Please make sure that you cast your vote AGAINST! videographers determining your destiny, Stenographers!!! Changing the bylaws is hard to do, but the videographers are persistent!!! If you think they are causing chaos now, imagine the damage that they will cause if we allow them full voting rights!!!
We have the power to stop this!
PLEASE VOTE AGAINST!!! … RIGHT NOW!!!
WAKE UP, NCRA!
FRANK N. SENSE
P.S. Polls close on 7/22/2022 (TODAY!) at:
10:30 a.m. Eastern Time
9:30 a.m. Central Time
8:30 a.m. Mountain Time
7:30 a.m. Pacific Time
4:30 a.m. Hawaii Time (Sorry, Hawaii! – But your votes are very important, too!)
P.P.S. If you have trouble casting your vote, send an email to: [email protected]
The polls are open!!!
We have received a number of inquiries from NCRA members about not receiving the email from NCRA with the voting link.
Please check your spam folders. If you receive the weekly email blasts from NCRA, they have your updated email address.
If you have questions, or need help voting, contact: [email protected]
But please VOTE A SOLID NO! to videographers becoming full voting members of NCRA. Please do not abstain!
There is NO REASON that videographers should be able to determine the destiny of stenographers.
Notice how the videographers have already banded together to even get these bylaws amendments to a vote – two years in a row? Aren’t you asking yourselves why? Well, all of us here at WUNCRA are wondering, too.
WAKE UP, NCRA!
FRANK N. SENSE
P.S. It’s not too late to get all of the NCRA members that you know to vote AGAINST!!! videographers horning in on the fate of stenographers. Polls are open until 10:30 a.m. Eastern time tomorrow.
P.P.S. Please vote NOW! while it’s fresh on your mind. This is very important.
VOTE NO! TO VIDEOGRAPHERS HAVING FREE REIN IN NCRA!!!
Please don’t put off this very important opportunity to VOTE!!!
Drive your own destiny!!! VOTE NO! … RIGHT NOW!!!
It will take less than a minute of your time.
WAKE UP, NCRA!
FRANK N. SENSE
P.S. Please spread the word to NCRA members that you know to VOTE NO!, too.
P.P.S. Very important!!!
Please Vote NO! on July 21 to Videographers Having a Seat in the Governance of NCRA!
The Destiny of Stenographers MUST Remain With Stenographers!
Thank you to the folks that let us know that even the Board of Directors of the Deposition Reporters Association of California oppose the proposed NCRA bylaws amendments: “… we do not feel that videographers have the same background, concerns, or vision of the future as working stenographic reporters …”
We want to reiterate that NCRA membership voted on this issue last year, and the videographers lost that election. Now they’ve tweaked the language a little bit, and here we are again. Why is the Board of Directors of NCRA putting us through this AGAIN???!
Also, please vote a solid No! and do not abstain when voting. Abstentions can muddy the waters.
Please make sure to VOTE NO! on every bylaw amendment on July 21st.
WAKE UP, NCRA!
FRANK N. SENSE
P.S. Please send this to every member of NCRA that you know so that they understand the necessity of their vote on the 21st!
P.P.S. Please place a reminder in your phone so that you remember to vote NO! on July 21st!!!
PLEASE SET A REMINDER ON JULY 21 TO VOTE NO!
TO VIDEOGRAPHERS BECOMING VOTING MEMBERS OF NCRA
The more we think about it, the more irate all of us here at WUNCRA are that the NCRA Board has allowed ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY for videographers to become voting members of NCRA. They LOST on this issue last year, and they are having another proverbial bite at the apple this year.
Why is the Board allowing this? Why must there be turmoil every single year?
Videographers are an adjunct service to stenographic court reporters. There is no reason for them to become voting members of NCRA! Videographers should not have a say in the destiny of stenographic reporters!
Every bylaw amendment that we will be voting on this year involves giving videographers the right to vote and to sit on the board of NCRA!
WE MUST VOTE NO! TO EVERY … SINGLE … BYLAW … AMENDMENT … AGAIN … ON JULY 21ST !
WAKE UP, NCRA!
FRANK N. SENSE
P.S. PLEASE! forward this post to every single NCRA member that you know so that they understand the importance of their vote this year.
P.P.S. Please place a reminder in your phone’s calendar to make sure that you vote NO! on July 21 to videographers becoming voting members of NCRA!
NCRA NEEDS YOUR E-MAIL INFO BY TOMORROW, JULY 8, SO THAT YOU CAN VOTE
NO!
TO VIDEOGRAPHERS BECOMING FULL VOTING MEMBERS OF NCRA
According to the main videographer relentlessly pushing her agenda – year after year – to give videographers full and unfettered access to the governance of NCRA, the videographers have been dedicating additional work to educate and persuade STENOGRAPHERS to vote in favor of these ill-conceived bylaws. She thinks that the only reason it didn’t pass last year is because of the number of abstentions. Please, let’s send her the message loud and clear that the reason is simply that we don’t want videographers having a say in the destiny of Stenographic Court Reporters!
