The following are summaries of weekly club meeting programs in the month of June. Thank you to all participants and contributors!

June 4, 2013: Program – RVA Media Designed New Website for Midlothian Rotary Club.

Maureen Patterson thanked Dave Saunders for being the key to a successful transition from our old website to our new website and for his guidance and leadership. She then introduced our speakers, Rick Duncan and Isabel Howell from RVA Media. Isabel showed us our new website.The new website provides the following features:

  • Enhanced color pallet that is in line with Rotary International
  • Pictures and videos of our events
  • News and Announcements section
  • Links Facebook and Twitter
  • Events calendar
  • About Us page
  • Member Information page that can include name, picture, company, company website, email address
  • Link to district website
  • Link to Rotary International’s mobile app for finding meetings worldwide
  • “Become a member” page with a contact request form built in. A great feature is that depending on the type of information requested, the request will be sent to the appropriate Rotarian for response.
  • Charity Application page with information and links to required forms
  • Membership Document page that is separate from the main page and has no link. This will allow us to selectively share our documents by emailing the link when we chose to.
  • Sidebars that highlight upcoming events and recent posts to the website
  • A search toolbar

You can learn more about at RVA Media.com.

June 11, 2013: Program – Doug Rhoads – Atlantic Coast Conference’s Coordinator of Football Officiating.

Chuck Catlett, introduced Doug Rhoads. Doug gave a very informative talk on college football in general and officiating of the college game.

  • The footprint of the ACC has recently changed with Maryland leaving for the Big 10, Pitt and Syracuse coming onboard on July 1st, and Louisville and Notre Dame also joining.
  • College Football is the #1 sport in the USA, based upon TV viewers.
  • The ACC should be very stable through 2020 due to the ratified Assignments of Rights agreement now in place, whereby the member schools assigned all Football TV rights to the ACC through 2020.
  • The ACC has 12 officiating crews for football. Each crew is made up of seven officials. There is one alternate official, 15 replay officials, and 33 supplemental officials that work for smaller conferences. These supplemental officials are developed and will someday become ACC officials. Each game has seven officials on the field and two in the replay booth.
  • ACC officials are required to report to the game city no later than 6:00 p.m. on the Friday before the game. They watch a training video that is created each week using 35-40 plays that reflect “good calls” and “bad calls” from the previous week. During each game there are 8 to 20 cameras filming.
  • Several rules changes during the off-season focus on player safety. There are 200 different rules when you compare High School to College; there are 180 different rules when you compare College to the NFL.
  • Beginning this year, a player will face automatic ejection if he uses the crown of his helmet during a play or hits a defenseless player above the shoulders.
  • Doug gave some insight into instant replays. For a play to be reversed the following rules are followed:
    1. The on-field call must be considered to be correct.
    2. There must be indisputable video evidence that is beyond all doubt.
    3. The play must have made a competitive impact on the game.• 20% of reviewed plays are overturned.
  • ACC football officials are paid $1,800 per game plus travel expenses.
    Doug concluded by showing videos of controversial plays and asking us to “make the call”.

    June 18, 2013: Program – Richard L. Grosse, Dominion Behavioral Healthcare.

    Chuck Catlett introduced Richard Grosse. Richard graduated from Vanderbilt and then earned his graduate degree from VCU.

    Mr. Gross shared “sobering” statistics on substance abuse by youth in our Chesterfield community, with a hand out that detailed a survey conducted by S.A.F.E. in 2007. S.A.F.E. stands for Substance Abuse Free Environment, and was founded by Fred Carreras.  You can learn more about S.A.F.E at www.chesterfieldsafe.org.

    Key Points

  • Pot makes you stupid. This is because pot is fat soluble and stays in your system for a month or two. During this time it clogs receptors in the brain, which blocks learning. Because adults have working (vs. learning brains) the effect is minimal. However, because children have “learning” brains the effect can be catastrophic.
  • Many people believed that pot is a gateway drug. Legalizing it for medical purposes in California debunked that theory when there was no correlated increase in other drug use.
  • Parents should throw away unused drugs so that they are not available to youth.
  • Mr. Gross recommended that every parent watch a documentary detailing the drug culture in British Columbia titled ‘The Union”.