[Ansteorra] Psychos and other Ogres

[Jan Van Zandt]

   Zubeydah wrote:

   Who defines who a 'psycho' is? The 'in' crowd? the angry mob? the
   current
   brass hat? the 'popular' folks?
   Playing devil's advocate,
   - Zubeydah Jamilla al-Badawiyya

   ***
   That's an excellent question.  Thank goodness there is but a small
   handful of these 'psychos' out there in our Kingdom.

   They can be identified by the years and years worth of problems they
   have created for their local group.  I'm not talking about spats or
   minor personality conflicts that can be resolved.  These are the
   individuals who continually antagonize, gossip, manipulate others and
   want to have everything their way - their actions can disrupt the
   private and SCA lives of the people in the group. They make unfounded
   complaints to the BoD if they can't get what they want from the
   officers or Crown.  When these people are,over the years, continually
   the source of problems and gossip and they are the ones who harrass
   others through email, call names, make accusations and keep trying to
   encourage others in the group to go against the local, regional and
   kingdom officers you can pretty much tag them as troublemakers.

   I will step down as Southern Regional Seneschal in a few months when
   my warrant expires.  I have information from prior Regional Seneschals
   as well as my detailed records and these records/letters,etc. will be
   passed on to my successor so he or she will be aware of the depth of
   the problems with these specific troublemakers.  One of the situations
   in our Society and one that these kinds of people take advantage of is
   that the offices are changed on a fairly regular basis on all levels
   as the warrants expire.  This is the way things should be, but unless
   the officers on all levels pass down all information, then there is a
   good chance the next person who fills the office can be blind-sided
   by the troublemakers.  The troublemakers are always eternally innocent
   and quite adept at convincing new ears that they are misunderstood and
   mistreated.  Then the problems will start up again or just continue on
   and Populace of the local group will continue to suffer.

   Yes, we need a way to deal with this small element in our Society and
   hopefully by discussing it we can find a resolution.  Considering that
   over the years the troublemakers have not changed their ways, how many
   chances do these people get?

   Baroness Jan