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From: tp@mccall.com (Terry Poot)
Newsgroups: comp.org.decus
Subject: Re: DECUS badge-pulling decisions (was re: Ray Ka
Message-ID: <1991Feb6.081150@mccall.com>
Date: 6 Feb 91 14:11:50 GMT
References: <910124092032.00000A80011@mwvms.mitre.org>   <10166@lmrc.uucp>
Reply-To: tp@mccall.com (Terry Poot)
Organization: The McCall Pattern Co., Manhattan, KS, USA
Lines: 46

In article <10166@lmrc.uucp>, hassinger@lmrc.uucp (Bob Hassinger) writes:
>In article <1991Jan31.165013@mccall.com>, tp@mccall.com (Terry Poot) writes:
>> "Canons of Conduct are policy that has been implemented to allow for the
>> revocation of symposium registration of those attendees who have been
>> obviously disruptive and/or have attempted to sabotage or vandalize
>> machines and/or software WHILE AT SYMPOSIA." (emphasis mine)  --
>> Registration packet, book II, page 4, column 2 at the top.
>> 
>> Thus there IS a policy for revoking registration, and this person did
>> not violate that policy. The board broke its own rules.
>
>Am I correct that "SYMPOSIA" is a plural?  That is, it refers to more than the
>current one?  If so, I refer you to first hand reports posted by Jeff Killeen
>over on DECUServe where he positively states that the individual in question
>*was* found crashing systems on the exhibit floor at a previous symposium. In
>that case Jeff reports the individual was ejected from the symposium
>along with
>two others involved in the same case, and the current policy including
>the
>notice on the back of the badge about "property of DECUS" was
>instituted to
>better cover the need to do the same sort of thing in the future.  In
>other
>words this individual in particular was the start of all this some
>years ago.

Hmm. The one thing that makes me doubt this story is the fact that it
hasn't been cited so far. If the board had ejected him from a previous
symposium in accord with the canons, the wording above does seem to
imply that they can bar him from future symposia. If that is the case,
why didn't they just say so? All it would take is someone on the board
saying "He disrupted a system at a previous symposium, and was thus
ejected from LV in accordance with the canons. The only mistake was
accepting his registration in the first place."

There might then be a debate on the wording of that article of the
canons, and whether this is an appropriate rule, but we wouldn't have
this raging argument over the ethics/legality/etc. of the action.

So if this is the case, why didn't they say so? Maybe they did it for
the wrong reasons, and then found out they could have used the right
ones? That wouldn't help my opinion of the board much.
--
Terry Poot <tp@mccall.com>                The McCall Pattern Company
(uucp: ...!rutgers!ksuvax1!mccall!tp)     615 McCall Road
(800)255-2762, in KS (913)776-4041        Manhattan, KS 66502, USA