The Election Debacle

I was involved in a situation where feelings got involved and clouded the process of business. This piece is a deep dive on how the situation unfolded and how it could how it could have been handled differently.

Windows of Choice. Photo: Gordon Truong

Preface

This article is going to focus largely on my involvement within the organization I have been a part of for more than six years.

The organization I’ve associated myself with for the last several years is a non-profit organization whose key role is to provide supplemental services and promote social comradery and the artistic success of those involved in such programs in the higher education environment. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, try to think about yourself being in a similar experience.

Since the beginning of my membership, I have always wanted to serve in some sort of leadership role (for those of you who know, leadership is one of the things I desire). I won’t go into this, but I have experienced reasonable success.

In this non-profit I served, at least two of my many active years were spent as their webmaster and some three to four years as their publishing lead. I took a break in between at least once at some point during my time, but outside, most of my time was spent serving some kind of role (including at higher levels of the hierarchy).

Fast forward to 2021 — I was elected to become Secretary.

Backstory

From this point forward, I will use the term “chapter” and “group” because I am speaking about a large organization whose structure is broken into smaller organizational units. This part of the story will touch on my most recent leadership involvement with the organization I served.

The chapter I worked with needed a secretary to help offload some of the duties from other officers (namely, the President). But I did not run for the Office of Secretary to reduce their workload, I did it because I saw an opportunity to improve the chapter’s operating logistics. To understand why I thought improvements were necessary, we must go back to 2020–2021.

2020–2021

2020–2021 is the year I considered the “COVID” year since many business-like operations (be it for-profit or non-profit) resorted to remote and virtual operations. But let’s focus on the Secretary position.

The secretary is seated by one active elected personnel and is installed duly to the organization’s standard election timeline. Many of the newly elected officers’ powers went into effect at the end of May. But let’s just cut to the chase: what happened in 2020–2021? We saw very inconsistent and very poor, and disorganized communication within the group. My biggest gripe was that we stopped seeing minutes shortly after meetings had concluded.

Why is this such a big deal? Because for a few reasons:

1. This was the only form of communication that could be officially broadcasted en masse;
2. it was the only form of communication available to the people who relied upon it for official updates;
3. people who were unable to participate in a given meeting (for whatever reasons) miss out on anything that gets discussed on the days they aren’t present;
4. there would be an increased likelihood of someone forgetting an important event or detail due to not seeing a record of such a meeting.
5. To make matters worse, meeting minutes were never (if not rarely) posted on our internal communications system (e.g., Slack).

The point is that when we had a secretary in the Fall of 2020, the position’s performance fell to a very poor level.

2021–2022

This is the year when the real fun begins. I was elected to be their secretary; however, not on a normal timeline, but on a special timeline. We call this type of election the “special election.” The special election is typically held in the Fall, and this process aims to fill in the seats of positions not filled from the traditional elections process held during the Spring.

I’m not going to go deep into every detail of what my platform is, but here is a basic gist:

• Restoring and improving the consistency of internal communications
• Streamlining communications
• Finish building out the new in-chapter communications platform
• Migrating individual user accounts to an administratively managed system on the Google Workspace platform
• Restructuring and reorganizing administrative data management systems for the Secretary
• etc.

My platform aims to address all the issues mentioned above and make additional unique improvements to the chapter.

My goals were very lofty and consequently required enormous time and effort. I thought I did my job well, but I knew there were some improvements and leftover work to accomplish. In that case, I thought to myself, “Well… I can run for next year and use that time to focus on the other half of what I wanted to do.” That ‘other half’ pertains to the corresponding communications aspect (where we communicate with other groups within the organization).

Fast forward to May 2022.

Elections

I did mention I was running for the Office of Secretary for the second year, so that happened. I had a new election platform — it shifted its focus toward the corresponding side of my job. In case you didn’t know, the Secretary position in my organization group is combined — recording (administrative) and corresponding (communicative).

At first, I thought I was running by myself; but as it turns out, the person I was running against just happens to be the secretary from 2020–2021.

We both had our platforms. I analyzed both of our packets and thought mine had a substantial edge and didn’t think I would lose. But I’ve always had this pessimistic side of me because I never find myself with any good luck with being selected for a desirable leadership position. Either way, we both presented our platforms, then (per procedural rules), we had to exit the space to allow the members to begin discussing which candidate to serve in office.