The stuff that they say is misinformation is not misinformation at all. If the videographers get the vote and they can band together like they’ve been doing the last few years, it is a reasonable assumption that they can and will replace stenographers!
Once the rules are changed, anything can happen! And things that you cannot imagine occurring, will occur.
All of us here at WUNCRA believe that every single stenographic reporter member of NCRA can become certified videographers. We also know that very few videographers can become Stenographic Court Reporters!
Just because you like a particular videographer is not a good enough reason to vote in favor of these bylaws changes.
THERE IS NO REASON THAT VIDEOGRAPHERS NEED TO SIT ON THE BOARD OF NCRA!
END OF STORY!
WAKE UP, NCRA!
FRANK N. SENSE
P.S. Please send this to every member of NCRA to make sure that they are registered to vote NO! to videographers becoming voting members, directors and presidents of NCRA!
Don’t you feel like you’re being beaten over the head with this issue?
If you read the rationales, videographers don’t need to be VOTING MEMBERS to complement verbatim stenographic reporters; to assist in promoting proper technical research; or to cooperate for the benefit of the public. They should be doing these things already just for job security.
Here’s what they REALLY WANT: A say in who sits at the table, and to have a voice in their own governance.
NCRA is not theirs to govern. As we’ve said before, if they want a say in the governance of NCRA, they should become verbatim stenographic reporters!
Videographers are an ancillary service to verbatim stenographic reporters — just like exhibit displayers and concierges on Zoom; the people that copy, bind and Bates-stamp exhibits; and the synchronizers of transcripts and videos.
Allowing videographers as voting members is the first step in them “sitting at the table.” All they will need to do is band together and get enough votes to change the bylaws again, and in a few years we will have a videographer sitting as the president of this association!
And here’s another bee in our bonnet: Our president is giving a videographer the microphone at an upcoming Town Hall meeting so that the videographer can convince members to vote in favor of this amendment!
Madam President, your membership has voted many times already not to make videographers voting members of our association. It is WRONG on so many levels that you are giving her a voice at a Town Hall meeting. We are demanding that you not allow any influence over this issue.
Videographers are wanting the vote, and so many members who have the right to vote don’t take advantage of that right!
Please, let’s put this to bed once and for all! Let’s get as many members as possible to vote AGAINST allowing videographers the vote in OUR association.
WAKE UP, NCRA!
FRANK N. SENSE
P.S. Please forward this post to as many NCRA voting members as possible so that they will vote NO! on these amendments, too.
IAll of us here at WUNCRA have been spending a lot of time dissecting NCRA’s “Social Media Response” to their ill-considered approach to test retention.
The flimflam continues:
”It is unusual for a certification body to allow test-taking, from beginning to ultimate passing, to extend as long as three years. And it is to the NCRA tester’s advantage that multiple testing opportunities are offered throughout those three years. For instance, over that time a tester has 24 discrete occasions to take and pass all legs of the RPR, an unusually high number of opportunities in the certification world.”
Using words like “unusual” in this situation is so vague. NCRA decided to change a policy that’s been around for at least 50 years and has now been lopped out of existence because it’s “unusual” to extend testing from beginning to passing for as long as three years? That is absolutely ludicrous! It’s not unusual. The policy has been around for 50 years! What is unusual is not to grandfather the legs that have been banked for MEMBERS that have passed tests under almost onerous circumstances! Why wasn’t the policy forward-looking, if there was going to be a change? This makes no sense!
And since the RPR is the entry level to so many reporting students transitioning from school to work, why just allow 24 discrete opportunities to pass that test in three years? Why not give them 24 discrete opportunities to pass the RPR a year? Why hold anybody back from earning a paycheck for one second? It’s a skill. They can either pass or they can’t. So give these newly minted reporters as many opportunities as possible to get to work as soon as possible! -especially since so many have experienced “icing” * because of the testing scheme that NCRA has chosen to hang its hat on.
NCRA’s next bullet point is self-congratulations about all of the wonderful things that NCRA has done to notify members of this crazy, unnecessary change. They talk about 22 separate individual announcements in the JCR Weekly, print magazine and the website (we’re sure an NCRA employee was tasked with finding and counting all of those announcements). They talk about a one-page chart, a link to the chart, footers about the policy change and the deadline at the bottom of emails since January 2021. They talk about how they posted numerous ads in the publications and on social media. They go on to say that they sent postcards to the tester database from 2000 forward reminding members who have passed legs of tests under the most rigorous of testing protocols that time’s almost up. And, of course, the website even featured a countdown of the retention policy since January 2021.
But NEVER MENTIONED in all the flimflam is the reason for taking away tests from members that were passed under the most rigorous of testing protocols.
Wake Up, NCRA!
Frank N. Sense
*Please see the WUNCRA “icing” blog post from June 1, 2021.
Thank you to the WUNCRA readers who have sent us NCRA’s “Social Media Response” regarding NCRA’s testing retention debacle. We will endeavor to clarify NCRA’s doublespeak for pissed-off members who are losing their banked tests that were taken and passed under the strictest of rules.
