[hackerspaces] Inclusivity, alienation and a lame duck

[Vesna Manojlovic]

Hi Morgan,

since you asked for the opinions:

On Thu, 19 Feb 2015, Morgan Gangwere wrote:

1. Inclusivity is good - even if it has to be forced at first;
doing nothing will change nothing.

Otherwise you'll only have:
> cis-white-het-male folk in our space.

However, stopping at the "written statement" , however hammered-out,
is not enough -- and it looks like your space does have attitude problems 
that are standing in the way of real "inclusivity".

2. Offending name: remove it!

Now you have the "written statement" to back up the decision -- even if 
giving the name is a perk of funding campaign, the name has to be alligned 
with your values of inclusivity, that is - not offensive.

Offer the person another chance, to come up with better name?

> (notably, the ones already mentioned; there are 6 on our board, plus president, who is the longest standing board
> member with 1 year terms).

since the board positions have an expiry date,
it looks like you have built in mechanisims for solving this problem 
already! congratulations!

> 3. The president of the board is useless, has no leadership skills, and has become in some ways a lame duck;
[...]
> I've considered calling for a vote of no confidence by the membership, but there's a problem: A majority of the
> membership doesn't even really show up nor care at this point.

because the issues are hidden from them.

i dare to bet that they will wake up if you call for a vote of no 
confidence -- that's quite harsh! but there might be other consequences, 
and you must be ready to accept them -- for example, if it turn out that 
people really don't care, while you aparently care a lot, maybe that's not 
a place for you any more...

Unfortunatelly, I recognise many of the patterns in the history of our 
'space... For now, our story still goes on, but not sure if it will have a 
happy ending...

good luck!

Vesna

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