After a somewhat lengthy debate, we were both brought back into the meeting space, the results were announced, and to my surprise, I was not elected. This is the point where my thoughts start to scramble.

Losing the election

At first, I tried not to think about it too much (which, some people think, is the best I should do), but I can’t help but wonder what the reason could be that made someone else more desirable. Optimistically, I did happen to think about running for other positions (like Parliamentarian) to maintain an outlet for me to serve the chapter. But after a brief period, I questioned whether I should even consider running for any elected (if not any) position. This is the point where I turned to others for suggestions.

Recommendations

The protocol for discussing individual people within any given meeting in this chapter is that the contents of any given discussion must not be disclosed in any way, shape, or form — this is an absolute rule (at least, to the chapter). Knowing this, I did not bother to ask anyone about what anyone in the meeting room had said about me. Instead, I approached my situation with a more open-ended question:

Based on the recommendations from the discussion from last night, should I run for another position? Or should I sit this year out, or apply to an appointed position?

One suggestion was to seek a position outside of the Executive Council. In case you don’t know, the Executive Council comprises six officers, all serving a crucial role in the group’s core operations.

The biggest reason for my lack of success in re-election comes down to this: there were some “time-sensitive” tasks I did not execute consistently, and I did not deliver upon some of my duties as expected.

And right there is where we will begin this conversation about what I saw was wrong with the decisions made in the election space, my analysis, and what could have been done instead.

*** BEFORE YOU CONTINUE ***

The next section may contain blunt language. If you are not emotionally ready to proceed, stop reading here; otherwise, continue.

The results

We now know I lost the election, but what we also know is I didn’t just lose the election simply because someone else had a better election platform than I did; it’s for performance issues that could have been easily addressed throughout the year.

For effect, I will leave a rather long message with you. Please know that I’ve truncated and filtered the text, so the context remains consistent with the rest of this article.

So I have learned about why I was not elected to be secretary this upcoming year and a lot of it has to do with my performance as a secretary. I was told that I had to constantly (all the time) that I had to release minutes and agendas in a timely manner, which did not happen, and I also did not do any sort of logistical planning […], which [was] my responsibility.

Instead, I spent far too much time working on the behind-the-scenes things which when it comes to all matters of the corresponding side of the position and getting things done in a timely manner on the recording side, I ultimately did not do my job and I failed the chapter catastrophically as a secretary. [truncated…]

I wish they had came forward and told me that my ability to maintain this position going into next year (if choosing to be nominated again) is in substantial jeopardy than just waiting all the way up to election night and then spilling the beans out.

This in my eyes is a lack of transparency on their part and nothing short of what feels like a passive-aggressive act in attempts to preserve my feelings from being damaged. I would rather have my feelings take a sting than to have it hurt much, much later as a result of hiding out concerns that could have been remedied much, much soon had they not choose too keep it in wraps.

Hiding honest concerns like this are strongly against my personal values of honesty and transparency. I don’t like having to play guessing games with people especially when it comes to business groups that take things very seriously.

Unfortunately, the judgement is against them and I strongly condemn the executive council for their lack of transparency and ability to come forward with their concerns about me much sooner.

Let me recap this here: getting certain things done timely. Had I been told there was a concern for my negligent performance in the first place, I would have sought to address those issues immediately. And had I addressed those issues, this would have been seen as a performance improvement. Instead, they decided to use those concerns as a justifiable means to push me out of office. As a person of honesty, if I swear with the promise of “improving,” I would have kept my word going into the 2022–2023 year; it is just that simple.

Closing Meeting

Many of you may be wondering why this particular section exists. I’ve decided to include it because this is the peak point at which a cascade of events starts to happen. Let’s dig in.

Brief overview

The closing meeting is special: it is formal, closes this year’s round of business operations, and officially installs its newly elected officers. Part of this closing meeting involves reading a formal document known as the “Officer Report.” This document summarizes everything an officer has ever done over the year, gives acknowledgment to relevant members or entities deserving credit where it is due, and expels a list of charges (responsibilities) to the officer-elect.

Normally, Officer Reports are delivered in the order of authority, starting at the President and ending at the last-named officer (usually an appointed chairperson, if available). However, for the closing meeting, the reverse protocol is true. So my report was delivered near the end of the first of a few segments of the final meeting.

