Hello, everyone. I miss you, and league. I’m overdue to give you a “State of the League” address and so this is it.When I took on directing the league, I thought the biggest ethical issues I would face would involve making rulings and dealing with the IFPA. I didn’t have the slightest idea I would end up in a situation that would require me to seriously consider broader social responsibilities. Unfortunately, that’s what happened, and it has been a very difficult and stressful position to be in. As an ethicist I’m very aware of the significance of my decisions and this has compelled me to spend a lot of time analyzing them and talking them through with my most trusted sounding board and league assistant, Joseph. Keep in mind that my concern is not primarily with the safety of vaccinated people but with the social responsibility of encouraging group gatherings at which I cannot be certain all participants are vaccinated.
Earlier this year we (Joseph and I) had arrived at the idea that if either of two conditions happened we would restart league. The conditions were A: 65% vaccinated in Ingham county or B: daily new infections of around 1 per 100K per day in Ingham county. Both of these things at one point seemed quite achievable and likely to happen by mid-summer. Unfortunately, A now seems further away than I could have imagined and B is no longer projected (unless a very unlikely shift in behavior happens).
There’s a lot I could say here but in the interest of keeping this relatively short I’ll cut to this. Despite the practical impossibility of reaching the benchmarks I had originally chosen, it does appear that right now the new cases per day in the county are declining sharply. Should this continue and should they stabilize at a relatively low level (e.g. under 5 per 100K per day), I would anticipate restarting league after the state’s broad reopening date of July 1, with the caveat that league could be suspended again if trends change. This would make our first meeting July 13 (second Tuesday of the month).
There’s some further news. As some of you may have heard, the IFPA has announced that sanctioning will resume on 8/1. This was a surprise as most people figured they would not be sanctioning anything for the rest of this year. Critically for us, they have stated that while no sanctioned play can be recognized between 3/17/20 and 7/31/21, leagues that had an interrupted season ARE allowed to resume and finish their season. In light of this, I am planning for us to finish Season 14, which we had just finished Week 5 of. However, we will have to wait until August to keep its official status. Since we are figuring on starting up again on July 13 (2nd Tuesday in July), my proposal is to have two meetings of warm-up tournaments. These will be unofficial, off-season, bragging-rights-only tournaments. One possibility, if it doesn’t seem too out of keeping with tradition, is to have the second meeting of July be Super-Ball XIV (the “Zen tournament” for Season 14) since that’s an unofficial league tournament anyway. We would have to base seeding on the partial season but I don’t think that’s a big deal. This would help with catching up since we are going to have issues getting back to our usual summer/fall and winter/spring league schedule (which may not seem like a big deal but it facilitates having a break around the holidays when most people are busy, as well as one during the summer).
