It was the best of times, it was the wurst of times

You may have heard a variation of the analogy attributed to Otto von Bismarck: “Laws are like sausages. It’s best not to see them being made”; this is a popular position to take when outrageous headlines and reports are filling our news feeds daily. Luckily, there are many of us that in fact relish this process of lawmaking, whether in the public arena or in our very own American Chemical Society, where many of the policies that impact the 200,000+ people in the ACS community go through our popular deliberative assembly, the ACS Council, and the group that sits at the epicenter of the process, the Council Policy Committee (CPC).CPC is charged with acting as the executive committee of the ACS Council and is charged with many important duties: planning and running council meetings, preparing the slate of candidates for the Committee on Nominations and Elections, independently investigating ACS election concerns, and reviewing allegations related to councilor and alternate councilor misconduct. For the better part of the last 150 years, the CPC has provided representatives of local sections and divisions with the ability to share the concerns of their constituents on the floor of the ACS Council and to vote on the policies and actions that are passed along to the ACS Board of Directors to bring positive changes to our society.For the first time in its history, the CPC held a strategic planning retreat (SPR) on Nov. 15–16 to review its role as the executive committee of the council