Why Don’t You Just Apologize Already?
Nov. 30th, 2018 12:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drwexThis is very long. I will cut the whole thing so as to not blow up your reading page. It was hard to write. Despite its length I have more to say on this topic. I've had this checked by an insider who confirmed that I am not revealing any confidential information, a thing I worry about a lot these days.
Background, for those who are not actually submerged in All Things Arisia: past leaders of the organization mishandled some serious incident reports. People got really hurt. I still believe that no one acted with malice, but impact matters a lot more than intent and when you've hurt someone you need to apologize.
We did issue an apology. You can read it here: https://corp.arisia.org/Apology-2018-11-23
This entry recounts part of what happened between November 11th, when the new Executive Board was elected, and November 23, when the apology appeared. During that time there were a lot of insistent voices saying "why don't you just apologize already?" as if that was a simple matter. As if it was like you'd stepped on someone's foot. They say "ow" and you say "sorry." It's not like that at all, and some of the loudest voices were from people who I think should know better. This post is public in part so they might read it and so that you can refer people to it. I hope it helps; I intend to continue blogging my adventures as Arisia VP whenever I can.
Of all the questions I’ve been asked in the lasttwo weeks eighteen days this is the hardest. It’s hard because I came into office knowing that apology was necessary, and that we would apologize. I felt great relief on finding out that my companion board members shared this pair of goals. Why, then, did it take “so long”?
Let me first dispose of two easy answers:
Number one, it didn’t take that long. Readercon’s apology appeared about three weeks after their debacle, and they were post-convention. We are in the run up to a bigger convention and most of the Eboard have significant roles in Arisia’19. Number two, we also managed during this time to pull off a miracle [1], and move the convention to a new hotel. Trust me, it was a miracle. But these are not the reasons I want to talk about.
Last time I talked about the intense writing process we go through. We started the apology process by pouring ideas and references into a shared document. Scratch texts and each person’s contribution spilled in as each of us had time. I combed through Jewish literature on apology because my notion of what it ought to be is heavily shaped by this philosophy.
I eventually boiled down my readings to several points, of which I’ll highlight three now:
It became clear that we all believed that individual apologies had to be made before a general one. Apologizing to the community was a necessary step, but first there were specific individuals who deserved apologies. We couldn’t publicly apologize to those people, especially since one made it clear they didn’t want to be named in a public apology.
People who chose to go public about Arisia’s failures broke the dam and freed up a flow - literally none of this would have happened but for public outcry. But an injured person who chooses to remain private is no less deserving of apology.
So first we had to write private apologies. Not form letters, not cookie-cutter copies. Individual, and personal. Each of us on the Board has been affected to different degrees by the stories that have been told, and by things we have come to know. An honest apology to a real person carries the voice of the person apologizing and we tried to do that - speaking in our own styles, yet with every lead writer knowing that all of us stood behind them.
It was hard to hear people whom I consider friends clamoring for us to “apologize already” while we put these together. It is emotional labor, draining, and we felt we'd only get one chance to get this right.
Think about what it means to “make right”. We weren’t just elected to take the blame; we were elected to clean house. We hold certain powers, bound by Bylaws and policies and always subject to the will of the Corporate body that can overturn our decisions. But still, we have the power to make some amends. An apology letter is more real if it can clearly state what actions we’ve taken to try and make amends. We agreed that when these apologies were sent they would contain specific actions and not just promises about the future.
To do that, we needed to review the files. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that once incidents were publicized, people volunteered additional information. We had to incorporate not just the material our predecessors had gathered, but also everything new. We had to identify people and situations we were too close to, and recuse ourselves as needed.
You can’t do a complete investigation in days. But every day that went by pushed the apologies further out. In the end we made the best calls we could with the materials we’d been given in the time we felt we could take. Individual apologies named people and stated clear actions. And the community apology has a list carefully constructed to be clear about what we did, without compromising confidentiality.
This is the real reason things took as long as they did. Because before we issued the community apology we wanted to send individual ones that were even harder and before we did that we wanted clear consensus on actions. Act, apologize, then apologize some more and continue taking action.
We’re far from done, and I have a lot more to say, but this is already long enough.
----------
[1] If you doubt that this is a miracle, then you’ve never tried to book space for a convention of four thousand people in Boston. The number of sites that can handle such an event at all can be counted on the fingers of both hands. Subtract out properties owned by Marriott corporation in its various guises, then throw in the fact that you want to take over ALL of a facility’s function space for four days (plus setup and teardown time) only ten weeks into the future. That alone would get you laughed out of most places, but add in that you want north of 800 guest rooms for those four nights, and significant ‘shoulder’ room nights and the contract will have several non-standard clauses, and you’re bringing in a show that has not only non-trivial AV requirements but wants to use its own equipment for many things and oh by the way could you please not charge an arm and two legs for all this because we’re a non-profit and can’t afford corporate standard rates?
Background, for those who are not actually submerged in All Things Arisia: past leaders of the organization mishandled some serious incident reports. People got really hurt. I still believe that no one acted with malice, but impact matters a lot more than intent and when you've hurt someone you need to apologize.
We did issue an apology. You can read it here: https://corp.arisia.org/Apology-2018-11-23
This entry recounts part of what happened between November 11th, when the new Executive Board was elected, and November 23, when the apology appeared. During that time there were a lot of insistent voices saying "why don't you just apologize already?" as if that was a simple matter. As if it was like you'd stepped on someone's foot. They say "ow" and you say "sorry." It's not like that at all, and some of the loudest voices were from people who I think should know better. This post is public in part so they might read it and so that you can refer people to it. I hope it helps; I intend to continue blogging my adventures as Arisia VP whenever I can.