My report

The reports I give are usually thorough and are generally constructed in the following format:

1. General report
2. Charges
3. Recommendations
4. Acknowledgments

I want to highlight the General Report segment because this is the part in which the overall perception of my thoughts regarding how the 2021–2022 year went was presumably negative; in addition, some presumably suspicious language was perceived throughout the entirety of the document. I will not go to great lengths of quoting every word I said; I will outline a short list of the things I did say:

• I am disappointed that the chapter does not acknowledge my work
• I failed re-election because of some performance-related issues that could have easily been resolved
• I did not deliver on certain time-sensitive duties as I should have
• The secretary must have excellent organizational skills
• The secretary position should be segregated back to individual positions (Recording and Corresponding, respectively)

Several other points could also be on this list, but I can’t name them all because it has been over seven months since at the time of this writing. What I have done in that short list above is highlight potentially triggering words I suspect aided in this whole drama.

Getting in trouble

On the 31st of May, I received a message from the President wanting to have a conversation with me regarding my actions (specifically, they were concerned about me “pressuring” members to release classified information discussed on the night of elections, among other things).

This is where the heat of the issue lies; this is where I will begin my analysis and commentary. I will also assert judgment regarding how they handled (if not willing to handle) the situation, what could have been done instead, and any final recommendations and opinions.

The Beginning

The conversation begins with the President’s disgust in response to the delivery of tone, choice of words, expression, and sentiment I gave while reading my Officer Report. They assert the assumption that I was undermining “the safety of chapter elections.”

While I did admittedly disclose my feelings of guilt as well as how my actions could have potentially gotten me in trouble in the private conversation, I will firmly posit the fact I did not make any attempt to “pressure” anyone to leak confidential information regarding the closed discussion in the election. If you read what I mentioned under the subsection Recommendations, under the heading Elections of this piece, all I did was ask for a suggestion on how to proceed based on what people have said in the closed discussion, not “tell me what did they say about me?”

Even if they felt pressured by my inquiry, I did not act with the intent to push people into leaking confidential information about what was said in the meeting; my inquiries suggested no evidence to support any such claims. Any argument saying I “peer-pressured” people into leaking details about the election on a subconscious or even unconscious level is not a valid claim and thus cannot be admitted into any place of judgment.

Side: “Pressuring” People

There are some components of “pressuring” people the accuser failed to consider:

1. There must be a component of fear.
   There must be evidence of emotional fear of retaliation expressed by the people involved. The people I spoke with are people whom I trust. I would never intentionally instill fear in these people because this could irreparably damage the relationship, which is more important than a simple malice act.
2. There must be a component of retaliation or harmful action.
   This is a big one — an aggressor must explicitly create or express a willful intent of harmful threat should any target person not comply. As repeatedly implied, I have not threatened people with ultimatums, I have not threatened people with penalty actions, and I have not lambasted the people I looked up to for being silent. All I did, was ask for a suggestion. If they didn’t want to say anything, I would have just moved on.

But how do I know?

How do I know the reasons contributing to a failed re-election? It was because the people I made contact with decided to disclose the information on their own accord. Also, I have the right to know what I need to do better not only as an officer of the chapter but an active member of the organization. When I ask for a suggestion based on the discussion of something confidential, it is because I have a very good and very specific reason to do so; the reasons I have for doing so are objectively beneficial. I would never ask people for information if the reason for asking serves a malicious purpose.

Consequences

As the conversation moved to a close, the President threatened me with Executive-sanctioned consequences (including up to earning the “suspended” status). How do I know my consequences would include penalties up to the “suspended” status? It was because it was discussed in a few chapter meetings and noted in the meeting minutes I read.

Analysis

To understand if what I could be facing is objectively justified, I turned my head toward a few relevant policies: the organization’s National Constitution, Risk Management Policies, the Investigation Protocol, and the chapter’s constitution. There were other potential documents I could also reference, but those documents were not relevant to the situation at hand.

Of all documents I referenced, the only potential policy violation that is even remotely close to what I could be liable for is 1. Hazing; and 2. Violation of Human Dignity.

Potential Hazing Violation

This would be more relevant if the act of asking an active organization member for a recommendation involved the use of coercive force (be it physical or psychological). But as mentioned on and on throughout this article, I have not forced people to disclose anything confidential — if they did not want to say anything, fine, no further action from there.

