Open letter to the SCA corporate officers and board of directors

Below is the letter I sent to the chairperson for the board of directors, society earl marshal, society president, and society seneschal. I post it here for all to read, with hopes that it will inspire others to write their own letters and make their feelings known. Please remember to keep things as civil, professional, and respectful as possible. In retrospect, I probably should have added that I’ve held multiple positions within the seneschalate of the East, and am acutely aware of what it means to know, understand, and follow the written rules of the SCA, and that no interpretations can contradict those rules. If any do, the old rules must be officially removed in favor of the new ones.

All,

I am writing concerning a number of topics. As was recently posted online, apparently there is a sentiment that not enough people write in regarding issues with decisions and actions of SCA society level officers, so this is an attempt to aid your perspective.

First, we’ll go into two topics at once. The recent sanction of Wistric regarding an issue at Gulf Wars is something that absolutely does not sit well with literally any scadian I’ve spoken with, of which there are many. From the information made publicly available, including the communications from the society level to Wistric, it appears that he followed the posted rules for that event and the chain of command. He was well within his rights per Corpora and the rules of Gulf Wars to do what he did. The burden then fell upon Baldar to appeal the decision to the War Marshal, which was not done to my knowledge, and to make matters worse he also continually tried to circumvent the RMiC decision and take the field anyway. Had someone like myself, a non-peer and non-royal-peer, done something like that, it would then be ME who was sanctioned and the RMiC would be backed by society. The optics here are exceedingly bad, especially considering Wistric appears to have followed the rules by every shred of available evidence, including the testimony of multiple people involved. To my knowledge, none of these people were contacted during the investigation.

Following the sanction, the reasoning behind it was made clear that supposedly Wistric did not follow the chain of command, which we know to be false. He also made the right call on the field, as a fighter presented improper paperwork and had not been recorded by his kingdom (paperwork not signed by 2 marshals, and was for a re-auth despite it being an initial auth). His KEM attempted to vouch for him, who is not part of the chain of command as well, and the rules in kingdom and corpora specifically stated at the time that the paperwork must be correct prior. The KEM also should have appealed to the War Marshal rather than the SEM, as per the chain of command. Again, to my knowledge, and that of others, neither the KEM nor Baldar have been sanctioned for their gross misconduct. Recently, it was announced by the BoD that the actual reason for the sanction is a violation of community standards, which in and of itself is both vague and problematic. I am aware that someone recently detailed at length why the “failure to follow the chain of command” reason was false, so this appears to be the BoD moving the goalposts in order to save face, which is also incredibly poor optics. This gives the public the perspective that something shady happened which allowed this sanction, and now corporate officers are scrambling and throwing every reason/excuse they can at the wall to see what sticks. To further complicate matters, there was a post on Facebook recently by an individual from corporate which was vastly dismissive, inappropriate, tone deaf, insensitive, crass, and grossly unprofessional. It has been spread all around scadian social media, and the general sentiment seen is that of deep disapproval accompanied with the knowledge that this individual will likely not face repercussions for it due to my last point.

There currently appear to exist multiple conflicts of interest amongst the corporate officers, and to the best of my knowledge corpora does not have rules preventing this. Having this be not just an eventuality, but even just a possibility, is deeply problematic. We have people in positions where they get paid by those of us who have memberships, and these people can pretty much do what they want because the only person(s) that can remove them are those with personal relationships to them. This conflict of interest has potential to cause major issues, and has already eroded trust in our organization that can be seen across multiple kingdoms.

Overall, these recent statements and actions by the society officers and BoD have sown distrust in MANY scadians across the known world. There is now a growing number who are strongly considering just canceling their memberships, not renewing their memberships, and/or walking away from the SCA completely. There also exists an aire of discomfort among the marshalate due to both what happened to Wistric for appearing to follow the rules, and due to the rules interpretation issued by the society seneschal last summer which basically stated that a Kingdom Earl Marshal can violate kingdom law and/or corpora if they so chose. This creates a dangerous environment for combatants and marshals alike, and also creates an environment where being buddies with the KEM is a free pass to pretty much do whatever. In this picture that is being painted, being a well known peer or royal peer means you are not an equal to others as far as what rules are applied. To my knowledge of peerage, peers should be the example, the ones to follow, those who know and follow the rules, and who encourage others to do the same. They should be judged MORE harshly when they break the rules, in my opinion, since they cannot claim ignorance whatsoever at their level. I’m unsure why the corporate officers are choosing to create and further this image of a “members only club”, where they basically can be stacked with a close knit group and make whatever decisions they want, regardless of rules and without oversight. I would ask that you all consider the implications of your actions and apparent attitudes towards our society, and choose to work to make this negative image go away in favor of one people can trust. I do believe that this would likely involve some current officers and board members to be replaced with those representing a more diverse mix such that proper discourse can occur for the betterment of our society.
—

YIS

Lord Fearghus mac Cailin