They start out by saying:
”As a membership organization, NCRA always appreciates feedback from its members. The Board is receiving feedback and questions on the upcoming deadline for those who have not passed all finishing legs of testing in the allotted three-year period. This discussion, and Board vote over four-plus years ago, has been ongoing for more than five years, with progressive implementation taking place from 2016, so there is a long history of thoughtful and vetted steps regarding these actions.”
Yes, indeed, NCRA is a membership organization. And the members — that the Board represents and pays the salaries for NCRA’s employees — are vehemently opposed to this policy! The memo of “talking points” explains that the Board voted over four-plus years ago, and this has been on-going for more than five years. Had membership known and had a voice BEFORE the decision was made, NCRA would have known how upset membership would be over this awful decision. We must ask: Why was the issue even brought to the Board in the first place? This is a practice and a promise that has been in effect for time immemorial. Why has it been changed?
The memo continues:
”CAPR (Council of the Academy of Professional Reports, an NCRA volunteer committee established in our Bylaws and comprised of NCRA members who have attained the designation of Fellow), after research and consultation, made a recommendation to codify and better manage our certification process. The lack of an established policy regarding accepted length of testing and expiration of exam scores falls well outside certification best practices of any accrediting body.”
Whoa! There’s A LOT to unpack in that paragraph. Let’s blame it on the poor Fellows that volunteer for CAPR, and let them take the heat for this terrible policy! After all, they’re the elite of the elite, right? That’s the way to deflect the questions! BUT the questions remain: Why was it ever brought to CAPR in the first place? Who brought it to CAPR? You just don’t decide “Let’s go to CAPR to solve a problem that hasn’t been a problem for 50 years.” AND if CAPR decided to make changes to the policy, why not just make the policy forward-looking and grandfather the tests that were taken under the strictest of testing protocols? None of what NCRA has done here makes sense. NOT ONE BIT!
Enough! With NCRA’s used-car salesman “I need to check with my manager” flimflam (talking points). Membership needs some real answers AND it needs a restoration of NCRA’s policy of banking of tests that’s been counted on by its members for the past 50 years.
Wake Up, NCRA!
Frank N. Sense
We’ve been hearing A LOT from some very angry members of NCRA regarding the change in the exam retention policy that NCRA is implementing at the end of the year. As a matter of fact, we believe that anger over this issue is one of the hottest buttons since WUNCRA came into existence.
As a background, NCRA members have been able to take tests in “legs,” and those legs remained active until the final leg was passed – no matter how long it took.
Suddenly, out of the blue, NCRA changed the policy, requiring members who had been “banking” legs of certification tests to take the outstanding legs by December 31st, 2021.
Some of the outcries that we’ve been hearing against this new policy are:
- When the passing legs were banked, those tests were taken under the strictest testing standards. So why discount the veracity of those tests now?
- Those tests were paid for with hard-earned money, often requiring a lot of traveling when the tests were given at brick-and-mortar locations.
- Realtime Coach and its association with Proctor U has been ONE, BIG FLOP. So even members that have tried to comply with NCRA’s new mandate haven’t been able to because of the ineptness of the testing scheme.
- Proctors don’t show up at scheduled testing times – what does that do psychologically to a person taking a skills test?
- There is not a human to talk to when dealing with Realtime Coach’s and Proctor U’s business FLOPS.
- Being timed out (automatic failure) from uploading notes within the three-minute window while waiting for a Proctor U employee to come to the chat box. Then when a proctor finally arrives, and if they can be understood because English is a second language, they have no clue about what they are even proctoring!
- Proctors chime in in the midst of dictation of the skills test!!!
- Why does the Proctor U owl logo show up on computer taskbars weeks after a test was taken? CREEPY! Are there videos out there on the dark web of NCRA members walking in front of their computers in their underwear – or worse – we wonder?
- We have not heard one single word from NCRA regarding these issues with Realtime Coach and Proctor U!
- During the Treasurer’s Report at NCRA’s business meeting, there was a lot of self-congratulations about the amount of money that NCRA’s three-year testing deadline brought into NCRA’s coffers just in this last year. So, is that it? We now measure the success of any initiative not by how well it serves members, but by how much money it squeezes from members?
- When a policy is changed, people who have banked tests usually are grandfathered, and the policy only applies going forward. (When states implemented certifications, they didn’t require every stenographer who had already been working in the state to sit for tests – they were grandfathered in, making them certified stenographers in those states. We cannot find a state requiring certifications that has not had this as a policy.)
The above are just a few of the concerns cited off the tops of our heads since we have been inundated with emails here at WUNCRA.
This policy needs to be back-pedaled and re-evaluated, NCRA! Why was it even implemented? What prompted this dubious, money-over-members policy?
WE WANT ANSWERS!
WAKE UP, NCRA!
Frank N. Sense
P.S. Please send this to every NCRA member that you know, so they can understand the outrageousness of this dubious, money-over-members policy of NCRA, too.