero' in PC(USA) arms race 
 
    by Alexa Smith 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The same old question comes up every year when the Office 
of the General Assembly (COGA) gathers for its first meeting after the 
annual GA: What should be done about youth advisory delegates, better known 
as YADs?. 
 
    YADs, it is said, jam up the microphones on the Assembly floor, making 
it hard for voting commissioners to speak. They use lots of committee time 
by speaking to the issues and raising questions. They're not always 
terribly well-informed on the issues. They are easily manipulated by older, 
more experienced and more sophisticated commissioners to continue a floor 
debate when the majority of commissioners long ago reached a decision. 
 
    COGA members have heard it all before. 
 
    Then there are the complaints that come yearly from some YADs 
themselves. 
 
    YADs tell church officials that they're harassed by special interest 
groups - from the far left to the far right - all begging for support in 
committees or on the plenary floor itself.  And yearly, COGA members shake 
their heads sadly and fret that GA events are so highly politicized 
nowadays that trying to stop Assembly lobbying would be like closing the 
barn door when the horse is long gone. 
 
    But this year, Rodger Nishioka - the denomination's young adult 
ministries' guru - showed up, and the conversation took an unheard-of turn. 
Nishioka would like to do away with YADs altogether and amend the Book of 
Order to require each presbytery to send one additional elder commissioner 
who is between 17 and 22 years old. 
 
    Nishioka admits that his proposal would throw off the historical 50-50 
balance between ministers and elders who handle business done by the GA, 
the denomination's top governing body.  But he is adamant that something 
needs to be done. The proposal, while not perfect, gives YADs full voice 
and vote rather than just an advisory one. It also helps stop the 
segregation of YADs into an easily targeted caucus for idealogues. "I'm 
seeing YADs targeted more than ever before," Nishioka told COGA, since 
special-interest groups want to control the YAD voice on the plenary floor, 
and the YAD vote in the committees that bring business to the floor. 
 
    Nishioka says YADs have "become ground zero in the escalation of the 
arms race." 
 
    While pressure on YADs is bad news to COGA; the good news is that it 
finally has a proposal to weigh, and can do more than just nod sadly in 
response to always undocumented charges that YADs are being manipulated: 
given prepared statements to read verbatim and, the new rumor this year, is 
that some YADs were electronically coached by cell phone. 
 
    There is this generalized sense that YADs are courted for their votes, 
as other commissioners are. But the YADs are courted with greater urgency. 
 
    "Enough YADs spoke to Cliff (Kirkpatrick, the denomination's stated 
clerk) or Freda (Gardner, the moderator), saying they felt pressured," said 
longtime COGA member - and now chairman of the Assembly Arrangements Work 
Group - the Rev. Bill Maloney of Pittsburgh.  "So we're asking: What is the 
best way for us to equip the next generation of church leadership? I'm not 
convinced the present system is helping us do that. ...  It is enabling us 
to look at the whole question of advisory delegates." 
 
    Each Assembly hosts four groups of advisory delegates who vote moments 
before commissioners do to reflect the opinions of ecumenical 
representatives, theological students, missionaries and young people. About 
173 YADs, one per presbytery, attend the GA each year. 
 
    YADs have voice but not vote on the plenary floor. More importantly (to 
special-interest groups), they have both voice and vote on the GA 
committees, the bodies that determine what business ever gets to the 
plenary floor. 
 
    Both ends of the ideological spectrum in the church agree that YAD 
power in committees is what attracts the interest, and the pressure. 
 
      The Rev. Jerry Andrews of Glen Ellyn, Ill., says he has watched the 
focus on YADs increase in the seven years that the Presbyterian Coalition 
has raised its conservative voice to ensure that the PC(USA) never ordains 
gays and lesbians. An Assembly committee, he said, may have 30 
commissioners and 10 YADs - which makes the YAD vote highly significant. 
Scott Anderson - who represents More Light Presbyterians, the group 
advocating most stridently for the ordination of homosexuals - has a 
similar take on the YADs' increasing political importance: "On a close vote 
[in a committee], YADs can influence the outcome, whether it is a majority 
or minority report. 
 
