Call for new Conduct Committee members

Hi RFR community!

We are looking for nominations (can be self-nominations) to the Conduct Committee. Our Conduct Committee finds itself with only 3 members now, and we would like to replenish to at least 5. Information about the nomination and selection cycle, as well as about the Committee, is below.

Let me first start by saying that the Conduct Committee is a group that RFR takes very seriously, and it is part of what makes our community what it is. I personally believe that the members of the Conduct Committee should be held to a higher standard even than members of the Board, because they are required to regularly handle sensitive personal matters with discretion, thoughtfulness, and wisdom, while remaining unbiased by any personal connections with the parties involved. The importance of the Conduct Committee member role is the reason for the complex set of nomination and selection guidelines below. Thank you in advance for reading.

Our Conduct Committee is a group of community members that answers to the Board. The current Conduct Committee is: Nuance Bryant (acting Chair), Beth Baniszewski, and Ken Clary. They can be reached at conduct@redfeatherroleplaying.com. The role of the Conduct Committee is to investigate conduct complaints, determine whether the Code of Conduct has been violated, and determine/suggest appropriate disciplinary actions for any violations of the Code. Note that there have been some sufficiently complex conduct issues that the Conduct Committee is no longer strictly beholden to the simple set of disciplinary actions currently listed in the RFR rulebooks (rulebooks still need to be updated as this is a recent change), which mandate a warning letter, suspension, or ban based solely on the number of conduct violations. A post about this will be made when our rulebooks are updated, but I thought it would be worth mentioning that there is nuance and complexity in several of the cases the Conduct Committee sees, and candidates should approach the position knowing that thoughtful investigation and discussion will be required in the role.

The Conduct Committee has also started keeping a confidential log of incidents, including time of complaint/case opening and date resolved. They work to keep resolution time as low as possible, and under 6 months as an upper bound. Please be aware that if you are a member of the Committee, you will be expected to support timely resolution of cases.

The procedure for adding a Conduct Committee member was drafted and approved this year, and this is the first that it has been posted publicly. Please let me know if there is any confusion, and I will do my best to clarify on behalf of the Board and Conduct Committee.

  • Committee members are added when the Committee has fewer than 5 members, or when either the Committee or the Board feels that more should be added, as determined by a majority vote of either.
  • New members are nominated by form with 5 people’s signatures (you cannot sign your own form). You can self-nominate or nominate someone else with their consent. This continues for a set period of time (“nomination phase”).
  • Candidates are interviewed by the existing Conduct Committee.
  • Names of candidates are published to the community, along with a request that if anyone knows of a reason why they should not be on the Committee, please confidentially inform the Committee. This is open for a set period of time (“comment phase”). This can happen in parallel with interviews; if anything comes up during comments that requires further questions, a second mini-interview or follow-up email could occur. Note that NOT all comments would trigger correspondence with the candidate, but neither would the comments be blindly trusted without followup if they did not seem trustworthy. All comments will be taken in good faith but with context. Also, every effort will be made to keep the person who made the comment anonymous.
  • Candidates are selected by the Conduct Committee and their names are put to the Board for approval by a majority vote of the board. Effort will be made to ensure a good distribution of the Committee members from across the player base and staff base of the games.
  • The Conduct Committee chair is selected from among Conduct Committee members, by the the Committee.

Specific details about the current nomination and selection cycle are as follows:

The nomination phase is open now. It will continue until January 15; this cycle is extra long because I would like the Board election cycle to finish before the nomination cycle closes. There are not currently hard restrictions about people being on the Board as well as the Conduct Committee, but candidates and/or the Committee may wish to know who ends up on the board before selecting new Committee members or deciding to nominate themselves.

The nomination “form” will be email. Send an email to conduct@redfeatherroleplaying.com and CC all 5 people who are signing the form as well as the candidate themself. Then, each of the people who did not send the original email will be required to reply-all stating that they do indeed endorse that candidate (or consent to the nomination, in the case of the candidate themself).

The comment phase will run January 16-31. At the beginning of this phase, the list of candidates will be published as described above.

New Committee members will be determined after January 31, after the Conduct Committee completes their interviews, any necessary investigations, and deliberation. They will the submit their suggested list of new members to the Board, for Board approval with majority vote, which will make the new members of the Committee official.

As one final note, while I am posting the guidelines for this nomination and selection cycle, I am NOT on the Conduct Committee email list. Nomination and selection will be run by the Committee itself. Thanks in advance for your consideration and your nominations.

Joy Perkinson
President of Red Feather Roleplaying, Inc.,
On behalf of the Board of Directors and the Conduct Committee

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I have some questions.

  1. I know the board has rules about gender balance. Does the conduct committee have this as well?

  2. Considering members of the community come from many different backgrounds, will anything be done to keep those balanced? For example, race, income, religion, sexual orientation.

  3. Do the signatures need to come from currently RFR members? I know with other positions this is the case.

  4. Is there anything that anyone should know that would specifically bar them from becoming a member?

  5. Are there any “preferred” qualifications, such as specific training or education merits?

  6. Considering the conduct committee is doing the selecting of their own candidates and having the board approve them, is there any oversight on this process? I have seen similar systems in the past that have allowed “missing stairs” to join conduct committees this way.

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A board member should correct me if any of this doesn’t match what we discussed, but:

  1. There are not currently gender requirements for the Conduct Committee. (Although that seems like a good idea. But since it currently has one man and two not-men, it would take a few new members before any such policy affected who could join )
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  1. As with board membership, we both want to embrace diversity and to avoid tokenism. Gender and sexual orientation seem to be areas where we have enough diversity to set a quota without forcing certain people to participate as token members. We are not at that point with race. Regardless, there are currently no such requirements for joining the committee.
  1. Yes, signatures should be from active RFR members.

  2. Anyone banned from RFR would obviously be unable to join the committee. After a person is nominated, if we receive credible reports during the comment period of conduct unbecoming of a committee member, we will not invite that person to the committee.

  3. There aren’t specific preferred qualifications, though I’d imagine things like mediator training would be obvious assets.

  4. The goal of having new members be approved by both the existing committee and by the board is to provide a check on either group, so any candidate must be approved by both groups. We believe this (along with the comment period) is a good way to avoid missing stairs, or at least, it is a less imperfect way than any others presented so far.

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Hi all:

We did not get as many nominations/volunteers for the conduct committee as we had hoped, so we’d like to reopen/extend the nomination period until May 15! Requirements and nomination procedure are the same as described above.

Thanks,
Joy

Remember, the extended conduct committee nomination deadline is Monday, May 15!