Category Archives: Official Announcements

Official Announcements

Subcommittee public statement on findings & recommendations

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WisCon Concom & SF3

The subcommittee convened to review Rose Lemberg’s report of harassment by F.J. Bergmann has finished its work and issued a report of its findings and recommendations to the Concom. The Concom has voted to approve the subcommittee’s work and agreed to facilitate the recommendations. Once the Concom had concluded its vote, the subcommittee’s report and recommendations were sent to both Rose Lemberg and F.J. Bergmann for review and comment.

To start, we, the Concom and SF3, extend our sincerest apologies – first and foremost to Rose Lemberg, who has endured much due to our bureaucratic lapses. We also apologize to both F.J. Bergmann and, especially, the WisCon community that collectively as an organization we have taken so long to bring this matter to a conclusion.

Subcommittee findings and recommendations

The subcommittee considers F.J. Bergmann’s poem “Meet and Marry a Gorgeous Russian Queen” to be both anti-immigrant and potentially sexist. Given the timing of the poem’s genesis and publication, however, the subcommittee was unable to characterize this particular incident – the reading of the poem during the “Moment of Change” open mic at WisCon 36 – as harassment. The subcommittee’s research has documented that the poem was written long before the conflicts between Bergmann and Lemberg began.

However, although the subcommittee could not characterize this incident as harassment, they did find that Bergmann has a pattern of caustic behavior toward anyone she disagrees with – including Rose Lemberg. This has led to a series of recommendations, which the Concom has approved and will carry out.

Rose Lemberg’s primary request has been that F.J. Bergmann leave her alone and not attend any of her events, should Lemberg attend WisCon in the future. The subcommittee recommends that this request be honored and facilitated by SF3, and SF3 and the Concom fully agree. The subcommittee has conferred with the Concom to determine the specifics of how this will work at WisCon, and relayed those specifics to both parties. Furthermore, the subcommittee recommended, citing Bergmann’s above-mentioned pattern of caustic behavior, that should F.J. Bergmann volunteer at WisCon in the future her volunteer duties will be limited to non-public-facing positions. The Concom has approved this recommendation and will facilitate it by coordinating among all volunteer departments.

Related posts

Subcommittee

WisCon Anti-Abuse

Official Announcements

Subcommittee work complete; next steps

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Chris Wallish
Media & Communications

The subcommittee convened to consider Rose Lemberg’s report of harassment by F.J. Bergmann has completed its work.  The Concom is currently voting on whether to approve the subcommittee’s recommendations.  We plan to post a public statement next week on the outcome of the subcommittee’s work and the Concom’s vote.

Last week in a blog comment someone asked if it would be possible for Programming Sign-Ups to remain open until after the public announcement about the subcommittee’s recommendations.  We hope to be able to do so!  We’re currently looking at our schedules to see what adjustments we can make.  We should know in a few days if we’ll be able to extend the Sign-Up deadline.

Official Announcements

Update from Anti-Abuse

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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.]

Official Announcements

update from subcommittee reviewing harassment report

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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.

Official Announcements

Adjust your dials

WisCon is embracing the blogging life and moving from our old Blogspot digs to a shiny new blog hosted on the WisCon webserver.  Please adjust your receiver to tune in our new RSS frequency.

We’ve also changed the name of our blog to clearly differentiate it from the at-con newsletter, which has long been called “A Momentary Taste of WisCon.”  Our new blog is “WisCon, WisCon, do you read?” — a title, like Momentary Taste, taken from a James Tiptree, Jr., story.

Stay tuned this week and next while we break in the new blog with updates from the concom as we begin work on WisCon 39.

WISCON OVER AND OUT

Official Announcements

Jeanne Gomoll leaves the concom

Jeanne Gomoll has announced her resignation from the WisCon concom:

I resigned from the WisCon planning committee and from the SF3 Board on October 5, 2014. To put it mildly, this has been a momentous decision for me.

You can read the full text below or on Facebook. If you’re on Facebook and would like to leave a note for Jeanne, you can navigate from that link to the version of the announcement she posted on her personal page.

Jeanne has done an absolutely tremendous amount of work on WisCon over the years. It’s hard to imagine we would have reached 38 WisCons without her. We are deeply grateful for her continued support.

My resignation from the concom does not affect my support of WisCon. I will be forever proud of my work on WisCon and for the space it offers the feminist science fiction community and its allies. I count myself lucky to have worked on WisCon for as long as I have, and hope that it continues for many more years. I plan to attend WisCon 39 in 2015 and many future WisCons.

Continue reading Jeanne Gomoll leaves the concom →

Official Announcements

Piglet recuses herself from harassment process

From the SF3 board (WisCon’s parent organization):

In response to member concerns, Piglet Evans has stated that she will not volunteer for Safety positions at WisCon in the future, and will recuse herself from handling reports of harassment or related matters in any other ConCom position. We further guarantee that she will be held to this. We thank Piglet for her cooperation, and for her years of service in many capacities.

Comments can be sent to SF3’s Corresponding Secretary: info@sf3.org

Official Announcements, SF3

An apology from SF3

The board of SF3, WisCon’s parent organization, has posted the following apology on their blog:

An Apology

The SF3 Board extends heartfelt apologies to those who have been harassed at WisCon, to those who feel unsafe at WisCon, to the ConCom, and to our wider community, for letting you down. We regret allowing Rose Lemberg’s report to languish. We are writing this statement as prompted by Rose Lemberg’s liaisons, Saira Ali and Alex Dally MacFarlane (link: . While this statement is being written per their request, the SF3 board would like to emphasize that it is genuinely sorry for Rose Lemberg’s pain being perpetuated by a seemingly unending tangle of bureaucratic lapses. WisCon co-chairs change from year to year, as do department heads such as Safety, but the makeup of the SF3 Executive Board is more static, as the turnover is staggered. Our board is organized so as to provide continuity and stability, and we recognize that our positions make us uniquely culpable for having failed to monitor and intervene in the communications with individuals who reported harassment at WisCon.

We failed to see that our process was a flawed and porous system that allowed reports to get misplaced. Since the SF3 Board officially appoints the chair(s) of WisCon, which in turn is technically a committee within the larger organization of SF3, the board acknowledges that it is ultimately our responsibility to oversee issues of safety that affect all WisCon attendees.

We will focus on our accountability and responsibilities as an institution and be vigilant in the future to try and prevent such events from happening again.

A number of valued concom members have chosen to resign over the summer, including several past WisCon chairs. In addition, several other former chairs have decided to significantly reduce their work on WisCon. We recognize that chairing Wiscon is a difficult task, even with co-chairs, and that the responsibilities of chair and other high-responsibility positions need to be rethought. The concom is currently examining itself, and has begun work to replenish committee positions and to provide training or apprenticeships for prospective chairs.

You may leave comments on SF3’s blog post or send them via email to the SF3 Corresponding Secretary.

Official Announcements

Subcommittee requests additional information

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.

Official Announcements

Update from subcommittee

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.

Official Announcements

Concom decision on Jim Frenkel

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.