Jacquelyn Gill, chair
Anti-Abuse Team

Since last year, members of the concom have been hard at work developing new policies and procedures for handling harassment reports and for improving member safety and well-being at WisCon in general. Our guiding principles have been to make harassment and abuse rare, reporting easy, and follow-through timely, respectful, and reporter-centered.

One of our first steps was to implement a new Anti-Abuse Team model.  The AAT will be a permanent, year-round concom department that will include a Safety representative and a historian/archivist — a model which we hope will help prevent past issues with institutional memory, mishandling of reports, and lack of follow-through.  The policies that the AAT will operate under will afford improved flexibility to handle both individual reports and to address general concerns.  The AAT will also strive to maintain a diverse team that reflects the diversity of WisCon’s membership.

Here are a few of the things we have been working on:

• We completely rebuilt our anti-harassment policy, working off of the Ada Initiative policy for conventions. Our draft policy is currently under review by the concom.  We will also be sharing it with our membership for public comment.
• We have developed a new policy to address member conduct outside of WisCon that may threaten member safety at the convention, including doxing, outing, stalking, assault, and online harassment.
• We have been working very closely with Safety, Registration, Programming, and Volunteering so that decisions on reports (e.g., bans, programming restrictions) are communicated to and enforced by relevant departments.
• We have been working with Safety and AppDev to design a secure database for incident reports.  We have also adapted our policy to include informal communications or general concerns raised about individuals or the climate at WisCon in general.
• We are re-evaluating the formal member advocate position (implemented just before WisCon 38) and have drafted some alternative policies.
• We are investigating training opportunities in advocacy, bystander intervention, and other relevant skill sets for members of the concom.

A draft document of our new policies will be available for public review in the next few weeks, so that we will have our new policy implemented in advance of WisCon 39. In the meantime, please feel free to contact me and the Anti-Abuse Team (antiabuse@wiscon.net) or Safety (safety@wiscon.net) with any concerns or questions.

[Footnote:  The policy and procedure revision is a separate process from the work of the subcommittee convened to consider Rose Lemberg’s report of harassment by F.J. Bergmann.  That subcommittee should soon be asking the concom for the final vote.  We will announce when that vote happens.]

Chris Wallish
Media & Communications

The subcommittee convened to consider Rose Lemberg’s report of harassment by F.J. Bergmann is beginning to wrap up its work.  Finalizing conclusions and recommendations will yet take several weeks.  The last stage of the process begins with the concom voting on whether to accept the subcommittee’s final report and recommendations.

The subcommittee’s next update will be an announcement when the concom begins voting.

As one of the concerns brought up regarding the Frenkel decision was that all available reports were not considered, the subcommittee convened to consider Rose Lemberg’s report would like to ask if anyone has additional information about the events publicly discussed by Rose Lemberg [http://rose-lemberg.livejournal.com/354919.html] and Saira Ali and Alex Dally MacFarlane [http://sairaali.livejournal.com/201577.html] that they would like to make WisCon aware of at this time.

We do have Rose Lemberg’s report, Saira Ali and Alex Dally MacFarlane’s open letter to WisCon, and WisCon’s other correspondence with Rose Lemberg, FJ Bergmann, Saira Ali, Alex Dally MacFarlane, and other witnesses. If you have additional statements or information, please email it to safety@wiscon.net by Monday, October 6.

Thank you.

The subcommittee reviewing Rose Lemberg’s report of harassment by FJ Bergmann is continuing its deliberations, while being mindful of the ways in which the first subcommittee’s process was flawed. We believe that WisCon owes all involved parties, and the WisCon community, a resolution to this matter sooner rather than later, given how long this situation was neglected by WisCon. All subcommittee members will be involved in deciding what information should be reviewed, we will be very mindful of WisCon’s Statement of Principles and our commitment to member safety, and the WisCon concom will be reviewing our recommendations for action before the decision is finalized.

The WisCon 37 and WisCon 38 concom members jointly reviewed the Frenkel subcommittee’s recommendation, and, after extensive discussion and consideration of additional evidence, voted whether to clarify or strengthen the existing ban, or to make the ban permanent. By an overwhelming majority, the decision is for a permanent ban. This decision cannot be appealed. Jim Frenkel will not be allowed to return to any future WisCon conventions.

The WisCon concom has begun the voting process in its appeal of the subcommittee’s decision on Jim Frenkel. In addition to reviewing the subcommittee’s decision, the concom is also considering information that has been brought to its attention in the weeks since the July 18th announcement from the subcommittee. Voting will close over the weekend. The concom’s decision will be announced Monday afternoon (Seattle time).

We have several announcements to make as updates to our previous post:

1) In light of the intense community response to the Frenkel subcommittee’s decision, and the concom’s own concern about the “provisional ban,” the WisCon concom is itself currently appealing the subcommittee’s decision and will vote on the matter this week.

2) Debbie Notkin has resigned as Member Advocate, effective immediately.

3) The Bergmann subcommittee is assessing if they can continue given the valid concerns about Wiscon’s existing process.

4) Regarding refunds of registrations for WisCon 39, we received this question via Twitter: “Will there be a policy for refunds for those of us who are against the con’s current harassment actions?”

WisCon has traditionally had a fairly free refund policy for any registered members who are unable to attend. Anyone who has registered for WisCon 39 and would like a refund for any reason can request one by emailing registration@wiscon.net.