The other thing for an action or behavior to qualify as “hazing” is there needs to be an actionable component. At large, it has to be actionably executed in a way that forces some kind of potential harm against a person. No part of what I demonstrated proves it because the most actions did was inquire for an opinion based on what people decided was best I should do going forward.

Potential Violation of Human Dignity

This policy is a rather vague one, but the essence of it is one can be held liable for a violation if a person expresses or does anything to tarnish the human reputation of other people.

So if I accused someone, slandered upon someone, libeled against them, blamed them for something they didn’t do, and then convinced everyone to believe this person is bad, those actions would qualify. I am going to tentatively claim liability for this violation because I was accused of “shit-talking” the chapter — which feels like slandering to them.

I am not 100% certain if I should reasonably accept the accuracy of my claim because there needs to be ample explicit evidence to prove this. For now, my golden rule of thumb is if there is any doubt, take it with a grain of salt. Let’s jump into this a little deeper to see if I am truly liable for slander.

“shit-talking”

In the private conversation, they mentioned there is a difference between “being upset” and “strongly condemning” a group of peers. Since they did not distinguish the difference between the two, let me give you a few dictionary definitions of what the word “condemn” means.

express complete disapproval of, typically in public; censure. — Oxford Languages

to declare to be reprehensible, wrong, or evil usually after weighing evidence and without reservation — Merriam-Webster

to criticize something or someone strongly, usually for moral reasons — Cambridge Dictionary

As you can see, all of these definitions have one thing in common: to criticize and to disapprove. The ability for one to criticize or disapprove is a right, not a privilege. If it is not a right, there would have to be clear policies that prohibit people from committing to such actions.

That being said, I have every right to condemn the Executive Council for their lack of transparency and inability to come forward to address an issue that could have been easily resolved. What they did was passive-aggressive; they thought they could keep a close wrap on any true criticism they had of me so they could replace me, move on, protect my feelings from being hurt, and hope not to engage in any more potential future conflict when the reality is not about conflict abatement but about solving a problem.

Even if they were to give me reasons on why they decided to choose someone else, the reasons they may potentially provide would have been drawn from secondary factors (a true, but non-explanatory reason) to not hurt my feelings but still provide something true that they can still offer. Even reasons like this are spiteful because they are very misleading and disingenuous. They are misleading and disingenuous in the fact that someone could be given a different reason and solve a problem that was never really the cause of an actual problem in the first place.

The fact that this type of passive-aggressive decision-making strategy was employed for the safety of my feelings, or anybody else’s for that matter, goes against a common-core professional value of transparency. To inclusively value “transparency” and “honesty” as a part of the chapter’s core values when they can’t even be honest about telling someone what they can do to be a better officer is not only ironic but is outright dishonest and dishonorably credited at best.

If the chapter’s leadership had come forward and addressed the issues early on, I would have been glad to listen and adopt new strategies to be a better officer, not lambast and criticize my fellow peers. But because they decided to follow the path of a more passive-aggressive route in order to avoid a perceived potential conflict, I now have a good reason to make a critical judgment about the Executive Council, let alone the President themself for failing to consider closer rationality in a place of objective decision-making.

I understand emotions and feelings are valid, but when feelings are allowed to encroach upon the limits where objective rationale takes precedence over emotions to drive decisional outcomes, logically sensible decisions are no longer proper and become incongruent with the rationale that technically makes sense. If emotions are highly prioritized over logic (especially if it is done so in every possible way), a severe organizational imbalance would occur and would result in some form of instability.

Suggesting to me that I cannot condemn the Executive Council is basically saying, “You cannot disapprove the Executive Council for being afraid of giving you criticism…” I’m not condemning the Executive Council for their feelings or for who they are as people; I’m condemning the improper use of influence because they allowed their feelings to obstruct a common-core professional value and allowed it to get in the way of solving a problem that could have been seamlessly resolved.

Back to Analysis…

So I was talking about how there might be an infraction upon the Human Dignity policy in my organization’s Risk Management policies. Given what we now know, even though it may seem like I could be guilty of violating the Human Dignity clause, there is, really, no foul here because 1. I only disapprove of the decisions of the Executive Council, not shame; 2. I did not slander them simply because they felt a specific way or because of who they are and then tell everyone these people are bad; and 3. I did not disapprove of them just to make them feel bad.