Of all the questions I’ve been asked in the last
Let me first dispose of two easy answers:
Number one, it didn’t take that long. Readercon’s apology appeared about three weeks after their debacle, and they were post-convention. We are in the run up to a bigger convention and most of the Eboard have significant roles in Arisia’19. Number two, we also managed during this time to pull off a miracle [1], and move the convention to a new hotel. Trust me, it was a miracle. But these are not the reasons I want to talk about.
Last time I talked about the intense writing process we go through. We started the apology process by pouring ideas and references into a shared document. Scratch texts and each person’s contribution spilled in as each of us had time. I combed through Jewish literature on apology because my notion of what it ought to be is heavily shaped by this philosophy.
I eventually boiled down my readings to several points, of which I’ll highlight three now:
- Confess the mistakes that were made, being specific enough that everyone knows we’re talking about the same things. There’s no use apologizing for the wrong thing, nor denying something that the other party wants you to apologize for.
- Express remorse. This needs to be both sincere and realistic. The current Board did not actually commit the mistakes for which we apologized, but we own it. We came in to take this on, both the good and the bad and none of us ever flinched from this.
- Do everything in your power to make right what wrongs were done.
It became clear that we all believed that individual apologies had to be made before a general one. Apologizing to the community was a necessary step, but first there were specific individuals who deserved apologies. We couldn’t publicly apologize to those people, especially since one made it clear they didn’t want to be named in a public apology.
People who chose to go public about Arisia’s failures broke the dam and freed up a flow - literally none of this would have happened but for public outcry. But an injured person who chooses to remain private is no less deserving of apology.
So first we had to write private apologies. Not form letters, not cookie-cutter copies. Individual, and personal. Each of us on the Board has been affected to different degrees by the stories that have been told, and by things we have come to know. An honest apology to a real person carries the voice of the person apologizing and we tried to do that - speaking in our own styles, yet with every lead writer knowing that all of us stood behind them.
It was hard to hear people whom I consider friends clamoring for us to “apologize already” while we put these together. It is emotional labor, draining, and we felt we'd only get one chance to get this right.
Think about what it means to “make right”. We weren’t just elected to take the blame; we were elected to clean house. We hold certain powers, bound by Bylaws and policies and always subject to the will of the Corporate body that can overturn our decisions. But still, we have the power to make some amends. An apology letter is more real if it can clearly state what actions we’ve taken to try and make amends. We agreed that when these apologies were sent they would contain specific actions and not just promises about the future.
To do that, we needed to review the files. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that once incidents were publicized, people volunteered additional information. We had to incorporate not just the material our predecessors had gathered, but also everything new. We had to identify people and situations we were too close to, and recuse ourselves as needed.
You can’t do a complete investigation in days. But every day that went by pushed the apologies further out. In the end we made the best calls we could with the materials we’d been given in the time we felt we could take. Individual apologies named people and stated clear actions. And the community apology has a list carefully constructed to be clear about what we did, without compromising confidentiality.
This is the real reason things took as long as they did. Because before we issued the community apology we wanted to send individual ones that were even harder and before we did that we wanted clear consensus on actions. Act, apologize, then apologize some more and continue taking action.
We’re far from done, and I have a lot more to say, but this is already long enough.
----------
[1] If you doubt that this is a miracle, then you’ve never tried to book space for a convention of four thousand people in Boston. The number of sites that can handle such an event at all can be counted on the fingers of both hands. Subtract out properties owned by Marriott corporation in its various guises, then throw in the fact that you want to take over ALL of a facility’s function space for four days (plus setup and teardown time) only ten weeks into the future. That alone would get you laughed out of most places, but add in that you want north of 800 guest rooms for those four nights, and significant ‘shoulder’ room nights and the contract will have several non-standard clauses, and you’re bringing in a show that has not only non-trivial AV requirements but wants to use its own equipment for many things and oh by the way could you please not charge an arm and two legs for all this because we’re a non-profit and can’t afford corporate standard rates?
no subject
Date: 2018-11-30 09:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-03 03:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-01 05:09 am (UTC)The cynical part of me will point out that, well, because I want much more than that. But that is damning with faint praise, I will quickly point out. As you say, doing so appropriately is hard work.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-01 06:39 pm (UTC)(The reason I'm skipping 2019 is because I didn't think everything could be done before the con; I've been pleasantly surprised at how much has been!)
Thank you (both you-in-particular and you-the-group) for the work you have done and are doing.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-03 03:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-03 03:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-03 03:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-04 06:51 pm (UTC)I am curious, now: would replying 'we are in the process of apologizing privately to various injured parties; a public apology will come next' have been a bad thing?
Or is this something you said but that your friends did not accept?
no subject
Date: 2018-12-04 08:03 pm (UTC)Ask me in person some time.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-06 07:14 pm (UTC)For whatever it is worth, I think Arisia acted with great speed in all directions once this happened. Much faster than most organizations have managed or even try to do ...
"impact matters a lot more than intent and when you've hurt someone you need to apologize"
I'm always grateful to hear that anyone else believes this as the best healing I've experienced or tried to offer comes from that premise.
I'm glad you're on the board and helping to re-build trust in this organization.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-09 11:23 pm (UTC)Your hard work is being noticed!
/here from network, I used to be concom at Wiscon so I can relate to the difficulties you're facing.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-10 04:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-11 07:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-16 11:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-17 01:08 am (UTC)