Greetings Everyone,

I’d like to take this opportunity to share who I am beyond the glorious collection of Mother conspiracies, Hutt memes, and #beatkam. Hopefully these humorous moments show my good nature and latitude towards we’re a collaborative group of individuals brought together by shared interests to have fun and not malicious intent.

I am appreciative of the offer by Bubba and Atra to serve the membership in the role of Justicar. I spoke with both of them a while ago about my desire to pursue this role and what it meant to me to be a steward of the membership. 

In keeping with tradition, I’m outlining three key areas for your consideration. Who I am. Who the Justicar is, as a grounding, and my perspective. What to expect if approved. I’ve included a simple table of contents if you want to skip to the parts that most interest you.

As I’m commuting to the office Tuesday - Thursday I’ll also be joining voice chat at around 4-4:10pm Central for live questions and answers. I look forward to hearing from all of you.

Who am I?

Who is the Justicar?

What to expect?

Kam as Justicar…

Issue Development

Bringing Charges

Who am I?

There’s so much I could write here, from joining the club in 1995 and spending the majority of my life in some way connected or influenced by it, to who I am outside the club. I’ll spare you all that much backstory, cause not everyone’s backstory is worth reading, and jump to modern events.

I’m a father of four children. Three boys and one girl. Their ‘in universe’ names are Kai (10.5), Komilia (7.5), Rohan (6), and Hikaru (2.5). My youngest was born in 2020 during a complicated pregnancy and spent 41 days in the NICU. Finding myself with a surplus of free time due to the pandemic, a desire for social interactions, and something to distract myself from the evenings in the NICU when I couldn’t hold my youngest - I found myself drawn back to the Brotherhood, nudged along by a comment from Sarin (Pravus) regarding getting setup on Telegram.

Over the last three years I’ve marveled at the growth of the organization and the community. Slowly, I found myself drawn back into a leadership position within Scholae Palatinae which opened a door to work as the Left Hand of Justice and later Right Hand of Justice under Atra.

Overall, I joined this community as a child seeking a safe place to express myself. As a Star Wars nerd in a rural area there weren’t a lot of like-minded people to dive into my fandom. As I’ve grown into adulthood I have a deep sense of responsibility to enable a continued safe space for future generations to find themselves in a community that shares their passions.

Who is the Justicar?

Bubba did a beautiful job describing this when he sought the appointment to Justicar. To me, simply put, the Justicar is the one who speaks for the people. While this takes a unique perspective of occasionally holding the members accountable for their actions I view that still as speaking for the members who either were directly negatively impacted or who indirectly could become negatively impacted if the behavior were to continue.

It is my belief that most situations can be addressed via communication and mediation. Further, that the overwhelming majority of our companions do not harbor malicious intent. 

In terms of my most recent experience with the Chamber there were a few key accomplishments I’m quite proud of, though not necessarily public knowledge. 

1. Letters of Reprimand (LoR) - One of our low impact punishments for individuals is the Letter of Reprimand which is a formal notation on a member's profile that marks them as having had a guilty verdict. There is a formal process to request a LoR be removed that was seldom enacted. As LHoJ I reviewed all the LoR since the creation of the chamber, assessed the merits of the case, the duration since it was issued, and the behavior/engagement of the member since the case. From this list I reached out to members who may qualify for their LoR to be removed and informed them of their rights under the Covenant. This has led to three members qualifying for their LoR to be removed from their dossier since 2021.

2. Templates, Templates, Templates - I believe in a repeatable process and built several templates for gathering facts in a case as RHoJ and tracking discussion and decisions within the Chamber. This enables the following

   1. A consistent experience between members joining the Chamber a RHoJ and LHoJ that is easy to navigate and find information
   2. A record of discussion/decisions regarding individuals who may be discussed frequently but not violate the Covenant and removes the oral history from one Justicar to another sharing what they had done
   3. It allows for the management of trends. We had one situation where a member had numerous warnings, from numerous Justicars, which when taken individually were not concerning but when looked at as a whole showed the need for additional engagement

3. Modernization of the Covenant - Specifically the removal of all gender pronouns within the Covenant. This was a great way of reviewing the Covenant and the intent within the language. Our community has grown and our Covenant should reflect that growth and inclusion. 

