Public Biography

The Greater Washtenaw Star Trek Society is a voluntary fan organization founded in 1987 and headquartered, for purposes of correspondence and internal elections, in the basement fellowship hall of St. Jude’s Episcopal Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where it has met biweekly since 1993. The society has approximately forty-two dues-paying members, ranging in age from nineteen to eighty-four, drawn principally from Washtenaw County and, to a lesser extent, from the adjacent counties of Monroe, Livingston, and Jackson.

The society’s founding charter, which has been amended twice, states its purpose as “the preservation, discussion, and dignified enjoyment of the Star Trek canon.” A series of internal bylaws, adopted in 1994 and substantively revised in 2004, defines the operative boundaries of “canon” for internal purposes — a definition that has, in the society’s history, produced four separate schisms, three of which were resolved within the same meeting and one of which resulted in the 2008 departure of seven members who went on to form the short-lived Livingston County Trek Fellowship.

Society business is conducted according to a modified version of Robert’s Rules of Order, with a standing exception permitting members to quote dialogue from any televised Star Trek episode during debate without first being recognized by the chair. The treasurer, Dennis Halvorson, has held the position since 2011. The society publishes an internal newsletter, Subspace Quarterly, which is mailed to members four times a year and has never, in its eighteen years of publication, appeared on schedule.

Annual dues are $24.

Private Profile

Culture: Quietly serious. The society does not permit costumes at regular meetings — this was resolved by vote in 1996 — and discourages, though it does not formally prohibit, the use of Klingon during new-member introductions. Disagreements are conducted with elaborate courtesy and referred, when possible, to subcommittee.

Sore points: The admissibility of the Kelvin Timeline films in internal debate. The question of whether the society should formally recognize the animated series. The longstanding, unaddressed matter of Walter P. Stanfield’s use of the phrase “Jaunty Look, Petard,” which the society has, since approximately 2019, agreed not to address.

Useful for: Stories involving amateur associations, fan communities, parliamentary procedure in informal settings, internal canon disputes, or the quiet Midwestern infrastructure of niche interest groups.