[committee] Formal notice of dispute

[Bob Adamson]

Dear Committee,

 

I would like to lodge a formal complaint under section 22.2 of the club's
constitution. I have been the subject of persistent and ongoing prejudice
and bullying from Felix Von Perger since March 8 this year (the day of the
AGM). I believe Felix went into his presidency with an agenda to remove me
from wheel and/or the club. A number of the following events happened in
closed forums, however certain individuals and members of committee thought
the discussions were not above board and so shared them with me at the time.
I have not previously made this information public because I recognise that
UCC is a learning environment and that people make mistakes, and instead
opted to speak to Felix at the time and urge him to change his actions.
However, Felix has persisted with his bullying since March 18, and I feel I
have no choice but to make this public. I have condensed this as much as
practicable for the sake of expediency, however if anyone wants more details
of incidents, I am happy to answer them.

 

8/3/19

*	Background: Incident with Melissa on the day of the AGM. On that day
I tried to help Melissa with handover by giving her a list of things that
needed to be done at handover, some of which required assistance from wheel,
however she took it to mean that I disapproved of her becoming secretary.
The interaction also put me in the unfortunate position of saying "no" to
Melissa - both to being immediately put on wheel, and to fully unfirewalling
her co-located machine. The details of this interaction are long and
contended by Melissa, however the crux of it is that I was subsequently
labelled by Melissa as transphobic, and she went to Felix and offered to
resign later that day.
*	Felix manipulated Melissa into not resigning by threatening to
resign himself if Melissa did
*	Rather than speaking to me, or making any attempt to defuse the
issue, Felix spoke with Melissa and let her know about a number of rumours
that he had heard, including that I had committed insurance fraud, bank
fraud, had copied clubroom keys without permission, and had unethically
locked the account of Tom Almeida for reinstalling a windows machine. These
conversations were quoted at the March 29 meeting by Melissa, and
subsequently confirmed by Felix at the same meeting. This hearsay and
allegations are all false and I reject them completely, however they shaped
all subsequent interactions between Melissa and myself. To quote Melissa at
the March 29th meeting: "What I'm going to say is this. I went to [FVP], I
told [FVP] that I wanted to resign. I did not say anything that anyone
should be removed from anything. [FVP] then responded that this was his
nightmare, that he really did not want me to resign, that he might consider
resigning too if I resign, and then told me a bunch of stuff about these
various allegations, and about, that he thinks you (bob) should be removed,
and at first, I disagreed with him, but then after what he told me, I began
to concur". There are various other quotes in the March 29 minutes which
detail the assorted allegations and I encourage all members who wish to be
informed on the issue to read those minutes in full.

 

9/3/19 

*	Felix called an unofficial exec-only meeting to discuss how to
remove me from wheel. The following excerpt is from his email to exec at
approx. 2pm:

"Apologies for the short notice. I believe I have contacted everyone

individually about these issues, and I would like to schedule a meeting

for the current exec to come to an agreement about what plan of action

we should take, and how we should best broach these issues with the rest

of committee.

 

Note that this is potentially sensitive information so it would be much

appreciated if this could be kept in confidence. I have invited the IPP

(Andrew Gozzard) and IPPP (Chris Forbes) to this meeting so that we can

get some context on Bob's behaviour and input on how to deal with him

and the rest of the wheel group.

 

It would be very much appreciated if everyone could fill in this form

[REDACTED] with your availabilities for the next

week. I will get back to you with the final meeting time and date.

 

There's a rudimentary agenda at

[REDACTED],

feel free to add whatever else you think is worth discussing in the

context of the Bob / Wheel issues."

 

*	The agenda in the "REDACTED" link contained the following text,
where Melissa called for cancelling my membership. She subsequently claimed
at the March 29 meeting that she had made no such calls:

"- Bob is a problem

  - Repeated abuse of Wheel powers / breach of ethics

    - Email to Tom Almeida "Windows Reinstall", 21/05/2018, threatening
account locking

    - (MSX) Report re my experience of Bob's behaviour, including
interference with my projects and his attempt to prevent me from taking my
role on committee.

    - Suggested solution: removal from wheel and cancelling membership

- Wheel culture is toxic

  - Schedule wheel meetings more often

  - Make wheel reapplications a thing

  - Afford more control to the democratically elected executive/committee
over the administration of the computer systems

- (MSX) Legally committee must maintain root control of UCC systems, and of
the clubroom, potential severe consequences to us if we don't.

