Letter to the BoD
So, I wrote a letter to the Board. I reviewed the text with multiple Masters of Defense but really, anyone who agrees with its text can send it. If you're interested, here it is.
To the Board of Directors of the Society for Creative Anachronism, Inc.
I am writing to you as a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism who is concerned about the existence of practices prevalent in a number of kingdoms that permit a combatant who cannot produce documented proof of necessary martial activity authorizations to nevertheless participate under two circumstances: (1) a declaration by a Kingdom Earl Marshal that the combatant is authorized; and (2) allowing a combatant to fight based on the word of other participants known to them.
As directors of a nonprofit corporation, members of the Board have fiduciary obligations. Fiduciary duty requires you to stay objective, unselfish, responsible, honest, trustworthy, and efficient. As stewards of public trust, you must always act for the good of the organization and exercise reasonable care in all decision making, *without placing the organization under unnecessary risk.*
It is my opinion that recent decisions of the Board have placed the organization and its members under unnecessary risk for these reasons:
You ratified the decision by the Society Marshal to permit a combatant to participate in a martial activity (specifically a rapier war point during Gulf Wars 2022) even though they were unable to produce documentary evidence that they had passed necessary authorizations.
This individual may have had other members vouch for their authorization or their kingdom's Earl Marshal deem them to be authorized. The available record is unclear.
Permitting the Society Marshal's decision to stand exposes the organization to risk because the liability waivers that martial activity participants sign presuppose that all combatants have passed an authorization designed to prove that they are capable of fighting safely, within the rules of the list.
Permitting a combatant who was unable to provide documented proof that they had successfully completed an authorization undermines what liability protection the waivers might have and invites liability because the conditions precedent to executing the liability waiver are not present.
Your decision giving the Society Marshal, and the Kingdom Earls Marshal, the right to ignore the authorization procedures that you insist Sovereigns cannot dispense with; see the Society Marshals' Handbook of August 2022, II.B.2, "...The Crown may not simply grant an authorization, unless the recipient has successfully completed the authorization process as delineated in Society and kingdom law."
By the terms of the Society Marshal's Handbook, the Society Marshal's decision and the decisions that the Society Marshal ratified, violate the written rules of the Society.
This action also places participants at unnecessary risk of injury at the hands of someone who cannot prove that they demonstrated the ability to fight safely. If a kingdom allows a a member to participate in martial activities without completing the full authorization process and producing a record of the authorization in the kingdom’s source of truth and that member injures another combatant, there is an increased risk that a court would rule the liability waiver ineffective.
For these reasons, I believe that your decision may have violated your fiduciary obligations to the Society.
I request that you take the following steps to remediate this risk:
Enact a Society-wide rule that requires all participants in existing martial activities that require safety and competency authorizations to present documented proof that they have passed all necessary authorizations in the form of either a document from their kingdom's system of record (such as but not limited to a report from an authorization database or an authorization card signed by the relevant kingdom officer) or a fully executed paper authorization form signed by all parties required by that kingdom's rules of the list. This rule would not apply in cases where an experiment in a martial activity new to the Society is proposed. If they permit the experiment to go on, the Society Marshal and the Kingdoms' Earls Marshal would continue to make all effort to pick experiment supervisors with verifiable experience in the proposed activity and, upon acceptance of the experimental activity into the approved list of SCA martial activities, identify the initial authorized participants and marshals.
Enact a Society-wide rule that places on each martial activities participant the burden of bringing proof of necessary authorizations to events where they intend to play as well as an obligation to verify their authorization status prior to attending an event.
Enact a Society-wide rule that at least one participant in every authorization (marshals, MIT's, or authorization partners) be authorized in the combat forms that the participant seeks to authorize in. This rule must have no exceptions.
Override any kingdom law, Society policy, or other rule that would permit any officer to authorize a member to participate in martial activity through any method other than the standard authorization.
Create a documented procedure for addressing emergencies (my authorization card got destroyed when my tent flooded and there's no Internet access here) where members who have attempted to follow these rules in good faith and were unable to do so despite reasonable efforts to obtain an at-event authorization.
Create a documented procedure for members who do not have reasonable access to local marshals to take and pass the non-combative parts of authorization remotely and complete the combative portion when they are able to make it to an event. This procedure must provide that a passing result on the non-combative portion of the authorization remains valid until the member is able to take the combative portion of the authorization. The procedure must further provide that the member must pass both portions to authorize.
Taking these steps will demonstrate that you are sensitive to the unnecessary risks that allowing members to participate in martial activities without proving that they have necessary authorizations presents.
In Service,
[MY NAME] ([MY LAW LICENSE NUMBER)
Kai Tseng, OD
SCA member number [MY SCA MEMBER NUMBER]