> Like SOPA or dislike it, it seems to have been established with the best of
>intentions.  This aside, the question remains, why should members of the
>SHA have to pay for its (or ROPA's) continued survival?  I am a member of both
>organizations and if I remember correctly I had to send SOPA a healty check
>this year.  This seemed perfectly legitimate at the time, join an
>organization, be it the Internation Order of Odd Fellows or the Archaeological
>Society of New Jersey, pay the dues.  Many SHA members, and I would think SAA
>members, do not participate in SOPA.  Why should they pay for an organization
>in which they don't participate, and may not even be able to participate
>(avocational archaeologists for example)?  Simply put, how does it benefit
>them?  Perhaps some sort of voluntary joint membership would be a better
>idea.
 
============
Response:
 
I don't think that the current ROPA proposal is very far from your idea of
"joint membership."  Membership in ROPA would be voluntary, just as
membership in SOPA now is.  It is expected that sponsoring organizations
would encourage their professional members to become RPAs, but as you point
out, it would not be workable or desirable to make qualifying as an RPA a
condition of membership in broad-based, multi-faceted societies such as
SHA, SAA, and AIA.
 
I don't think any of us on the SAA-SHA-AIA task force on ROPA want to argue
that ROPA is going to solve all our problems or that it is necessarily the
best solution that could ever be found in an ideal world.  There are a
number of questions that can be raised about it, and discussions like this
one are necessary to get all points of view on the table.  On the other
hand, ROPA would be based on something that is already in
existence--SOPA--and we believe that a new ROPA under sponsorship of the
major societies will be more effective than SOPA has been in promoting
ethics and professional standards in archaeology.  And that would be worth
doing.
 
In the next several paragraphs, I'll try to make the case for ROPA, based
on the discussions we had in the Task Force meetings:
 
Promoting ethical behavior and professional standards is already part of
the mission of archaeological societies such as the SAA, SHA, and AIA.
Sponsorship of ROPA will allow these societies to further this goal in
concrete ways without their each having to create an accreditation or
grievance-resolving structure from scratch.  Keep in mind that the majority
of the costs of ROPA will be borne by the RPAs themselves, just as the cost
of SOPA is currently borne by the members of SOPA.  What is being proposed
here is that the major archaeological societies put their weight behind
specific mechanisms for promoting ethical and professional standards by
becoming sponsors of ROPA.   Sponsoring ROPA will cost SHA members only a
little more than $2.00 per member per year.  Costs of SHA sponsorship
cannot go up without approval of the SHA board.  Each sponsoring
organization gets a seat on the ROPA board, and members of a sponsoring
organization get a break on their annual ROPA renewal fee, thus providing
an incentive for professionals to join one of the sponsoring organizations.
 
I think that those archaeologists who are willing to commit their time,
money, and reputations to ROPA in order to more effectively promote ethics
and professionalism  are justified in wanting to receive some minimal level
of endorsement and support from the major archaeological societies, which
presumably share these goals.  ROPA would not duplicate what the sponsoring
societies are already doing, but would establish concrete mechanisms for
promoting professionalism and dealing with failures of ethical and
professional standards.  Maintaining ethical and professional standards is
important to the entire field of archaeology, and to public acceptance of
archaeologists as serious professionals.  This will benefit students and
avocationals as well as professionals.
 
Broad-based, multi-functional societies such as SAA, SHA, and AIA don't
have any way of setting base-level requirements as to who should be called
a professional, or for sanctioning gross violations of ethical and
professional standards by their members.  ROPA would start with a
time-tested peer-based mechanism for taking on such problems.  Its
requirements and sanctions would of course apply only to those SHA members
who were also RPAs.  The expectation is that SHA sponsorship and
endorsement of ROPA would encourage more SHA members to become RPAs.   SOPA
has not been ineffective, but it has never had enough members, and
surprisingly, it has never had the formal support of the major
archaeological societies.   Establishment of ROPA under the sponsorship of
these societies provides an opportunity for the field of archaeology to
build a stronger capacity to promote professionalism and deal with problems
in its own ranks.
 
Thanks for putting up with my overlong postings.  The ROPA proposal raises
important but rather complex issues, and discussions such as we are having
about basic issues are essential so that everyone understands the proposal
thoroughly before voting on it.
 
Bill Lipe
Co-chair, SAA-SHA-AIA Task Force on ROPA