I'm one of the section chairs for this year's APSA conference. Before I tell the story of what happened from my perspective, let me first point out that section chairs are powerless and unpaid volunteers. I'm an assistant professor who agreed to serve as section chair this year, mostly because I was told it's a good form of service to the discipline and would help me network in my subfield. I (as well as all other section chairs) receive absolutely no compensation, aside from being able to put our friends onto APSA panels, if you think that's worth anything.
After the pandemic made it clear that this year's APSA would have to be virtual, the section chairs were all invited to a video conference where APSA administrators discussed how the conference would transition to a virtual format. I wish I had recorded the entire conference call and posted it online. Here's what I remember...
Several section chairs questioned APSA administrators about whether registration fees would be waived (or at least reduced to a minimal level), since the conference was moving online. The APSA Meetings director (Ashley Bunte) claimed that APSA still had to charge registration fees because "our hands are tied". Which I took to mean that they just needed the money. When pressed further about this, Bunte claimed that APSA still needed registation fees to pay for the web-based virtual conference platform, which was being specially designed for APSA by a vendor.
At that point, many of us pushed back on this point. We pointed out that we could easily host every panel on Zoom, since virtually every university professor already has a full Zoom subscription. At first, the APSA administrators hemmed and hawed about how they needed to create a customized online platform for the "safety" of conference participants. But eventually, it became clear what they really meant was that APSA needed a way to keep non-registered people from logging on and attending panels, and Zoom would allow anyone with the correct meeting ID to attend any panel. In other words, APSA's costly virtual meeting platform was necessitated by APSA's desire to keep out non-registered people. And in turn, creating this web-based platform was the main cost that "justified" APSA charging a huge registration fee for a "virtual" conference.
A lot of us were clearly exasperated by this circular logic, but there was really nothing we could do. Section chairs don't have formal powers of any sort (aside from constructing panels for our section). And we had already, at that point, constructed these panels for the APSA program. So it's not as if we could go on "strike" to demand lower or waived registration fees for all participants. But many of us clearly wanted to use what little influence we had to make our displeasure about the conference known to the APSA administration.
We were given no specific details about the finances behind the web-based system - how much it cost, whether other bids were solicited, what would happen if the system failed, etc. But imagine my surprise when, this week, basically every APSA panel has been forced to transition to Zoom. Exactly as we had suggested to the APSA administrators. Except now APSA has already collected registration fees that we protested were unnecessary.