- (MSX) Perception on campus of UCC as an unfriendly place and "wheel" as a
dark shadow committee. Need for cultural change."

 

*	Later that day on the committee-only discord channel, Felix gloated
about being able to kick me off wheel:

[6:36 PM] frekk: Ah yes btw we get to be the committee to kick Bob off
wheel. More to come at our first actual meeting!

 

12/3/19

*	Provided for context: Melissa lets slip that an exec-only meeting is
happening, which is quickly followed by condemnation of this on the wheel@
and committee-only@ mailing lists

 

14/3/19 

*	Exec-only meeting happened unofficially. I believe the whole
committee was invited to this meeting after the wheel uproar. Note that at
the time I was aware of this unofficial meeting, was unable to attend it,
was having my membership of both the club and wheel discussed in a closed
forum, and had no opportunity to defend myself at this point. I was
extremely stressed, unable to sleep, and unable to focus on my work, and
this continued until March 29.
*	Subsequent to this meeting, Felix emailed committee and suggested
ways to remove me from wheel without any due process:

"Hi committee,

 

In light of the discussions at the meeting on Wednesday (earlier today...?
or yesterday... :P), I would like to suggest that we implement a system of
regular wheel applications, in a similar manner to what we [should] do with
door members.

 

In particular, regarding the issues raised with Bob, this may provide a less
"hostile" way for us to remove Bob from wheel with the same effect. Given
the circumstances, I do not believe kicking out Bob individually, which
regardless of our reasoning may be seen as us making an example to the rest
of wheel, is the most tactical way to go about this. I do not believe there
are many, if any, other (active) wheel members who are similarly
problematic, and as such if we did kick Bob out to make an example then I
think it would have many consequences which are undesirable (such as
potentially losing many of our other active wheel members).

 

However, if a system of wheel reapplications cannot be decided upon and
enacted in the short term, then I would see a necessary intermediary step
being the removal of Bob from wheel as soon as is reasonable in the eyes of
committee (preferably effective immediately).

 

Regarding the potential reapplication process, I do not believe that it is
disrespectful to ask current or prospective wheel members to justify why
they should have administrative access to club systems and what benefit they
bring to the club. Such access is not a right nor an entitlement, but a
power granted by committee that comes with great responsibility and only
given to those who can be trusted. As such, I would propose an open-ended
application process whereby current / new members simply explain why they
should be on wheel, with only a small number of criteria provided (such as
"benefit to the club", "benefit to yourself / what you want to learn",
"trustworthiness", etc) so the applicant at least has some idea what we are
looking for.

 

Regarding "the short term", I believe that we should aim to discuss, decide
upon and vote in a wheel reapplication system ASAP (ie. this Friday) such
that applications can be submitted from the date of the meeting until, say,
one month from then. At that point, committee will review the applicants and
vote to re-add members to wheel as appropriate, to be determined by
committee. In the meantime, current wheel members could retain their
privileges, however it would be a good opportunity to work out and discuss
further strategies in an open and transparent manner to improve the
application/reapplication system. This extra time will also allow us to come
up with strategies to deal with wheel members upon their removal (such as to
deal with the possibility of Bob going rogue). I am sure contributions to
discussions about such will be many and "juicy" (for lack of a better word)
given the relatively controversial nature of a wheel
application/reapplication system in general. Not only will this provide food
for thought but will likely be very amusing (hahaha)."

 

*	At the March 29 meeting, Melissa referenced Felix's allusions to me
possibly going rogue as another item on her list of complaints.

 

18/3/19

*	Myself, [NTU] and [LE@] have a sit-down meeting with Felix and urge
him to be open and fair in his dealings with me. I consider this meeting to
satisfy the requirements under 22.1 of the constitution regarding dispute
resolution: "The parties to a dispute must attempt to resolve the dispute
between themselves within 14 days after the dispute has come to the
attention of each party."

 

26/3/19

*	Felix proposes annual wheel purges (see wheel@ and committee@
lists).