    "As votes get closer," Anderson added, referring to the church's 
repeated voting on the ordination question, "[those] votes becomes more 
critical." 
 
    A former moderator of the YAD Caucus and a two-time YAD, Zachary 
Wheeler of Philadelphia, says he felt the heat go up in the year between 
the Charlotte and Fort Worth GAs. 
 
    "Both sides are pushing, and pushing so hard ... It's a shame. It's a 
sin. But people want to win. They want to get their point across, and 
they'll do anything. 
 
    "YADs are very influential. We've picked the moderator the past few 
years," Wheeler told the Presbyterian News Service. "We're prepared well, 
grouped together and trained in ways they don't [train] commissioners. 
Commissioners rely on us. [YADs] know we influence commissioners to vote in 
a certain way. And the lobbyists know it." 
 
    What gets sticky is what lobbyists actually do, and how ethical it is. 
 
    Is throwing a pizza party unethical, now that the Assembly requires any 
event's sponsor to be made public?  Is it all right to wait outside the YAD 
caucus room late into the night, then to walk home with tired YADs, 
providing ready answers to their questions? What about prepared statements 
- which COGA members hear about but never see - readied for a YAD to read, 
as if he or she wrote it? Is slamming other interest groups during 
presentations in the YAD caucus - and turning it into a battle ground - 
appropriate? 
 
    Sinthia Hernandez of Miami - a YAD during the 211th General Assembly - 
said much of the pressure on YADs comes from older commissioners who arrive 
at the Assembly with their minds made up on an issue, and the much younger 
YAD may feel timid about expressing a different perspective. 
 
    Is the overall pressure too great? 
 
    "Yeah," Hernandez said quickly. "Yeah. Yeah." 
 
    Wheeler said he heard about, but never saw, the cell phones. He saw the 
prepared statements: One about abortion turned up under his hotel room door 
with a request that he read it; another appeared mysteriously at his seat 
on the Assembly floor - although no one but commissioners is allowed to go 
there.  The latter statement asked that Wheeler speak in favor of 
reparative therapy for homosexuals, something the Assembly did not endorse. 
He threw both statements away and deleted a voice-mail message he received 
in his hotel, asking that he speak on another issue. 
 
    Using YADs to keep an argument going on the floor or to extend debate 
is something that COGA members worry about, according to the Rev. Kerry 
Clements, an associate stated clerk - referring to times when well-meaning 
YADs line up at the microphones as: "a way to get things said that might 
not be said otherwise," even though the issue is clearly decided. 
 
    Spokepersons for special-interest groups admit that YADs are simple to 
lobby - they're the only coalition at the Assembly that is separated from 
the larger body for meetings and lectures. YADs often are sleep-deprived, 
because their nightly caucuses convene after the Assembly closes. The 
caucus is where lobbyists plead their cases. Lobbyists wait outside the 
caucus door, late into the night if necessary. Others sit-in, always 
present in the back of the room, listening. 
 
    Any Assembly activist will acknowledge that it is routine practice now 
for special-interest groups to bring young people to the Assembly with the 
specific assignment of befriending YADs. 
 
     Andrews said the Coalition pays the way for one former YAD to talk to 
current ones. More Lighters assign a few twentysomething supporters to the 
caucus. PPL relies now on a representative to the YADs, through the network 
of special-interest groups that define themselves as working for "renewal." 
The Covenant Network - an advocacy group that defines itself as the 
church's middle - plans to assign interpreters to the YAD caucus for the 
first time next year in Long Beach, Calif. 
 
    However, the grown-ups all insist that no one writes prepared 
statements for YADs or tries to manipulate them into reading them. 
 
