[Ansteorra-announce] [Announcements] Sanctions and Investigations Policies and Processes

[ea at sca.org]

The Board of Directors would like to address concerns that have been raised regarding the sanctions process and related documents.


 
The authority for and actions by the Board of Directors are granted by and described solely within the Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws of the SCA (our Governing Documents). With respect to sanctions, this authority is found within Section V.C.3 of the Bylaws and Sections II.D and II.E of the Corporate Policies. The rest of our Governing Documents describe the authority and policies that govern Officers of the corporation, not the authority and/or policies of the Board.
 
 The document titled "Board of Directors Procedures Manual" was a document created in 2004 as an internal set of suggested guidelines for earlier Boards of Directors. The document was outdated and has not guided the actions of the Board of Directors for at least the past seven years.  That Manual should have been rescinded and removed from the website once the current Board was made aware of the document. The Board had discussed such action many months previously, and made certain the document was properly removed at the January 2013 meeting.
 
 All recognized SCA websites providing official documents clearly display the disclaimer that “information on these pages will always be superseded by paper copy available from the Milpitas office. Those versions of documents are authoritative for all purposes” – and the Policy on Electronic Communications within our Governing Documents clarifies that the governing version of all documents are those available in printed form from the SCA Stock Clerk, and that disputes over documents are always decided in favor of the printed version available through the Stock Clerk.


 
Although no such authoritative paper copy of the “Board of Directors Procedures Manual” was ever made available from the Milpitas office, the Board recognized that some recently sanctioned individuals may have relied on the contents of the Manual to guide their actions and expectations during the investigation and sanction process. As a result, the Board agreed to hear the appeal of  those recently sanctioned individuals who included as part of their appeals that reliance on the language in the Manual may have prejudiced the investigation, resolution and/or sanction decision, whether or not “new” evidence was presented to the Board in the appeal. The Board took any reliance upon that Manual into account in the consideration of such appeals.


 
The Board of Directors has directed the Society Seneschal to review and revise the sanctions and investigations process, and the Society Seneschal has been working to consolidate information regarding sanctions for the SCA into a single document. The Society Seneschal is also working to streamline the entire sanctions and investigations process. He has engaged the Kingdom Seneschals and the Grand Council to assist in these significant undertakings. Proposed revisions will be presented to the Board for review when complete.  Once these processes and documents are approved, they will be available to all participants on the corporate website and officially available through the Stock Clerk in the Milpitas office.


 
The first step in this process was to revise the Seneschal’s Handbook, to streamline that Handbook and remove the references to sanctions in that document, in anticipation of a consolidated sanctions process. That revised Handbook was approved at the January 2013 meeting and the Society Seneschal will be communicating with all Kingdom Seneschals in the next few weeks. 


 
As always, any potential changes to Corpora will be communicated out to the membership for commentary. We encourage anyone with recommendations for improving these processes to communicate with the Seneschallate and/or the Board via comments at sca.org. 
 
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Comments are strongly encouraged and can be sent to:
SCA Inc.
Box 360789
Milpitas,  CA 95036

You may also email comments at lists.sca.org.

This announcement is an official informational release by the Society for Creative Anachronism , Inc.  Permission is granted to reproduce this announcement in its entirety in newsletters, websites and electronic mailing lists.

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