Pardon me if I wasn’t clear, but never said there hadn’t been communication. It just had been dropped for an extended period of time and not by me (although the most recent e-mails I had sent were not through my school e-mail, which might have created the oversight).
For this, I’d like to point to your advice that it would probably be more appropriate to give me at least more than 3 hours for me to respond to that e-mail before making an insinuation on a public forum.
I apologize for my defensive tone on the manner (I can sense that permeating even as I write this) However, it is an overarching feeling I get in my correspondences with individuals associated with IDSA that the blame for frustration is always on my end. I would agree with Yo on this manner that IDSA needs to “reengage their base, not alienate them” because even as the president of our IDSA student chapter, I do feel a sense of alienation from the professional and national sphere.
Our student chapter functions very much outside the influence of IDSA itself, and besides the associated name, we really act as an autonomous organization. We are lucky enough to have the president of IDSA national as one of our professors at Carnegie Mellon and I have had discussions with him over the transitions IDSA is going through and their new efforts to connect with students. Nevertheless, I have yet to see any real manifestation of those efforts and it is much more productive and useful for our chapter to take the reigns into our own hands and make connections with professionals outside IDSA, than to wait. All of this, coupled with communication and/or membership issues, leads to a sense (and I’m only representing the opinion of myself here) that IDSA may not be the appropriate venue for students.
I digress now since this I’ve strayed off the topic, but I felt it needed to be stated.
And for a shameless plug, http://idsa.cmustudents.org/ is our student chapter’s official blog. I think we’re doing a really great job this year connecting ID students together and with the outside world. We also really want to share our experiences with the rest of the ID community (hence new website and twitter) so we can get feedback on what we’re doing and how to improve.