Facts vs. Feelings (in this situation)

I understand that much of my actions come off as an emotional attack on the entire chapter, but the chapter must understand: logic and accuracy are more important, if not, no less than equally important. An organization that prides itself on allowing its feelings to inappropriately drive its trajectory without any objective foresight is not an organization worthy of my association. If the chapter wants to be successful, it cannot chiefly allow feelings to decide what will happen next. Feelings are important and valid, but you cannot allow yourself to discount, under-weigh, or God forbid, dismiss the values of facts and logic. Feelings may guide, but they may not decide (in at least, most situations).

Back to Consequences…

So the current (2022–2023) Executive Council is (or was — if they no longer are already doing so now) looking to penalize me for my role in allegedly sabotaging the chapter’s elections and objectively criticizing the 2021–2022 Executive Council for lacking transparency and allowing their feelings to influence an otherwise objective decision.

If convicted guilty, a discipline status could be imposed. Let’s go over them and the process by which a member may successfully earn their badge as a disciplined member.

Statuses

In the organization, there are at least three penalizing discipline statuses in which a member may earn:

1. Probation: Member’s involvement in the organization is limited. Member must follow through a prescribed remediation program; failure of completion may result in elevated penalties.
2. Suspension: Member’s involvement in the organization is prohibited for a prescribed amount of time. Other provisions may be enforced; non-compliance or failure to comply may result in further penalties up to expulsion.
3. Expulsion: Member is irrevocably discharged from the organization.

There’s a lot more to the nuances regarding these statuses I will not be discussing, but this gives you a general idea regarding the severity of these penalties.

Process

A discipline status is imposed upon an organization member (usually an active one but other statuses could also apply). For a member to receive a discipline status, the following process must happen (likely in this order):

1. A formal report must be given to the National Executive Director (a joint position) and the National President.
2. Both executives at the national level must review, assess, and motion a final approval of the report within a prescribed amount of time.
3. Once approved, a designated chapter sponsor must review, assess, and motion their approval.
4. Once approved, the chapter must convene, review, assess, and vote to act upon a decision.

If all three decision stages pass, the member in question must be notified within a prescribed amount of time that a disciplinary status will be imposed. If any of these decision stages fail, no status changes will occur.

As you can see, imposing a disciplinary status upon a member requires a highly involved review process. It takes a substantial amount of effort for a given status to go through. Disciplinary statuses are not something the organization takes lightly for many reasons, and it would require ample provable objective evidence to allow a process to move through successfully.

“Under due cause…”

Part of receiving a disciplinary status requires a reason for such a status to pass through; sometimes, those reasons don’t have any objective merit, so that’s where the “under due cause” clause comes to play.

The reason why I am bringing this up is because of a couple of reasons: 1. this language is ambiguous; 2. the ambiguity of such language enables the possibility for policy abuse to occur; and 3. due to its ambiguity, it is difficult, if not impossible, to concretely warrant the justification of imposing a penalty upon a given member because there are no specific provisions in the policies specifically providing procedural support for penalizing a member because of a specific action.

Let me give you some examples to clarify further. If this clause is allowed judicial freedom, I could get in trouble for literally saying the word “poop” right in the middle of a chapter meeting. If someone wanted to report me for wearing a green and yellow outfit in an environment that doesn’t like green and yellow colors, they could do so and get away with it. If I started the argument, “blueberries don’t bounce when they are ripe,” and they don’t like the points I make because my points say blueberries can have white fuzz and taste nasty when they do, they could turn me in and get away with it all because the objections I make, made them feel bad, even if those points are made impartially. The protection of an ambiguous clause affords them the full potential freedom to use whatever reasons they feel are appropriate for justifying the use of penalty and get away with it liability-free. When that is allowed to happen, this is where policy abuse begins.

Because of the clause’s ambiguity, policies following this linguistic pattern cannot be enforced. You cannot just sentence someone to life in prison because they took the life of another if there is no specific language to support the association of penalties for that kind of action (fortunately, we do). So in the case of this organization, I could technically do things that would be morally offensive to them and get away with it. I could leak guarded secrets and get away with it. I could do things to morally sabotage the entire organization and still get away with it. Although I want to assert that committing to such an act is a violation of oath, I don’t condone it. But oaths themselves are not procedurally protected by any policy. If anyone tells me I can’t do any of the examples I just mentioned, then the National Organization needs to include specific policies to protect itself from this kind of behavior, not just allow sworn oaths to provide protection and call it good.

