Article 10. Conflict Resolution
It is expected that conflicts or disputes arising within or between the membership and / or the Executive Board will typically be addressed and resolved by those organs themselves. In the event such resolution cannot be achieved, the matter at issue may be referred to one of the Society’s two formal conflict resolution organs – the Ombudspersons and the Trustees. Given a conflict among the officers or members of the Society, any party to the conflict may request the services of either organ as follows:
- An Ombudsperson may serve as a non-binding arbiter.
- A specially convened panel of Trustees may serve as a factfinding board or as arbiters.
Conflicts of a relatively minor, transient, or personal nature should be referred to the Ombudspersons. The process for using the Ombudspersons is:
- any party to the conflict requests an Ombudsperson’s service as arbiter.
- the Ombudsperson decides if he / she can properly accept the case.
- the Ombudsperson investigates the case, seeks a resolution, and if necessary prepares a report.
Referrals to the Trustees should be limited to large scale or very serious conflicts such as (e.g.) grievances relating to officers, policies, and actions of the Executive Board. The process for requesting a panel of Trustees is the same as for using the Ombudspersons, except the request for assistance should be directed to the Trustees.
Article 10 is essentially unchanged from the 1979 edition. It has been rewritten to further clarify that conflicts of relatively low severity should be forwarded to the ombudsperson(s) and those of relatively higher severity should be forwarded to the trustees.
PROPOSAL Re. Article 10
I suggest to eliminate this article altogether.
• If the position of Ombudsperson is retained, the function of the Ombudspersons is appropriately specified in Article 7 which could be fine-tuned to include whatever Article 10 adds. On the whole the Ombudsperson part of Article 10 is redundant with Article 7.
• If the position of Ombudsperson is abolished, which I advocate, there is little left in Article 10 but procedures involving the Trustees, which are more appropriately specified in Article 5, concerning what the Trustees are to do.
• I would suggest adding to Article 5 the paragraph 8 of Article 9 dealing with the certification of voting results when participation is too low, as well as the breaking of ties. The issue of vetoing an Executive Board decision is already included in Article 5, all three of which are conflict resolution/prevention mechanism (incidentally omitted from Article 10).
• My final reason for eliminating this article is that reading the by-laws gives the impression that there is a lot of struggle within ASC, which is not the case. True, current practices within ASC do not preclude future conflicts, which is why by-laws are so important. Therefore, I would not want to eliminate conflict prevention and resolution procedures but specify them where they need to be handled, largely in Article 5, Trustees.
I concur with Klaus’ suggestions.
after all discussions, i still stand with my proposal
- remove articles 7, 10, and 12
- add paragraph 8 of Article 9 to Article 5 dealing with the certification of voting results when participation is too low
- add that the latter applies also when ties have to be broken.