How the Annual Meeting Site was Selected

How the Annual Meeting Site was Selected

The 2003 Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association takes place October 16-19, in Hartford, Connecticut. The Annual Meeting is based in three primary locations--the Hartford Civic Center, the Hilton Hartford Hotel, and the Crowne Plaza Hartford Hotel. How did the ASA make these decisions?

The Executive Committee began to consider possible sites for the 2003 annual meeting over three years ago. The principles involved in the selection of Hartford included geographical rotation in order to maximize attendance, diversify participation, and ensure a reliable budgetary surplus of convention revenues over expenditures. The Executive Committee considered the fiscal condition of the association, our ability to safely meet and freely conduct our business at the convention sites, the amount of local and regional support, the adequacy of the conference facilities, the employment practices of conference facilities and vendors, and the proximity of the meeting site to the majority of association members, when selecting Hartford, Connecticut.

Additional criteria for site selection are local support and an adequate conference facility. A location may have excellent conference facilities, but without local interest and support the Association cannot meet there. Nor can enthusiastic local backing offset inadequate meeting space. The Executive Committee was delighted to receive invitations from the New England regional chapter and from Trinity College's American Studies Program, which were willing to host the annual meeting. Once local support was assured and sufficient meeting space had been identified, the next step was to determine which properties would be used, if any choice existed.

Since 1998, the Executive Committee has employed Conferon, Inc., the nation's largest meeting planning company for associations and other non-profit groups, for site research, meeting planning, contract negotiation, and on-site coordination. The Executive Committee required Conferon to ask each property to submit detailed information on the property's union status, affirmative action efforts, and ADA compliance standards. Each bid included a statement of the facility's equal opportunity/affirmative action program, a statement from corporate headquarters regarding their stance on unions, and a statement on actual efforts to exceed ADA compliance standards. The ASA will meet only at properties whose employees are free to organize and be represented by a labor union. The hotels also provided client lists including groups with similar site selection policies to those of the ASA. The Conferon meeting planner submitted these materials to the Executive Committee for review before any property was invited to submit a formal proposal.

The ASA fully endorses to the NAACP Economic Reciprocity Initiative and Hotel Industry Report Card Project on hotels and conventions, which establish guidelines for labor policies that promote equal opportunity and social justice. The selection of Hartford reflects the ASA's long-standing commitment to economic and social justice through its selection of annual meeting sites.

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