While “under due cause” could be claimed as a means to rationalize a position, it fails to confidently support any justification of penalty action because of its ambiguity and ability to afford people the liability protection from critical judgment on the use of illogical claims. Even if it can still be used as a means for reasoning, the National Constitution doesn’t even remotely have the language defining specific conditions to allow “due cause” to assume eligibility for specific actions.

So can you genuinely use this clause as a valid means to justify penalty action? The answer is, no. In the case of me “lambasting” my former Executive Council for not being transparent about improvement? There is no strong argument to support sanctioning disciplinary actions for this particular action (among other things).

Closing Remarks, “Under due cause…”

While I don’t mean to get into this rabbit hole of policies, I think it is very important to highlight this because if any part of the organization wanted to seek penalty upon a member, they would need to further develop their policies beyond what already exists. If a given member’s actions or behavior meets specific criteria, policies, and logic would already be in place to support the execution of penalty decisions. If I leaked classified information discussed in a closed chapter meeting and there are already written policies addressing it, I could be held liable because the logic for penalty action is procedurally supported. As it stands right now, they are not.

Likelihood of Sanctions

After several months of reflecting upon my actions, the events, the drama, and talking with a few people, it is highly unlikely I will face any sort of disciplinary actions from anyone outside the desires of both the current President and quite possibly, the current Secretary.

But out of their comfort, I have decided to invoke a motion request receiving “Conditional” status so I can 1. recollect myself for the time being; 2. wait for the current office to leave at the end of their term, and 3. reduce the likelihood of adversely triggering them in any way because of my mere simple presence in a given meeting space.

Facts vs. Feelings (in general)

In this particular chapter, a few people have been subjected to the President’s judicial disapproval. But there is one pattern I want to point out I’m seeing which would apply to the majority of cases: making faulty accusations by jumping to conclusions based on the emotional merits of either themselves or others, allowing the manifestations of emotions to take over the executive decision-making process where the logical rationale is expected, and attempting to execute procedurally unsupported actions regarding membership sanctions.

All three of these points have one thing in common: feelings. They are allowing their feelings to hijack any high-profile situation where objectivity, facts, and logic take precedence over emotions. I’m not saying feelings are unimportant; they are a factor of logic. I am saying, instead of allowing emotions and values to serve as a factor of logic, they cut out (or at the very least, deprioritize) the logic and allow feelings to drive the decision-making process. This led to the subconscious manifestation of impulses, pressuring them to respond as the Executive Council did.

If there is anything I know about impulsive feelings — feelings don’t have to come with reason, and if an action has to take place to satisfy it, it will likely happen. In an environment where reason is critical, this is the kind of mindset I would wish for people to reconsider.

The result of their actions is that people have requested “Conditional” status or declared “Inactive.” From what my intuition tells me, the people who downgraded their active status didn’t do so for the commonly known reasons (health, finances, school, etc.), it was for reasons relating to their case (if not, the common reasons I mentioned). As a bonus, this is yet another reason on top of the already-existing reasons regarding why I decided to move to “Conditional” status.

Elections Procedure Violation

With regard to the current Executive Council’s desire to impose penalties upon me, I want to point out some additional possible reasons I have yet to cover in this article. These reasons pertain specifically to chapter elections and what the Council believes should happen if such a violation occurs. In my case, the reasons they may have apparently feel logical enough to the point they could use them to justify sanctioning actions against me. Unfortunately, none of these have (if not, have an infinitesimally weak) policy support behind them.

• Penalty justified because member incited a violation of election procedures.
• Penalty justified because member leaked classified discussion contents of a closed meeting.

Arguments

Both of these reasons, although valid, are inadmissible for several reasons:

1. No policy explicitly specifying penalty actions associated with election procedure violations exists anywhere — you currently have no policy to support the desire for such penalty actions;
2. No written document outlining a strict set of practice standards, policies, or regulations exists anywhere — election protocols and procedures can vary between chapters within the organization;
3. Because election protocols and procedures vary between different chapters in the organization, chapters have unique ways of conducting elections, therefore there are no specific uniformed standards;
4. Even if such rule or standard exists, they are only enforced at the “Guideline” enforcement level. Penalties can only be imposed if a rule or standard is enforced and protected at the “Enforced Policy” level;
5. If any applying reasons for imposing penalty arises from the suggestion of “violating Roberts Rules of Order,” sorry, but Roberts Rules of Order is nothing more than a guidebook, nothing from it can be enforced to a level where penalty actions in the case of violation are eligible.