 

29/3/19

*	This was the day of a committee meeting. Leading up to the meeting,
I was aware that the issue has not been resolved, but that it had continued
to be discussed behind closed doors. I had been held in suspense for nearly
three weeks at this point, and basically had to be on standby to attend any
of the intervening meetings. 
*	There was no agenda item pertaining to the complaints/issues that
had been raised regarding the day of the AGM, no formal notification that my
membership would be discussed (again I was relying on club insiders to let
me know). 
*	This meeting was scheduled at 3pm - during work hours for me. I was
only able to make it at 3:50pm.
*	This meeting was three hours long, in which I was forced to defend
myself against spurious accusations which had sprung from Felix's initial
rumour spreading.
*	During the meeting, Felix moved to give me a formal warning before I
was able to speak to the allegations, and other committee members had to
point out that they had not yet heard from me
*	I strongly urge all members who wish to be informed about this issue
to read the March 29 meeting transcription in full, however, here are a few
relevant quotes:

 

"- [BOB] I'm going to rewind a little bit. I believe I am here to answer to
a complaint. I have not been told what that complaint is.

- [FVP] Right, well, unfortunately you missed that part of the meeting."

 

"- [BOB] I want to actually get a clarification of what the issue is /cutoff

- [MSX] And I'd like the other issues that you ([FVP]) told me from before,
being the issues from 2010

        - To be talked about and not have my name on them because they were
told to me

- [FVP] Yes. I was going to get onto that. [MPT] can you finish up then
please."

 

"- [JGM] (to [FVP]) based on what you just said, it sounds like you've got a
strong bias towards believing [BOB] is guilty - And I am questioning the
chairing of this meeting, including as such ignoring instances where people
are interrupting and not being held accountable for this. I'd like that
minuted"

 

*	At the end of the meeting, I believe I had addressed the concerns of
all parties, including those regarding allegations of fraud and transphobia.
The committee voted unanimously to apologise to me for their overall
treatment of me, and it was generally agreed that the events on the day of
the AGM were a comedy of misunderstandings.

 

2/4/19

*	I provided a dump of all my communications regarding the 2010
insurance claim to committee and requested an audit. I have had confirmation
from the Treasurer today that he is satisfied with it all.
*	At the same time I presented a scan of the welcome letter from
Westpac, dated 12 days *before* the hail storm. Turns out we were 100%
legally setting up a bank account with Westpac so that we could accept
paypal payments.

 

30/4/19

*	Felix motions to require a full review of all group memberships at
an OGM and the motion is passed.

 

28/6/19

*	With less than one days' notice to committee, Felix attended a
meeting with the Guild president to respond to a complaint that had been
made against the club. At that meeting, Felix states "non-students aren't
the problem, problem members are the problem". 
*	Following this meeting Felix made the following entries in his
report into his report for the upcoming meeting, which was then sent out
with the 4-day meeting notice:

"- Had meeting with Guild President this morning, forwarded minutes to
committee@

- lol bob"

*	When asked what the "lol bob" statement meant via IRC, Felix refused
to answer. I asked Felix several times what the statement was across
multiple days before he removed it from his report. He finally insisted that
if I wanted an answer, I would have to add it as an agenda item for the
upcoming meeting. I did so.

 

5/7/19

*	Committee meeting. Regarding the "lol bob" statement in his report,
Felix responds that "It was irrelevant and not appropriate, and a bad meme.
No further explanation necessary."
*	Felix made no apology to me for a statement that he acknowledges was
inappropriate and had yet again kept me on tenterhooks for a week.

 

I am honestly not sure where to go from here. Felix's bullying and rumour
spreading has led to minor disagreements being blown monumentally out of
proportion, and the ongoing fallout from it has been damaging to all parties
and the club. I think that anyone who knows me knows that I am not
transphobic, and even some people who think I'm an ass have attested to
that. I feel that if Felix had a shred of decency left, he would step down
from the President role, as he has very clearly abused his position. If that
were to happen then I would consider this dispute settled.

I believe Felix went into his presidency with the attitude that I am too
involved in the club and am holding onto the reigns too tightly, and hence
jumped on an opportunity to get rid of me. I come into the club once a week
in the evenings and am active on the mailing lists. I admit that it is hard
to not keep an eye on something that I have put so much work into, however
this year the effort spent defending my work has far surpassed the original
effort I put in. I am tired of the revolving door of student politics and
thus have been looking to move on from UCC. I would like to be able to do
this while remaining a distant member, however I am reluctant to step back
while my name is being dragged through the mud. 

 

Sincerely, Andrew (Bob) Adamson

 

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