Hello folks,
Lately I’ve
experienced, as I suspect a number of you have
experienced, a variety of comments and criticisms of
our new Code of Conduct. Initially, I
responded to these by listening
politely and uttering a few generic platitudes about
loyalty, honor, and good
governance.
Yesterday I was at a
symposium put on by the Harvard
Wireless Club, W1AF.
It was an
outstanding event, with speakers such as Dr. Paul
Horowitz, a/k/a Mr. SETI, and
our own Tom Gallagher.
The attendees were
an articulate, educated, and intellectual bunch of
hams, more so than is
usually the case at your average hamfest.
During the course of the event, several of
the attendees buttonholed me to
talk about the Code of Conduct, and their concerns
about it. This
time I paid better attention. I should have
done so much earlier.
First, let me say that
the vast bulk of the Code is
excellent. Outstanding,
in fact, and I
whole-heartedly support it. In fact, all
of it is outstanding.
The problem is
that there are a few bits that to me seem
inappropriate for a membership
organization such as ours. I suspect
(more than suspect) that these snuck in because we
started with existing Codes
of Conduct as models without taking into account the
difference between a
membership organization such as ours, and an
organization with a closed
board. I
believe we can resolve this
easily, with a few tweaks. But before I
make suggestions, let me describe a somewhat
analogous situation that may
illustrate the issue.
-----------------------------
When election day comes
along, I cruise down to my polling
place, get my ballot (we still use paper here in
Chelmsford, MA) and retire to
a booth where I fill out the ballot in private.
I then take the ballot and insert it, face
down, into a counting
machine. Nothing
on the ballot indicated
that it is mine. No
one knows how I
voted except me. I
cannot be punished for my vote. And so, a senator
gets elected.
Now my senator goes to
Washington. She
stands up on the floor of the senate,
states her case, beats up on some hapless republican
senator from a coal state,
and, when it comes time to vote, places her vote. All of this is
public. It
has to be if there is to be any
accountability, if there is to be any chance for me
to determine if she is
doing a good job, and to decide if I’m going to vote
for her again. I’m
not privy to the conversations that go on
in the Senate cloak room (how many of you remember
what a “cloak room” is?) but when the
formal debate and vote come up,
it is public knowledge. If I’m enough
of
a masochist, I can watch it on Cspan.
Furthermore, my senator
can go on a road trip, stand up on a
stump somewhere, and roundly criticize the same
hapless republican senator from
a coal state, along with the policies he has
supported and which the Senate
has
enacted.
-----------------------------
The ARRL Board is not the US Senate. But it is also
not an organization with a
self-perpetuating board and a private or
semi-private agenda.
Insofar as the form of an organization like
ours is reflected in the conduct policies it
promulgates, we need to position
ourselves somewhere in between.
I would suggest the
following:
I.
Disclosure of votes
Section 6.c, concerning
disclosure of votes, needs a major
change. We
could do one of two things
a.
Eliminate the paragraph
entirely
b.
Allow suppression of voting
information for a
particular vote only after a roll-call vote to
suppress that information
Either of these should
work.
Option b) gives the Board an out in those
very rare situations (I can’t
think of many) in which some privacy is warranted.
II.
Support of Board decisions
We need to find a way
in which a Director can be publicly opposed
to a Board action in a respectful way.
Respecting the final decision of the Board must not
be equated with agreeing with that decision. While I would
agree that Directors should not
undermine decisions of the Board (Code of Conduct,
8.d), we must not forbid a
Director from expressing opposition to it.
Some people are reading section 8 of the code
to say just that. It
is unclear to me what the real intention
is of section 8 in this regard, and I suspect that
different members of the
Board, and certainly of our membership, have
differing and conflicting views. One way to
clear this up, I hope, would be to
add a section 8.g:
g. Nothing in this Code of
Conduct shall be
interpreted so as to forbid a Director from
respectfully and publicly expressing
opposition to or criticism of an action of the
Board, providing that he or she
does not hinder its implementation
A few more notes.
Tom, NY2RF, and I sat for most of an hour
basking in the late afternoon
sun at table in Harvard Yard (it don’t get much
better than that!!) He
pointed out to me that our current Code of
Conduct is firmly and soundly based on other similar
Codes. He
named several examples. Of course, he
is correct. I
would ask, however, how many of these other
Codes are in effect for membership organizations
with elected boards such as
ours? One
good example to investigate might
be the IEEE. I
have not yet found their Board Code of
Conduct. Does
anyone know if they have
one? And are
there other similar
organizations we might look to?