Side Reference: Enforcement Levels

In case you aren’t familiar with “Enforcement Levels,” it simply refers to whether one must follow a set of rules and if so, to how close they must comply. There are three basic levels:

1. Optional
   Compliance is neither recommended nor discouraged. Conformity is “as desired.” Penalty for non-compliance not enforced.
2. Guideline
   Compliance is recommended, and modifications of a guideline are acceptable if it fits specific needs. Conformity is “as desired,” but lack of compliance may be discouraged. Penalty for non-compliance is also not enforced.
3. Enforced
   Compliance is required, deviance is not a choice. Modifications generally have to be approved. Penalties may exist for non-compliance.

There might be other levels to this model, but let’s keep it simple.

Back to Arguments…

It is very hard for me to reconcile with the idea of imposing penalties upon members of the chapter simply for doing something that feels wrong when there is simply no logical support to favorably commute the Council’s desires forward. If the Council truly wants to press forward with imposing such penalties, then there would have to be some form of substantial policy changes or expansions made to guarantee the protection of a fair elections experience.

Policy Suggestions

If it is in the will of the Executive Council, let alone the President of the chapter to pursue the ideal where 1. the election integrity shall be maintained and protected at all costs; and 2. the emotional well-being of organization members shall be protected at all cost, then consider a few of these suggestions:

Election Integrity Protection

Election Integrity Protection (EIP) is the primary policy serving to protect election activities where elections are conducted. EIP should aim to protect a given election from the following (although not exclusive) safety hazards:

• Theft
• Cheating
• Fraudulence
• Falsification
• Whistleblowing
• Leaking
• Circumvention
• Fabrication
• Unfair Engineering
• Peer Pressuring

The list could go on, but these are some things to keep in mind when developing a policy in an attempt to give protection to elections conducted within the organization. Anyone reading this portion of the article should start drawing some ideas from this inspiration.

Not to mention, the EIP wouldn’t be worth what it could be if it didn’t come with penalties associated with them. So penalties such as supporting the consequences of submitting an Active member to “Probation” or “Suspended” status (depending on the severity of each case) would be included as a part of the policy.

Other forms of protection could be a part of this policy as well. A multi-layer and multi-dimensional approach would provide a comprehensive level of protection against any of the listed safety hazards. This multi-layer approach also helps to strengthen elections procedure compliance by all members. In addition to the primary protection mechanisms of this policy, some of these layers could be implemented as part of the protection suite:

• Procedure Education
• Safety Education
• Elections Briefing & Auditing
• Election-in-Progress Security
• Safe Information Handling Procedures
• Safe Voting Procedures & Practices
• Elections Process Contingency

There may likely be more that could be added to this list, some of these items may already seem familiar; but the idea is this could be implemented as a single policy suite; others may draw ideas and become inspired by this, it could even be adopted at the national level.

Emotional Safety Protection

As assessed in this article, the closest policy violation I could be liable for is the violation of Human Dignity; however, as argued, the violation of the Human Dignity policy would have to come from an act that is provably evident and cogent — in other words, there has to be clear objective evidence of it. For example, intentionally making libelous statements, intentionally accusing an individual for something they didn’t do, defaming them for who they are, etc. None of these are logically congruent with even the submission of “shit-talking the Executive Council.”

But if the mental sanctity of people ought to be protected to the highest level possible, then we must consider additional expansions to the policy where additional protection from any harmless objective criticism takes precedence. Therefore something like an “Emotional Safety Protection Policy” would have to exist.

The Emotional Safety Protection Policy aims to do a few of the following:

1. Protect all members from any mental, psychological, or emotional harm inflicted in any way, shape, or form (including but not limited to verbal, non-verbal, visual, aural, or written; all of these are given);
2. Protects all members from acts known to induce harm, including but not limited to, gaslighting, name-calling, guilt-tripping, shaming, cold-shouldering, isolation, coercion, humiliation, infantilization, manipulation, silence-treating, intimidation, belittling, and blocking;
3. Associates penalty for anyone convicted guilty of violating, circumventing, or undermining the protections of such policy.