I will take a moment to address some of my history as, like an elephant, there are members of the Brotherhood with a long memory. Decades ago, during the Emperor’s Hammer era I was on the High Court of Inquisitors which elicits some strong memories in many people. There are a few lessons I take away from my time there that influenced my time in the Chamber.

1. Creating work to keep you engaged in a ‘legal’ role is dangerous. The HCI used to find all sorts of reasons to have something to do and that led to a lot of people going through trials that were unnecessary. In preparing for this discussion I reviewed some of those old cases and in some situations wouldn’t have even created notice today. From an individual being tried for swearing to cloning (in an era before our site tools would catch it as it happened).
2. Punishments must be tempered to the crime. Loss of rank and awards, in the era before XP, were severe punishments for severe violations of the Covenant. What should be avoided in the ‘nuclear’ option of removing all rank and medals as that is more likely to cause a member never to return to the organization instead of learning from the situation and engaging in a more positive manner. 
3. While the Justicar has unique authority granted by the Covenant they do not operate in a vacuum. Whether consultation from the Hands, precedent in former cases, to consultation with the Justicar it is important to have a mirror of your actions to say “is this fair”.

What to expect?

This is where I give a similar answer to what I was discussing with my real-life mentor recently - this seems like an easy, short answer, but anything else seems like I’m over thinking.

Unlike other positions within our organization, I wouldn’t expect big sweeping objectives within the Chamber if I am appointed. Mainly, because the situations that warrant the attention of the Chamber have diminished over the years and my desire to address situations before they escalate into requiring the Chamber’s attention.

That being said, I do intend to continue to look at how our community grows and technology grows. We spent quite a bit of time researching Artificial Intelligence (AI) while I was in the Chamber and we made some adjustments based upon the emerging technology. I want to continue to examine how we can enable a fair use of AI like we do other tools (e.g., I remember grading fiction before spell-check was automatic. Do any of us consider spell check or grammar check AI cheating? No, they’re commonplace now) while not creating a situation where manual work is diminished.

Kam as Justicar…

Given the unique position of the Justicar I want to share how I would approach what I see as the two, public, components of the Justicar. What happens while an issue is developing and what happens when an issue requires charges to be levied.

Issue Development

I always want to defuse a situation before it escalates into a bigger issue. During my time in the Chamber the majority of situations that were raised to our attention were misunderstandings or poor communication.

Objectively viewing the situation and engaging 1:1 with the members, in each situation, allows us to diffuse the situation and find an amicable outcome. Whether that’s changing the tone of future conversations or accepting that two people shouldn’t communicate. 

I intend to continue the practice Atra had with Arch and myself when we were his Hands to have the Hands engaged in reviewing and debating a situation. There are rare situations that a Justicar needs to take unilateral and immediate action and having multiple perspectives helps ensure objectivity. 

Bringing charges should be a situation reserved for clear violations of the Covenant. 

Bringing Charges

For me the first thought of bringing charges is - would the case result in a guilty verdict. If the answer is no, then there’s another means to handle the situation via mediation or counseling. 

As I reflect upon Section 7.06 Conduct of Members often these are read as the various items that individuals can be charged with. I look at it as these are the situations that, when they occur, negatively impact other members and when they occur require a response. 

While some have varying levels that relate to them, such as 7.06(g) crude behavior, 7.06(i) Disreputable Behavior, and 7.06(l) Harassment. The majority are crystal clear. Based upon either the severity of the situation or the failure of mediation/counseling then charges will be brought forward.

During my time in the Chamber there was only one situation that didn't easily fall into these two categories and that was an individual who was borderline on communication issues but had a long-standing trend of mediations and remediation's happening yet the root situation continued to present itself.

As I shared above, the tracking enhancements will minimize these type of situations from occurring as we’ll track the trend and discussions will be held with the Hands are to when the scales tip towards charges. This would be done very carefully and with consultation with the Chamber and former Justicars as it would be a precedent setting case.