LOS ANGELES: The saga of Cerrell Associates CFO and would-be PRSA member Steve Bullock seems to have come to a close, with the society’s Los Angeles chapter finally agreeing to approve Bullock’s membership application.
LOS ANGELES: The saga of Cerrell Associates CFO and would-be PRSA
member Steve Bullock seems to have come to a close, with the society’s
Los Angeles chapter finally agreeing to approve Bullock’s membership
application.
It took several weeks - not to mention a heated e-mail exchange between
Bullock and board member Greg Waskul - before the application was
rubber-stamped, once again leaving the PRSA looking petty and hard to
please administratively.
Bullock’s application had initially been turned down by both the LA
chapter and the national association on the grounds that it failed to
show that he was ’engaged in the paid professional practice of public
relations.’ (PRWeek, Feb. 7). Despite having led account teams and
pitched for new business, Bullock’s title of CFO - often considered an
administrative-only post - apparently rendered him unworthy of PRSA
membership.
In one of several letters of protest to the group’s local and national
arms, Bullock maintained that his application clearly showed that his
work as well as his job description met the organization’s eligibility
requirements.
’What I tried to describe (in the application) was the working
atmosphere of a public relations agency,’ he wrote. ’We are all involved
somehow in the ’manufacturing’ of our product: public relations.’
Waskul said he was speaking as an individual rather than as a member of
the board when he chastised Bullock for failing to discuss the situation
with the chapter’s eligibility chairwoman, Karen White, and choosing
instead to go public with his protest.
’Considering what you do,’ Waskul wrote, ’you never would have been
rejected ... had you explained the scope of your job on your
application.’
The debate between the two, which was alternately polite and barbed,
centered on Bullock’s insistence that his eligibility be judged on the
basis of the application he originally submitted.