I think this implementation would be appealing to those who may find these explicit policies useful. I understand similar policies (up to the State or Federal legal level) exist; it does not hurt to make them known in additional places. Also, for whatever protections are listed here, this policy aims to protect against the said behaviors directly. Unlike at the legal or current policy level, one would have to supply tangible evidence to prove such an act exists; with this policy, provable objective evidence from the alleged party is not required — only evidence from an emotional manifestation as a result of such behavior is required.

Non-Grandfathering

This implementation would enable anyone found liable for the violation of any above policies prior to the time of official effect to undergo the same investigation, conviction, and sanctioning procedure as someone who is accused and found liable on or after the time the policies would theoretically go into effect.

The purpose of this implementation is to objectively hold accountable those accused of such wrongdoing when the wrongful act was realized at the time when corresponding sanctions cannot be executed due to the lack of policy support.

In my case, since the happenings from May 2022 occurred before these new policies theoretically could go into effect, I could get away with it unless this passes. If the application of these theoretical policies becomes non-grandfathering, an official case against me could be brought back up and there would be a logically plausible possibility of me facing penalties for my actions.

Other Policy Improvements

Some of the examples I mentioned earlier demonstrate that not all of what would be protected is technically protected by policies. So the following is a non-exhaustive list we could consider for policy-level protection:

• Classified organization secrets
• Official sworn oath statements
• Classified contents of other meetings

There could be more, but this will do, and I will allow your intuition to ideate as desired.

What would I do?

If I were to step into a position that allows me to craft policy changes, I would implement revisions to certain processes that are incongruent with the values I think are important. These changes aim to make a decision-making process objective, transparent, and fair for all parties to which a given decision is involved. This is the Open-transparency Policy, and part of it includes, but is not limited to the following policies:

1. Mandatory Disclosure
   If at any time regarding the outcome of an election, bid, or a decision upon a matter involving a given person in question, the person inquires for details regarding a decision about them, a representative must satisfy the disclosure request. In addition, any information disclosed must contain primary and true details justifying any decision.
2. Voluntary Participation
   If a given person(s) in question requests to sit in a closed discussion and all parties to which a given discussion pertains also grants permission or are in the desire to participate, no enforcement may be enacted to bar their participation.
3. Objective Communication
   Any discussion activity in a given environment must be conveyed while retaining qualities of objective delivery, tactfulness, and interpersonal respect; a discussion environment must also allow the opportunity for thoughtful appeal to occur at any time during any given argument.

This type of policy may be disagreed upon by a few, but I stand by it with great conviction because we can’t solve problems if we choose to keep things secret (especially if they are in the name of conflict mitigation). Problems aren’t solved without witnessing some form of conflict at some level, running away and hiding from it (or, lying about it with some kind of truth) is one of the most dishonest things one can do. It is the goal of this policy that we allow people to have the right to know why decisions are made in the way they are made so they can be informed where they fall short and what they can do to improve.

Closing

This has been a very long journey for me (in terms of my time in the organization, the length of time it took to get me to experience the success I had, the trouble I had endured in the face of internal bureaucracy and politics, and the light of me recognizing my situation from a rational viewpoint and taking the time to write this 30-minute long story). I have written this story because I needed to get the thoughts out of my head to someone who would read and understand my issue while not counter-lambasting me for being rational.

Because the situation I am dealing with is rather sensitive to many people, I have stripped as much context out as I can without diluting too much detail. If you don’t know what this whole story is specifically talking about in terms of its setting, that is by design — you are not supposed to know. Multiple people have undergone the experience of judicial castigation, so additional filtering is in place.

And if you do recognize the context this article discusses, understand that this piece was written purely from a logically objective, impartial, and emotionally unbiased perspective. This article is emotionally difficult to read; but if you have reached this point without skipping sections, then I appreciate you taking the time to read this in its entirety.

Because of the nature of this situation, I may receive some potentially heavy backlash. I am not in favor of continuing the argument of facts vs. feelings or feelings vs. facts. As someone who values the principles of logic, it disgusts me to have to reconcile with the notion that “feelings are more important than facts, all logic goes out the window” mentality. I value both; but some situations genuinely call for the priority of one over the other, not one exclusively. If anybody engages me with that mindset, rest assured you I will be running for the hills faster than Flash can run to Mars and back.