Covenant Amendment - Sunsetting Letters of Reprimand and Updates to Administrative Notes

Since my first term as Left Hand of Justice I have sought to lessen the impact of the Letters of Reprimand, championing a review and advocating with members for their removal, which has led to the current amendments to the Covenant.

The proposed amendments which were sponsored by Justicar Kamjin "Maverick" Lap'lamiz and informed from discussion with several members over the past two years, including an excellent line-by-line review of the Covenant by Darth Strix, has passed the Electorate.

These amendments will see the sunset (removal) of Letters of Reprimand from our system and a transition to a semi-private Formal Warning system. In addition, it addresses an administrative oversight from the origin of the Covenant which had Administrative Notes within the penalty section of the Covenant, when they are non-punitive administrative actions. Further, it aligns whom can access them, as defined in the Covenant, to align with historical operating models since the creation of the modern Brotherhood website over a decade ago.

Voting

I want to thank the Electorate for the engaging discussion and debate on the nature of the Letter of Reprimand and the original intent and intended value compared to how our community engages with members who need, what I call first-level, intervention.

Following the discussion 48 hours of voting begun with the Electorate. With 100% of the Electorate responding, the Amendment passed with 14 affirmative votes, 4 dissenting votes, and no abstentions.

Amendments

Section 7.07 (j) Administrative Notes

This section was amended to include the Chamber of Justice and Consuls to make Administrative Notes on a dossier. Further, it relocates this section to Section 2.01 Rights of the Members. Any necessary reformatting of bullets will occur within Section 7.07 as a result.

Section 7.03 (i) Choice of Trial

This section was modified to remove the reference to a Letter of Reprimand.

Section 7.07 (p) Letters of Reprimand

This section will be replaced with a Formal Warning process that is semi-private. Below is the approved language.

(o) Formal Warnings - As a non-judicial penalty, the Justicar has the authority to issue a formal warning to a member. A formal warning signifies that a member’s actions have not aligned with the spirit of the Covenant or policies of the Brotherhood. It serves as a clear reminder of expectations and an opportunity for the member to adjust their behavior, with the understanding that continuing the behavior may result in a trial by the Chamber of Justice.
      (i) a formal warning must be communicated via email to the individual;
      (ii) the formal warning must be stored such that the Chamber of Justice may easily access it;
      (iii) the minimum number of necessary individuals are notified of the formal warning as determined by the Justicar;

As of approximately 12:20pm central the Covenant has been updated to reflect these changes. Please note the change to 7.07(o) versus the original 7.07(p) is due to the movement of Administrative Notes from 7.07 to 2.01.

Existing Letters of Reprimand

With the passage of this amendment all remaining Letters of Reprimand will be converted to Administrative Notes, and the Letter of Reprimand will be removed from the member’s public dossier. This will take several days to occur. If you are a member who currently has a Letter of Reprimand that will be removed I ask your patience as the Chamber moves through all the steps of enacting these Covenant changes.

Conclusion

I again want to thank the spirited discussion amongst the Electorate regarding this amendment. I am certain many of you will have your opinions on this as well and I'm available to discuss with you. Given the move from having ID lines displayed on a person's dossier page, the move of the awards to only display the top awards and needing people to click on a separate page to view all - of which the Letter of Reprimand is at the body and visually looks like the other scrolls - meant that whatever perceived benefit of the Letter of Reprimand had diminished over time and we, as a Brotherhood, have better means of engaging with our membership to address concerns than 'awarding' them a punishment.

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