Hello!
Please click the link above or use your camera to scan the QR code to view the petition.
Moderators,
It is our request that this thread be closed/locked immediately. We do not intend to start a conversation or participate in heated debates. We do wish that this petition be allowed to be viewed by all members, as is our right under the bylaws, Section 6: Resignation, Termination and Vacancies: “…An Officer or Director may be removed as an Officer or Director by written petition signed by more than two-thirds (2/3rds) of the voting membership…”
Information below was copied directly from Google Form for viewing without clicking the link:
Written Petition to Remove Board of Directors
I am signing to express my grave concerns regarding certain board members and urgently request their removal from our MakeICT Board of Directors.
The Board’s failure to address critical safety concerns in their previous term and capacity as Board Members and/or Security Officers, by knowingly allowing individuals to be in the space who were deemed to be severe threats to membership safety on the order of months, has jeopardized the well-being of our community and put our members at risk.
Despite repeated attempts to engage the Board, their indifference and lack of responsiveness demonstrates a severe lack of integrity.
By signing and including my email below, I, along with the other members listed, urge the membership and leadership of MakeICT to immediately remove from the MakeICT Board of Directors those individuals who were involved in the June 29, 2023 special called board meeting where these critical safety concerns were revealed to the membership.
The authority for this request this comes from bylaws, Section 6: Resignation, Termination and Vacancies: “…An Officer or Director may be removed as an Officer or Director by written petition signed by more than two-thirds (2/3rds) of the voting membership…”
Please include your name and the email address that is linked to your membership in Wildapricot.
Email address is requested in case MakeICT leadership requires verification of membership after this petition is submitted.
Thank you for your time,
~concernedmember5920@gmail.com
Please select the Board Members you are in favor of removing. If you are in favor removing all of the below Board Members, please select the box beside each one:
*
Rustin Atkeisson - '22-'23 & '23-'24 Board President and Security Lead
James Lancaster - '22-'23 & '23-'24 Board of Directors Member at Large
LaDeana Dockery - '22-'23 & '23-'24 Board of Directors Member at Large and '22-'23 & '23-'24 Security Officer
Michael Atherton - '23-'24 Board of Directors Member at Large and '22-'23 & '23-'24 Security Officer
The bylaws don’t give you a right to demand a recall of board members using the forum, let alone to do so without any sort of questioning by reply from others.
If you don’t want to have a conversation, how do you presume to explain why any of these people should be removed? Or is providing an explanation too daunting?
Discourse software doesn’t like large numbers of flagged posts and did this automatically: “This topic is temporarily closed for at least 4 hours due to a large number of community flags.”
But I’m reopening And disregarding request that a topic posted to a discussion forum have no discussion.
Frankly, what I’ve seen the past few days is that if anyone faces abuse at the space, they should just cancel their membership. If these things are actually taking months to resolve that’s a long time to be left in the lurch. And if that’s not enough, when something does happen the whiplash on the other end sends a pretty clear and strong message.
As quite a few are aware, there was at least one situation last year that made it pretty clear that we needed a better way than simply throwing every complaint in front of the entire board. It sounds like maybe these complaints were just gathered up and festered while the process was established?
So apparently the board moves too slow, but also somehow too abruptly?
The reports committee apparently has been suggested to have an unwritten statute of limitations that’s on the order of just a couple months?
Things are supposed to be confidential yet some clamor for every single detail to be publicly vetted?
The board and reports committee stated things are to be private yet we’re surprised they keep to that? Especially when the first post about a topic states “all committee members should resign” and there’s little attempt to turn down the heat from there?
We’re a private organization, yet any discipline should look like an even more tortured version of a legal system?
Another disturbing thing is the immediate waving away of 14 reports and apparently a police report. Is the process really that bad that all of those can be ignored? No one’s going to be willing to report anything if that’s not a high enough bar. And no one will dare report anything and be willing to talk about it here because they’ll just be eviscerated.
I would like to add that if you feel the need to comment about this that you adhere to BnBr policy. If you feel that you cannot, scroll on by.
With that said.
From what I’ve heard, in bits and pieces, those who were dismissed from the space last Thursday, weren’t even aware they had violations against them. Some of the violations were Months old. No counsel was given to those dismissed beforehand and the timing of the dismissal was Very Sketch. Youd think if someone who had That many violations or even a Police Report filed against them that there would be in no way be considered as a “member in giod standing” be allowed to run for board positions? yet, they did because no one told them about their violations!. only when one of them won did the violations come up and were used for dismissal. That’s the Very Sketch part of the optics here.
They did know. Counsel was given. They were informed that their actions were not in line with our Code of Conduct. If an incoming member exhibited the same misconduct, they would not be granted membership. It’s honestly that straight forward.
I’ve piece some things together based on FB post and what happened at the board meeting on June 29th. The police report was filed June 20th. Which was during the election. The CoC or security can not remove a member from an ongoing election and the board has to announce a meeting 7 days in advance. Security can turn off a key card if there is an issue and must notify the individual why their key card was disabled. I don’t know if that happened in this incident.
Revoking key access
The following events may result in forfeiture of your key:
Loaning your key to any other person.
Duplicating your key without authorization.
Disobeying any policy set by MakeICT or any of its programs.
Any active Security Officer may deactivate a key of a member and must immediately notify the Lead Security Officer.
In the event a key is revoked, Lead Security Officer shall notify the appropriate member, the Makerspace Area Leads, and the Board of Directors of the reason by phone or E-mail within 48 hours.
Devil’s advocate here (for what it’s worth). Seems the 2 camps that exist are “They knew they were in violation” and “They didn’t know they were in violation”. I have seen people say (paraphrasing here) ‘They can bring proof they didn’t do the things they were accused of.’
What about … can we have proof they were given notice of the violations?
The thing that’s not sitting right with me is that we’re including (at least from what I’ve gathered so please correct me if needed) forum post flags as violations. As someone who grew up on the internet while it was still developing in the 90s, 00s, 10s, this, to me, is alarming. I almost spent more time online than interacting with ‘the real world’ so I cite this experience as my knowledge base.
Forum trolling is real and it’s not pretty. It’s what drove me away from a game I played for about 15yrs and spent thousands of dollars on and met my husband playing. Let me say that again, forum trolling is what made me disappear from that world. Parallels…
The CoCC can not investigate post flagging as a violation of CoC. What they can investigate is post reported to them as a violation of CoC. Just because I have spoken openly about my incident, doesn’t mean all the infractions happened on the forum.
@modrrators first off, thanks for all you’re doing as a volunteers on a long holiday weekend. When you decide to remove or ignore a flag is there any reason given?
As many of you have seen in the forum there has a been a lot of controversy over recent actions against 2 (now former) members taken by the Board. This petition has nothing to do with whether those actions against those individuals were right or wrong. This petition is about the Board failing in their duty of care to the membership of MakeICT. By their own admission the Board identified these members as a risk to public safety in the space months prior to the actions taken yet did nothing to protect said membership in a timely manner. Moreover they failed to warn the membership that there was a risk to their safety, this could have been done in an anonymous manner so confidentiality is not a reason.
Code of Conduct reporting was approved in April. The investigations again these 2 individuals were opened in May(2023-06-5.1) and June( 2023-06-6.1) according to how the CoCC labels investigations. While some incidents happened before the code of Conduct Committee was formed it is not fair to assume leadership was knowledgeable of the infractions.
