Conrad's mad goal of becoming the AIGA Director of Chairs (?!?) for fun and profit continues unabated this day. There's a point there, which, when reading up on the AIGA page, throws the concept of being on that board into sharp relief. You are required to give or raise $10,000, and that does not include sponsorships. So, outside of asking your dad for some serious scratch or sending your kids door-to-door selling M&M's for $1 ten-thousand times, I'm not sure what options you have for not just writing them a check for some cold, hard cash. This is a barrier for entry, no doubt, the responsibilities of which are surely not lost on the organization. It gets you an upper-crust of designer leader, or at least some scam-artists who are good at price-jacking clients (I have no information that the latter has ever occurred).
But to me, it sounds an awful lot like that WK12 "internship" that students and young designers go batshit for. It's an internship, and it costs you unknown thousands of dollars. That's if they accept you. Now, I've actually known two people from my town that have gone through that internship, and they are not doing poorly -- not by a stretch -- as a result. But still. Not the highest road.
It seems Newton is missing his eyes in panel three.