    Longtime Assembly activist Jim Anderson, of Rutgers, N.J., says he's 
comfortable passing out "talking sheets" during More Lighters' briefings 
for folks to use however they wish. And he's also willing to suggest 
wording to a  YAD - or any other commissioner - who wants to speak to an 
overture. Terry Schlossberg of PPL says the same: When approached by 
someone who wants to speak on the floor, she'll help find the right words. 
"But I don't write for them. I'm careful not to," she told the Presbyterian 
News Service. 
 
    Some of those speakers are YADs, she said - YADs who want to speak. The 
distinction that needs to made, she said, is between manipulation on the 
one hand and resourcing on the other. 
 
    The Rev. Harry Hassell, lately retired to Brentwood, Tenn., is 
something of a GA politico, with years of experience organizing 
conservative strategies from his pastorate at Highland Park Presbyterian 
Church in Dallas. To cry that YADs are subject to lobbying  is 
overdramatized, he thinks. YADs - the United Presbyterian Church in the 
United States of America coined the term in 1969 - are lobbyists to other 
commissioners, hence the term "advisory delegates." 
 
    "They come as lobbyists. Most groups recognize that upstream, and try 
to get [certain] people elected, knowing that YADs vote just a moment 
before the commissioners themselves do," said Hassell, insisting that that 
puts them in a clear position of influence. Hassell said he is appalled at 
the thought of cell phones ringing on the Assembly floor. 
 
    Speeches? He assumes only about half of what is said on the Assembly 
floor is written by the person who said it; and that, according to Hassell, 
isn't a problem if they believe it. 
 
    "The process," he said, "is highly politicized." 
 
    Anderson, too, doesn't fret about the likelihood that that YADs are 
harmed by GA-politicking. 
 
    "Some YADs may feel [harrassed]. But that's not the general feeling. 
 ... This is our raucous form of government. And that's the way it is ... 
 
    "How do you police how people relate? I don't know how you'd do it." 
 
    Neither does COGA - or Nishioka, for that matter, who contends that, 
despite the confusion some YADs feel at the Assembly, most handle it well. 
Evaluation forms turned in at the conclusion of the Assembly do not reflect 
anguish on the part of the YADs, according to the Office of the General 
Assembly - and it acknowledges that the ratio of YADs to commissioners goes 
up slightly every year.  That's because the YAD population is stable, while 
presbytery commissioners are elected on the basis of membership - which is 
declining. 
 
    COGA is thinking about what it might do. It may come up with a 
YAD-microphone on the Assembly floor to limit the amount of time YADs 
speak. The Youth Ministries' Assembly planners, according to Gina Yeager, 
are considering eliminating time given to special-interest groups in the 
caucus, since it has become such a battle ground. 
 
    "We're keeping the YADS up too late," she said. "And they're 
exhausted." Yeager said the non-stop schedule is wearing, coupled with 
non-stop attention from activists: Some groups want worship time with YADs, 
some stay in the caucus room, and some wait outside late into the night. 
 
     Nishioka is waiting to see whether any presbyteries will put his 
proposal into a GA overture. He says he's heard that two are in the works. 
 
    "More and more pressure is being put on YADS . It is true ... and it 
makes me tired," Nishioka said. "In the past it has not been as blatant or 
as forceful." 
 
    Nishioka said he watched a YAD read aloud from a text and hand it to a 
visitor inside a committee room in Fort Worth. When Nishioka followed the 
visitor outside and asked his identity, he was told, "None of your 
business." 
 
    "These are new things for me," he said, noting that he's been involved 
with youth at the Assembly for 11 years. 
 
    Moderator Freda Gardner of Princeton, N.J., said YADs have told her 
that they feel lost and stressed out at the Assembly, mostly because they 
didn't expect the highly politicized, highly polarized atmosphere. The 
nature of Assembly-level work comes as a shock to adult commissioners too, 
she said: "The tactics used on adult commissioners and YADs are used by 
people with well-intended convictions. The truth is, we live in a very 
competitive culture. 
 
    "We know the strategies of the culture. And it takes a lot of 
discipline for Christians to resist the culture." 

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