There has been and continues to be a great deal of discussion about rotation. Rotation is the method of deciding where to hold the next university session.

If you have a kingdom that covers a great deal of land area (several states, or in the case of some kingdoms, one or more entire countries), then you should consider holding the university sessions in different areas of your kingdom on a regular rotating basis. This ensures that everyone will have the chance to attend a university session without having to travel hours and hours every time.

In the Kingdom of Ansteorra, Their Majesties, the Kingdom Minister of Arts and Sciences, and the Kingdom Seneschal concur on a date and solicit bids for the event. After that, the format is decided between the autocrat and the KMoA/S. There are also regional colleges, being fairly autonomous affairs, put on by local groups. The Shire of Northkeep does an excellent Winterkingdom event in late January/early February which has teachers and students in attendance from both Ansteorra and Calontir. The Baronies of Bryn Gwlad, Stargate, and the Steppes and others host similar events during the year, and there is often also a Western Regional Symposium on the Arts, usually sponsored by one or more of the gifted artists in that region.

Atlantia is a long, narrow kingdom. They try to rotate it North, Central, South, Central. But, many times, it comes down to who can come up with a free or really cheap site. The winter session is almost always in the southern region.

Eskalyan University has been set up as a baronial sponsored system, easily expandable to regional, principality, or kingdom-wide in the future.

How you want to divide your kingdom up into ``campuses'' is up to you. The Kingdom of Calontir took the north, east, south, west, and middle route. So they have five campuses. And they rotate in the same order every time. A session is held in the south, the next time it is held in the west, then it is held in the middle, etc. They roughly allocated a state to each campus, and then the middle is a section that covers pieces of several states.

The campus divisions do not need to follow the number of sessions per year. Taking the example of Calontir from above, they have five campuses, but hold only four sessions per year. So the north campus hosts a university session once every 15 months. If you are going to use the campus method, divide your kingdom up in as sensible and logical manner as possible. Not too few and not too many campuses. Either extreme can be a burden for your university board members.

Using campuses and regular rotation ensures that each member of your populace has an equal opportunity of attending a university session. The members of the populace on the east side of the kingdom don't always have to travel to the extreme west side of the kingdom to attend a session.

Use of campuses also allows you to assign a Regent to each campus. Ideally, the Regent would live in the campus area, giving you better balance on your university board. Then too, Regents would only be directly responsible for the university sessions held in their campuses area.

A campus is not limited to just one barony or one shire. All groups that exist in the area determined to belong to that campus are members of that campus. As members of that campus, they can rotate the hosting of a university session among the groups when it is their campus's turn to host the university session. This ensures that no one group is always ``stuck'' holding the university session. Again, this serves a dual purpose; if you have members who cannot or will not travel, they will still get the opportunity to attend a university session without too much hassle as some campuses may end up being ten travel hours wide and eight travel hours long.

Date last modified: 11/19/98

Please send your comments to: Kateryn de Develyn