The Division II Presidents Council recently examined, but ultimately resisted, a concept from the California Collegiate Athletic Association to change the configuration of the Council.

Dianne Harrison, president of Cal State Monterey Bay and chair of the CCAA board of presidents, asked the Council during a Tuesday conference call to respond to a draft proposal that would change the make-up to equal representation based on conference affiliation. The current system uses weighted representation based on the geographic location of member institutions. CCAA members believe their approach would address some of the unique circumstances facing institutions in the West region.

The concept – similar to the regionalization model used for selecting teams to Division II championships and for appointing members to sport committees – would establish eight regions based on conferences, rather than four regions based on state boundaries, from which Presidents Council members would be appointed. For example, rather than Region 1 − which is currently composed of institutions from Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and West Virginia − the CCAA concept would establish the East region as institutions from the Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference, the East Coast Conference and the Northeast-10 Conference, along with seven other regions based on conference affiliation.

The concept also would include four at-large positions for a total of 12 Council members.

Currently, the Presidents Council is composed of 15 members based on weighted representation that includes one president or chancellor per the four membership regions (Northeast, South, Midwest and West) for every 22 institutions in that region. That has produced a roster that includes at least four representatives from the Northeast region (76 member institutions), four from the South (82 institutions), three from the Midwest (64 institutions) and three from the West (54 institutions). Two at-large positions also exist to enhance efforts to achieve diversity of representation.

That model has been in place since 1996 when the Association voted to federate its governance structure among the three divisions. At that time, Division II purposefully established conference representation on the Management Council but set up a system for the Presidents Council that would avoid conference influence and instead rely on the weighted regional structure.

From the discussion on the conference call, Presidents Council members don’t appear interested in changing what they regard as a philosophical cornerstone of representative governance.

“This new concept would represent a major philosophical shift,” said Presidents Council Chair Stephen Jordan of Metropolitan State.  “The fundamental premise of the Association is that it is a membership organization. The current Council composition provides proportional representation with respect to membership. We choose to act out what we do as an Association through conferences. I see the concept as one that would fundamentally change to proportionality based on conferences, not on members. I, for one, would not be comfortable with that approach.”

Jordan, though, joined other Council members in understanding the West region concerns, pointing to actions recently taken to help with travel (such as additional allocations from the Division II budget to defray costs). Jordan in fact offered to hold a special session with West region representatives on concerns that are unique to that region and ways that they might be addressed.

The Presidents Council agreed, however, that changing the way the Council is configured is not the right approach.

“For now it appears that the Council is not interested in a philosophical shift,” Jordan said. “But members pledged to work with the CCAA to make sure their ideas and concerns are being registered.”