[SCA-AE] FW: [Mid] Sad news from Lutr and Tessa

[Michael B. Greenstein]

>Excuse me - but why are you so upset about the action taken by the BoD?

Simply put, I consider the corporate mentality to be one of the more dismaying blights upon the mundane world.  Too often in life I find myself dealing with policy rather than with people, and with the sense of disenfranchisement that accompanies it.  I expect more, and better, from our Society.  I work to try to make that "more and better" come about, and so do many others, no doubt including yourself.  When all that effort and belief in what we are building is undermined because someone's Form XYZ-23-B(2) has not been placed in the correct pidgeon hole during the prescribed phase of the moon, it cheapens us.

In these Modern Middle Ages we strive to create, it seems to me that good faith and a willingness to make amends should be permitted to counter a harmless error committed by inadvertant omission, particularly when not permitting this creates so much trouble for so many people.  That it does not seem that way to the BoD is the reason for my upset.

The rules must serve us, and not the other way around.  "Bright lines" have their place and their purpose, just as do the rules themselves, but like any other instance of "one size fits all" it can be taken to excess.  I believe that this is just such an excess.  An honest and readily-correctible error that harmed no one need not -- and should not -- be met with a "nuke" as a matter of first resort.

>Don't fault those you elected to do the job of running the SCA when they 
>actually do it.

I do fault them, readily and without hesitation.  I think this matter was handled poorly under circumstances in which remediation was readily achievable, the breach was minimal and extenuating circumstances existed.  It also seems to me that as a result, the Midrealm as a whole has been ill-used by those whose job is to protect the Society's interests and values.

I have written to the BoD to express my thoughts, and to suggest remediation of Corpora in hope that the honest mistake of one will not again have such a profound effect on so many.

Perhaps the simplest way to solve the problem once and for all is for the Society to award each new Crown Prince and Princess an automatic one-year extension of their memberships, in recognition of their service to come.

- Michael