I haven't seen anything from the ARRL team that attended the meeting yet, Tom. We usually do receive a copy of the trip report from the conference so I know it will be forthcoming. I didn't feel there was any urgency in expediting the report. Occasionally we have an ARRL Officer attend with staff, but chose not to this year for a number of reasons. The meeting is usually rather boring and nothing happens other than a lot of disorganization, but the Spanish language issue, which really isn't an issue in this context, caught the attention of a few from the W5YI Report who aren't aware that Spanish language exams have been around for decades and given the current political environment surrounding illegal immigration is fanning the flames about it. Just as a bit of additional information for everyone, although I don't think we want to dwell on this now as it would just agitate the situation, the FCC rules do not prohibit a VEC team that is fluent in any language other than English from translating an exam and providing it in that language. If a VEC team was fluent in Farsi, for example, they could translate the exam and administer it to an exam candidate in Farsi. That would probably fuel a chat room comment from someone that ARRL supports terrorism! Anywho, I'm sure Harold will expedite our receipt of a trip report when he sees these emails. I'm quite interested in reading Maria's comments about how the NCVEC responded to our motion they voted down! My spin - ARRL's position and attempt is to tighten things up by having one standard and one translation based on the English version, but NCVEC rejected it. Joel -----Original Message----- From: Tom Frenaye [mailto:frenaye@pcnet.com] Sent: Sunday, August 05, 2007 9:23 PM To: arrl-odv Subject: [arrl-odv:15867] Re:Spanish Language Exams At 09:58 PM 8/5/2007, Joel Harrison wrote:
I started receiving emails today complaining about ARRLs push to establish Spanish language Amateur Radio exams. The emails are apparently being generated from a W5YI story as well as a spot in the ARRL Letter about a motion ARRL made at the recent NCVEC meeting.
I couldn't find any reference to the NCVEC meeting in the last two copies of the ARRL Letter. The W5YI web site has their story at http://www.w5yi.org/ama_news_article.php?id=203 Is there an ARRL trip report available from the recent meeting in Gettysburg? In the past they have been circulated to the Board. Sounds like we are doing the right thing in trying to move to one Spanish version - a web story on the meeting and this issue sounds like the right step to take. -- Tom ===== e-mail: k1ki@arrl.org ARRL New England Division Director http://www.arrl.org/ Tom Frenaye, K1KI, P O Box J, West Suffield CT 06093 Phone: 860-668-5444