Monday, July 21, 2014

Update From the Concom

Over the weekend, the WisCon Concom has spent much time reading and discussing the responses to the Friday announcement of the subcommittee's decision on Jim Frenkel.  We heartily thank the community for all of your insightful commentary and critique.  We are grateful to you for holding us accountable to our feminist principles.

Currently, the concom is looking at all aspects of this process and decision.  You have brought us your questions; we have questions of our own.  We are actively working on answers to them.  Answers may not come immediately, but we will keep you updated.  If possible, we'll post again before the end of the week with information about where our discussion is taking us.

We apologize again to Elise and Lauren.  Not only were you hurt by harassment at WisCon, but you have been hurt again and again by this process over the past year.  We are deeply sorry for our repeated failures.

We apologize to Mikki Kendall, whose information on a previous incident was not made properly significant in the process.

We apologize to the WisCon community.  You have been hurt by this process as well and left feeling unsafe at WisCon.  Thank you for your anger and criticism -- it's informing our discussion and moving us forward.

Moving WisCon forward from these repeated failures is hard work.  We on the concom are willing and determined to be engaged in this, although as individuals engaged in such hard work it can prove extremely difficult to not add to the ongoing harm.  We apologize for our part in causing harm, and thank you for patience that is not always so well deserved.

The concom continues to invite and value your feedback.  Comments made on this post (as well as tweets made using either @WisCon39 or #WisCon) will be sent to the entire concom.
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I feel that a question that needs to be asked is what the role of the Member Advocate is, and what it should be. In acting as the chair of the individual harassment sub-committees, doesn't the Member Advocate effectively take up a position of impartiality? And if so, isn't that at odds with the role of "advocate"?

Much has been said about the sub-committee's "judiciary" approach to the case, and much has also been said about how their approach failed to center Elise and Lauren.

I understand that the proceedings are confidential and thus can't be picked apart and analyzed by the membership at large, but I'm really curious how the Member Advocate saw her role in the conversation: more as advocate for those who weren't in the room, or impartial mediator of those who were?

And if the latter... I'm not condemning the idea of impartiality. But then where is the voice of the harassed?

July 22, 2014 at 10:28 AM
Anonymous said...

Also, I've already expressed this at length to Jacquelyn, but I want to make sure that this concern is brought up for the wider ConCom...

It's really a problem that when it became apparent that the membership at large didn't have a clear understanding of what the sub-committee's ruling even meant, that there wasn't an immediate clarification.

I have been told by Jacquelyn that the concern was that since the the first draft was taken as ambiguous, the sub-committee wanted to make sure that the clarifying statement was as clear as possible, and that the clarifying statement would have to be released through the same official channels to prevent confusion.

But we are now at five days and counting since the statement came out and there is still no *official* statement to the effect of how long the ban actually was meant to be for. I only learned that it was definitely intended to be an indefinite ban with the possibility of being revisited in four years after repeatedly asking on a personal blog post and stressing what a difference this makes compared to "(provisionally) not allowed for four years", which suggests a ban of four years' duration that can be lifted at any time.

Given how much of the dissatisfaction with the ruling came from the lack of clarity and the widespread perception that it was effectively a one year ban that might be extended to four years, I feel that the refusal/failure/whatever you want to call it to officially clarify the intention of the initial decision is a huge disservice to the sub-committee, the membership at large, and the con itself. It makes the sub-committee look bad, and it forces the membership to draw our own conclusions. No one is served by this.

Given that the members of the sub-committee had already opted to identify themselves, I can fathom no reason why the very instant people started asking what the terms were, the sub-committee members weren't out there saying, "_______ is what we meant. Sorry if we worded it poorly. ________ is the thing that will actually be enforced."

The failure to clearly articulate the decision in the first place is a minor failing compared to the failure to explain it in the face of the confusion and dismay that greeted it.

I know there are people who would have been dissatisfied with any possibility of Jim Frenkel's return, however slim and guarded it might be, but I think the dismay would be lessened if the actual terms had been known. Certainly the confusion would have been.

I had a lot of faith in the idea that a clarifying statement would be released *soon* when I first started talking to Jacquelyn about this, but the longer we go without hearing one, the more I have to wonder if the members of the sub-committee even agree among themselves about what it is that they decided.

My other fear is that the sub-committee is still "over-correcting", trying to make their statement less ambiguous by tacking on qualifiers and explanations and defenses of reasoning. But really, there should be no reason that the key points can't be reduced to a few bullet points for immediate release.

July 22, 2014 at 11:05 AM

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