OA COVID-19 Update

In light of the extension of the Governor’s stay-at-home order thru April for all of our counties, the Lodge Leadership has made some decisions regarding upcoming events.

April OA Ordeal/Service Weekend will be POSTPONED and rescheduled for later, possibly June (see below).

For continuity, we will be holding an April online Quarterly meeting on April 19 as this is normally the time we announce the proposed slate for 2020/2021 to keep on track with officer election which is typically held in May.

May will remain on the calendar FOR NOW and a decision will be made at the end of April based on how Covid progresses. Wee need a minimum of 2.5 weeks lead time to arrange food, communicate out to membership, etc, so around Apr 27-28 that decision will need to be made.

It was tentatively proposed to hold the April Weekend the first weekend in June (5-7). I independently verified with Kevin Huneke that most of Camp is currently unoccupied that weekend.
NOTE: This currently would conflict with the Section Conclave, however, a decision on Conclave will not be made until Easter by Section leadership. Many lodges in the Section indicated that in light of other Spring cancellations, they would want more time to prep their camps for Summer camping season likely in June. Various ideas are pending for Conclave, including postponement to Fall, or cancelling and shifting Conclave rotation by one year. In the case of cancellation, a contingency plan is available for Section leadership elections and succession. As soon as Section makes their decision, we can solidify Kittatinny’s plan. If Conclave is ON, we will attempt to hold 1 or 2 extra service days between late May and early June is state-wide bans are lifted.

To continue the practice of Social Distancing, any camping for OA Weekends we may do this Spring would be in personal tents in sites or if canvas is up, in camp tents and NOT in cabins.

Candidates will have the option to move their selected weekend up to 24 months from their election as described in National’s Directors update from March 27.

Also as per the March 27 National Update, Kittatinny will test the Online Election with Troop 575. We believe we have the technology in place to do this, and the unit leadership there has previously held troop-wide conferences online with success. Individual units will need to be able to satisfy the technical criteria in order to use this option, and will be evaluated on a unit-by-unit basis to make sure everyone in the unit is able to participate.

Also as per the March 27 National Update, we will extend unit elections as necessary thru July 1 to make sure each unit has the opportunity to hold one and elect candidates.

At this time, NOAC is still ON. Individual program registration opened today on the NOAC registration pages, and we are still encouraging Arrowmen to join the contingent and stay up-to-date with payments and program releases as they become available.