Being a Prospective

A prospective has virtually all the rights, priviledges and responsibilities of a member. The main differences are that they cannot have a key to the office, they are not to be given the root password to any of the SIPB machines, and they do not get a vote in elections. They also may not be added to certain sipb mailing lists, although there is a mailing list (sipb-prospectives) devoted to prospectives.

A prospective is expected to:

• Learn as much about the SIPB as they can tolerate. Good ways to do this are hanging out at the office, reading SIPB documents, looking through the office and learning where resources are kept, and just plain talking to people.

• Learn who the currently active SIPB members and the current prospectives are. Becoming familiar with the expertise of these members is also useful when being helpful and answering users' questions (see below).

• Attend SIPB meetings. Attendance at at least 4 meetings is required, and thus a one month ``probationary'' period as a prospective is required before nomination for membership. In general, very few prospectives are membered in only 4 weeks. The only technical exception to the 4-meeting rule are non-student, associate member prospectives, but in practice everyone has a minimum ``probationary period.''

• Help out with SIPB functions as much as possible. This includes projects such as documentation writing, programming, teaching SIPB courses over IAP, as well as day to day functions such as answering phones and questions, cleaning parts of the office (it almost always needs this), and keeping the documentation rack supplied. The prospective need not do all these duties, of course, but is expected to help SIPB within reasonable bounds.