Top 10 – Stop the Booze Party

Unless things have changed in the past few years, there is a HUGE drunk party that is thrown in conjunction with General Assembly. Delegates and General Assembly staff persons drink, and drink, and drink. This party is facilitated by General Assembly staff persons. The party is not held at the official hotel of the General Assembly. It is not, and I repeat, NOT an official function of the General Assembly meeting.

I use to be a chaplain at one of the colleges related to the PCUSA. We were informed that the Presbyterian College Chaplains Association, the United Ministries in High Education and another higher education group sponsored the event (I don’t remember the name of the third group). The funding of the party rotated each year. The year it was our group’s turn to fund the party I strenuously objected. The GA staff person told us that the way you got things you wanted from General Assembly was to rub elbows with the delegates and staff at the party. He also said that if we stopped funding the event he had other groups just waiting for a chance to do it. Reluctantly, the Chaplains Association voted to fund the party with the provision that our president would be there to see what actually happened at the party. She came back horrified by what she saw. She said that she had never been so embarrassed to be a Presbyterian. There were gallons and gallons and gallons of rum and vodka. There were kegs of beer. People were drunk out of their minds. At our next meeting, the Presbyterian Chaplains Association voted to NEVER fund the party ever again. The GA staff person told us that another group would take our place.

The Stated Clerk should mandate that GA staff and delegates avoid that party. Staff should be fired if they show up. Delegates should lose their vote. It is outrageous that a drunken, booze-driven party is associated (either unofficially or officially) with the General Assembly meeting