Non-member

From SWILwiki

SWIL officially claims that it has defined its membership criteria to include all beings from the moment of their birth or creation (hence the epithet "A nondeterminate set of sentients, devoted to order and chaos"). These membership rules exempt only those who officially apply to SWIL to have their membership revoked; however, SWIL is so constructed that membership bears penalties, not privileges, such that the privileges of voting on official SWIL business, holding elected office within SWIL and so on are only extended to non-members. Thus, if one can prove one falls in the set of entities relevant to SWIL -- sentient beings -- one can remove oneself from the membership roster and gain all the privileges therein.

This is a roundabout way of saying that SWIL more or less systematically exchanges the terms "member" and "non-member" from their normal usage, the actual *membership* of SWIL being its "non-membership" and vice versa, allowing SWIL to proudly proclaim that the club has billions of members without straining the holding capacity of Sharples dining hall too much at SWILmeeting. The actual chain of reasoning behind this was conceived after the tradition of calling SWIL's members "non-members" began, and so it differs from telling to telling -- some, for instance, claim that the requirement that one be a sentient being only applies to SWIL *non-members*, not members, and that therefore SWIL's "membership" contains all entities, not just sentient ones (including inanimate objects, mythological figures and abstract concepts). This makes things make a whole lot less sense, but since it is largely a moot point, the true size of SWIL's "membership" remains ambiguous.

One, therefore, becomes a non-member of SWIL by first attending three consecutive SWILmeetings in order to gain the right to prove one's sentience. That done, SWIL then revokes one's membership. A pun has developed around this practice, referring to the process of becoming a non-member as being "dismembered"; this is traditionally done by a SWIL president, miming removing one of the prospective non-member's limbs with a Sharples spoon (rather than knife, as Sharples spoons notoriously have a better cutting edge). Eliza Blair '07 recently donated a plastic lightsaber with a glowing interior and authentic sound effects for the purpose of making dismemberments more dramatic.

The post of "Master of Arms" was conceived of as a way of extending this joke, having someone officially be in charge of storing these imaginary limbs on SWIL's behalf, possibly in some hidden recess of George. When no one has requested the title of Master of Arms, this (imaginary) duty devolves back on the Presidents.

The only non-members who have actual powers in SWIL as a campus organization -- as opposed to alumni non-members, non-members from other schools or inanimate objects that have been dismembered as a joke -- are those who are currently taking classes at one of the Tri-Co schools. Such people are thus called "voting non-members" as opposed to "nonvoting non-members", although in practice "non-member" and "voting non-member" are often used interchangeably.

Voting non-membership technically confers only a very few tangible benefits -- the only SWIL votes that are recorded on paper, and therefore the only votes for which one's membership status will actually be checked, are traditionally SWILMovie voting and the presidential elections, the latter of which is nowadays only very infrequently a real election. Aside from the ability to influence SWILmovie showings, then, pursuing dismemberment is for the most part its own reward, as a way to show one's devotion to SWIL and go through the process of presenting an entertaining sentience proof.

Therefore, there are active SWILlies (though rarely the most active ones) who never prove sentience, and are in all senses referred to as SWILlies, SWILfolk, SWILniks, or other informal terms without being non-members. In other cases, many people are dismembered and then "go para" or lose interest in SWIL, meaning that the list of non-members and the list of actual SWILlies does not perfectly coincide (hence the widespread use of terms like "SWILlie" rather than "non-member" in the first place).

Although, technically, exiting voting non-membership nowadays does not lead one to stop being referred to as a non-member, in earlier times graduating and no longer directly participating in SWIL events carried the connotation of having one's "membership" restored, leading to the tradition of Senior Remembrances at the end of the year where one's limb is "returned" by the Presidents, sometimes with comments about the condition the limb is in after years of storage. Technically it is being re-membered that ends one's voting non-membership, not graduation, although in practice one is only re-membered just before graduation or, in some cases, after a reasonable length of time has passed after one has left the school for other reasons.

History of a Strange Term

The term non-member was used from the very beginning, and is present in the oldest extant SWILnewsii (http://www.swil.org/SWILnews/Fall80/9-28-80.txt). It has been in use continuously since then, despite worries in the early 80s, recorded in SWIL News during the Weyrleaders' first year as Presidents, that the term was scaring people off:

"Jack raised the issue that our off-beat "bylaws", specifically the "voting non-member" clause, might be giving us a bad reputation on campus and scaring some people off. We were worried about this last year as well; this year's Student Handbook description was toned down from last year's quite a bit. After much discussion, we took a vote on whether to change the terminology to straight-forward membership; Jack was defeated everybody to one."

One (possibly apocryphal) story for the origin of the term is that SWILer A was writing down a list of other SWILers, and exclaimed: "There are so many names! How will we remember them all?" SWILer B quipped that, if they were non-members rather than members, they wouldn't have to.

Other names used for non-members of SWIL have included SWILer (1978-??), SWILfolk (early 80s - mid 90s), and SWILlie (1995 (http://www.swil.org/shirts/1995/1995.html)-present). Jay Scott has insisted that the only appropriate term is SWILnik, punning on the bad-guy Zwilniks from the genre-establishing Lensman space operas by E. E. "Doc" Smith.

The Inverse

The inverse of referring to SWIL's actual voting meeting attendees as "non-members" -- referring to all other people as "members" -- is far less common in SWIL conversation, and the actual usage of both at once when contrasting "non-members" to "members" is uncommon enough that it trips up even experienced Swillies. Much more common nowadays, in fact, is the simpler usage of "Swillies" and "non-Swillies" when discussing such a situation. SWIL "members" are far more commonly referred to as "Campus", "Campusfolk" and "Campus People", a usage specific, consistent and widespread enough (and different enough from the way Campus says "campus") that Arthur thinks it should be capitalized.

Referring to someone as a "member" or the rest of Swarthmore's campus as the "membership" is now primarily only used in a context when the irony of doing so is immediate and obvious -- such as exhortations to avoid an action because it will "appeal to non-members but offend the membership", which has the opposite meaning in SWIL that it would in other campus organizations.

The suggestion has been made that a letter should be sent to Eugene Lang, reminding him that he has long been a member of SWIL, and suggesting he might wish to bequeath us with money for a castle.