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This has been an exciting year for me to be continually involved with this chapter. The singing valentines, the quality of our spring show, singing at churches in the summer, the fellowship of singing with you all, and singing at other community functions continue to be great experiences.

I have discovered that the responsibilities of this office are closely aligned with the office dealing with chapter development. In fact, almost anything we do as a chapter has public relations implications -- from our singing at community events and our spring show to providing grants to public school teachers seeking to augment their music programs that otherwise would not be possible. After reading all of the grant proposals from the public school teachers, wouldn't it be great if had the luxury of granting all of the requests.

In November I began a new activity with the Manhattan Mercury. I provided the Mercury a report about our Board Meeting to be included in the Club News section of the Sunday newspaper. It was published on Sunday, November 24. The December report was published last Sunday, December 15.

In preparation for our Clay Center show on Sunday, February 2, I have prepared an article, and drafted another one for the sponsoring Clay Center group to use in articles for their local newspaper. I am also looking into publicizing our spring show with an ad in the McCain program booklet for the balance of the

year.

After attending the International Convention in Portland last year, I was wondering how we could involve more college age guys to participate in our chapter meetings. As the fall semester began at KSU, Rodney Stanfield and I visited

with Dr. Jana Fallin, director of the Music Education program at K-State about the feasibility of involving college students in our style of music and our chapter. It looks like there could be a merging of interests where students could have the opportunity to gain ensemble experience by singing with the chapter and we could have the benefit of some talented young voices. Although Dr. Fallin has given us a positive, yet a preliminary, verbal response, much has to be done by the Music Education department and by our chapter before this idea can become finalized.

Each one of you is invited to think of ways we can tap potential men who would enjoy singing the barbershop style of music. A few years ago, when I attended COTS, I heard about a way to identify a group of men who could be invited to sing with us. We could invite local men still living in the area and who sang in high school glee clubs. We could identify these men by looking at high school yearbooks for years between 1970 and 1980. These men would be men between 40 and 50 years old. If someone would volunteer to do this research, we could set up a program to invite these men to visit one of our chapter meetings. We could expand the music sound of our chapter and do more

things as a chapter!

Harvey Kiser

V.P. of Public Relations

[Editor's Note: This article didn't fit in the December issue of the InCider Press]