[Deptheads] Re: GM complaint

Thu Sep 6 00:08:16 PDT 2012

Roderick wore a series of shirts that used parodies of Obama campaign logos. 

Strident, but by modern standards not terribly inflammatory. The "hot-botton-ness" is obviously their political nature. Considering the range of T-shirts that show up at cons, these were utterly mild. 

As for being "racist," that is quite a stretch. None of the shirts I saw said anything of a racial nature, and I don't think any of them even had a caricature, drawing or photo.

Campaign t-shirts have shown up at previous cons. This is nothing new. I remember someone I knew making a big deal out of wearing a campaign t-shirt in 2008.

This whole matter is a difficult area to balance - highlighting the matter might just exacerbate the issue. The last thing we need is to fire up fringy political types into wearing "bomb throwing" antagonist t-shirts and buttons to counter other political clothing.

Frankly, I think taking just about any action at all at this point is making mountains out of molehills.

Eric N.

-----Original Message-----
From: Eric Burgess <erburgess at gmail.com>
To: deptheads <deptheads at strategicon.net>
Sent: Wed, Sep 5, 2012 9:56 pm
Subject: Re: [Deptheads] Re: GM complaint

I don't recall the text on the shirts but I'm still not convinced it matters much. If multiple people reacted to it, then it wasn't 'welcoming'. That's why I think Ryan's text is so good. It's simple, open to interpretation and not enforced in a draconian manner.

...ERB
www.boardgamebabylon.com 
www.strategicon.net
Please consider supporting The Battle of Red Cliffs before September 5th!

On Wed, Sep 5, 2012 at 9:52 PM, Ryan McMullan <rmcmullan at gmail.com> wrote:

I think the key questions are:
1) (as Eric said) What actually happened?
2) How do we learn from this and build it into our process in the future?

Unless I hear otherwise, I'm going to paste that snippet I wrote into the email template that I send GMs after I accept their event.  That way they will hear the message every time and it stands a chance of sinking in.  If we want to do something different or word smith the message, I'm game, but I don't want to just shrug our collective shoulders and change nothing.

Ryan

On Wed, Sep 5, 2012 at 4:03 PM, Eric Burgess <erburgess at gmail.com> wrote:

Roderick's personality notwithstanding (he's a friend), was definitely part of my daughter's interpretation, I think she was bothered by one of the shirts, too.

Personally, I think Ryan's suggestion is exactly the right response. We want to be welcoming and we would encourage all GMs to well-represent the cons. I don't think this is different than asking them to avoid foul language, provocative clothing or excessive blood/guts on their shirts. This isn't at all a free speech issue - it would be if we asked paid attendees to be similarly cautious. As volunteers, they are a bit like employees, who absolutely can be asked to consider how they represent an organization. I think the light tone Ryan suggests is the way to approach it. If it comes up again, there is then the opportunity to address it with a repeat offender that has heard the request to avoid attire that might be less than welcoming.

And it must be said: If we kicked out all the creepy GMs, we'd lose too many. ;)

On Sep 5, 2012, at 3:44 PM, Mike James <mjames2871 at aol.com> wrote:

Whenever anyone calls anything racist, I tend to roll my eyes. It seems to be the go to argument for a lot of stuff that isn't. Chances are most people can understand that just because someone is GMing a game or is that does not mean that Strategicon is sharing their political views. Someone is far more likely to stop coming to games or even cons if the GM is the aforementioned "creepy and mean" than if someone wears something with a differing viewpoint. 

Mike

On Sep 5, 2012, at 3:18 PM, Tim <tim at stugiii.com> wrote:

              I would be more inclined to talk to him about being "creepy and    mean".  That certainly isn't something we need in a GM.

On 9/5/2012 3:05 PM, Eric Burgess      wrote:

Full disclosure: One of the complaints I heard was      from my daughter, who called Roderick "creepy and mean" but it was      someone else who said one of the shirts was "racist".

-- 
      Hadrian decided to build his wall so the Scots would be left          undisturbed in their never-ending war against their mortal          enemies... the Scots

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