Re: Last Call: <draft-farrresnickel-harassment-05.txt> (IETF Anti-Harassment Procedures) to Best Current Practice

[Sam Hartman <[e-mail]>]

>>>>> "Pete" == Pete Resnick <[e-mail]> writes:

    Pete> On 3/9/15 3:14 PM, Jari Arkko wrote:
    >> we did discuss the leadership-as-respondent issues during IESG
    >> Evaluation, and we concluded keeping these procedures and recall
    >> separate was best. Pete or Adrian can give details if you're
    >> interested.

    Pete> The short answer is that the IESG generally thought that
    Pete> "crossing the streams" was a bad idea. Imagine that we do get
    Pete> to the particular point of horror, that someone in leadership
    Pete> has harassed someone in such a way that the Ombudsteam
    Pete> concludes the only appropriate remedy is that they are unable
    Pete> to attend future meetings or participate in list discussions,
    Pete> *and* that person refused to resign their post. Even if they
    Pete> keep the fact of the harassment confidential and simply said,
    Pete> "I will be unable to attend meetings in the future for
    Pete> personal reasons, nor will I be able to participate in WG list
    Pete> discussions, but I still wish to remain as AD", that's really
    Pete> plenty enough impetus for a recall committee to be formed and
    Pete> remove the person from their post.

OK, well, that seems kind of inconsistent with the current text that
talks about recommending someone not be in a leadership position.

I really do find the current text deeply broken and don't think I
understand it well enough that I could reasonably participate in any of
the roles outlined by the process.  Which to me seems to be a fairly
major fairness issue.

Also, there's another concern.  Imagine sexual harassment on the part of
ADs in in-person interactions.
First, if you think that doesn't happen, I'll be happy to share specific
instances where I was the target of such harassment (without names of
course) so we can get a public discussion of the sorts of things that do
happen.
I don't think situations involving me were sufficient that someone
needed to be excluded, but others may have experienced more serious
situations.
In some ways this approach forces the ombudsteam to exclude someone from
a meeting rather than what might be a lesser penalty  of removing them
from a leadership position.
Do you want to force that?

I think that most of my concerns would be addressed by adding a
statement indicating that the ombudsteam SHOULD maintain a procedure
explaining  how they resolve conflicts between the desire for
confidentiality and the disclosures necessary to do their jobs.

To me that statement accomplishes two things not present in the current
text:

1) It acknowledges that there are such conflicts; I read the current
text and I see a bunch of stuff about absolute confidentiality, with no
acknowledgement that it can't quite be absolute.

2) Indicates where people can look to see current thinking on resolving
the conflict.

Without something along these lines or a lot more work, I think this is
really very broken.