Some general thoughts and comments on our league

Oh hey MissFits,

So, I have had a very hard time reading about all of the, for lack of a better word, drama that has unfolded in our league while I've been out of state the past week. However, I have been given the opportunity to think about these things long and hard while I spent 5 hours either in an airport or on a plane with no outside contact.

A wise woman once said "There is no time like the present to shut the monster down." So, lets do just that. This is not a reflection on any certain skater involved in the issues that have taken place, just my thoughts on how we, as a league, can move forward and fix them. In fact, consider this an official proposal to the board on how to move forward with this issue.

The first issue I would like to address is the rewriting of our bylaws. Look, it needs to happen, like last year. Jackers, Ivy, and I did once upon a time sit down and made several useful revisions but even then I don't think we were ready for the overhaul it really needed. So, I propose that, using the framework of the bylaws we already have, we select a committee of the best candidates for re-writing our bylaws. The league ultimately would have the choice of how many to be on the committee, but I have a few nominations:
1. aMOXIEcilla- she is the original writer of our bylaws and could provide some valuable insight as to how she chose what to include.
2. Ivy Packin- she has been working since our original meeting about revisions to help revise the bylaws and I can only assume has a lot of great input based on that.
3. Black and Blue Stocking- she has so many great ideas for what should and should not be included in our business operations, another league member with excellent insight.
4. Ginger Spite- she has an excellent grasp on the legal side of our business and has helped many skaters understand that side of our business. Plus, who better than a lawyer to help re-write the bylaws, eh?

My second proposal to the league is much bigger and is not (again) a personal attack or reflection on any skater. I would like to call an overhaul of how we operate our HR system. The current bylaws state that HR is a volunteer position. No single HR member or the committee as a whole should have more power than handling the problems and issues of the skaters and then looking to the board, our elected officials, for guidance.

So, I have several ideas on how to go about this plan.
1. Completely disband our current HR and pick four new skaters to take over the committee. This would be to simply get some fresh faces and new ideas into the committee.
-As far as this option goes, it is my least favorite. We would end up back where we started and that is not getting anything accomplished.

2. Vote as a league which skaters would be on HR. This would promote this committee from just a committee to a group of elected officials whose purpose would be clearly stated in our bylaws along with what their powers are and what kind of decisions they could make. I would advise that even though they would have elected voting power, they would still need to be second to the board and still report to the board.

3. Disband our current HR system and add an HR position to our current board. HR would then be an elected position with voting power. This person would continue to do the same record keeping and deal with skater issues. I would also propose that this person has an assistant that is chosen by them or elected who can help with the sending of reminder e-mails, and any note keeping that would be too much for one person to handle.

We, as a league, have so much room and potential to keep growing. Let's do it the right way. A problem has been presented to our league so lets quit talking about the problems but rather present solutions. These are just my ideas, please share yours! Every member from NSO to president, from casual skater to team captain, from referee to bench coach, has a voice. Don't stay silent if you have good ideas.

Painbow

Good points Painbow.

This may sound dumb but who is in the HR and who is in the Board. I know a few but not all.

HR is ward, ivy, tayz, and pushy
the board (until march 1st) is moxie (president), camp (vp), wrecka (secretary), painbow (treasurer), and jackers (senior adviser)

Double Painbow wrote:HR is ward, ivy, tayz, and pushy
the board (until march 1st) is moxie (president), camp (vp), wrecka (secretary), painbow (treasurer), and jackers (senior adviser)

Thank You

Painbow, it's like you live inside of my brain. I couldn't love you more right now if I tried.

Good ideas, Painbow. I agree that when we focus on the problem, the problem increases. When we focus on a solution, the solution increases. We know the problems, let's get to the solutions.

Great ideas painbow. And i believe the votes extend past the 1st so your board should remain in tact until there is a solution voted upon. I already let the board know i wouldnt leave them high n dry. And I also was never asked to step down despite rumors that anyone has heard so please know that I'm very much here, supporting each and every member of this league.

Moxie

A problem has been presented to our league so lets quit talking about the problems but rather present solutions. Painbow

Best sentence Ive read all week! Yes we have gether ourselves us and move on, staying mad or choosing sides does nothing but let the cancer spread.

The idea of disbanning the current HR and voting in new members sounds like weve lost our faith in who sits on this committee at present, altho that doesnt seem at all your intent Painbow. We could say all day long "something needs to change" and that just adds to the confusion of everything, your ideas are a great starting point. I know Munch has sent in her letter of interest to sit on the new committee to revise the Bylaws the day after the idea was mentioned at the meeting. I hope that others have followed the proceedure if they are interested, have experience and the backround, to help their league.

I am purposeful when I keep anything bad that happened at The Push out of my posts on this forum, I left it there for a reason and I never have any intention to spew hate to a group of women who have done nothing but welcome me.

That being said I will explain this; The Push has what I would call a very week Greivance Committee ( a committee of one) that would turn to the Board of Directors for assistance. This opened all skaters privacy on a grievance to everyone on the board, the more people that knows about a situation the more chances of it being leaked out. also from my experience it opened up anyone on the board to "get at" someone they didnt particularly care for if there was a grievance against them. Another point in this mished up mashery of nonsense is it was very hard to bring a true grievance against someone on the board. This leaving no check and balance for the board members, they had a say in most grievance proceedures. A system of checks and balances should not, and cannot, be internal to the Board of Directors, that would nullify the entire point of the check and balance system. Its of my opinion that we as a league should have seperate members on HR and seperate members on BOD, it keeps the "good ole boy" mentality far away. No one should be excluded from punishment and no one person should have the final say in the fate of a skater in question. I do believe there will be a point in time when all members of both committees will have to commensurate on a decision together, big issues no one sees coming and/or havnt been address in writing in the Bylaws.

Having a committee of one is dangerous and Ive seen it crumble to pieces. Having one committee that has final say on anything is just as dangerous. I DO like the idea of having ONE HR member on the board and ONE from the board as a member of HR. Both committees have access to the other without single control over any.


make sense?

Great ideas painbow! I like the committee idea for rewriting the bylaws and the people u thought would he good to do the job. Also don't care for option number one for the hr comittee but do like 2 and 3. Maybe someone could create a poll with those three options and maybe create a forth that would be do none of the above in case there are people who dont like any of the options or don't want to do anything differnt?

This is great and I would like to also suggest that Nonny be involed for the section of fundraising/sponsorship and Laursony for PR and I would like to suggest Dinah too. That's all thanks ladies for being so awesome!

Thanks for all this, Painbow!

When I wrote the proposal for a governance committee to rewrite the bylaws, I put in that bit about "All Members of the League, especially those who were present at the founding of the League, are highly encouraged to make themselves available to the Committee to provide any information or expertise needed" for moments like this.

Maybe this won't be the perfect place to ask this, but if I wind up helping revise the bylaws, I'd like to ask those who were involved in the setup what the reason was for creating an HR committee, and what it was expected to do - and then go from there.

Perhaps some of the less savory duties, like arbitration of disputes between skaters, could be handled by everyone - sort of like jury duty. If somebody has a problem, some number of people get randomly selected, and they handle the dispute. Next time around, another group gets selected.

I know it's hard to take time away from skating, but is there any chance that we could - all of us, or as many as possible - get together for some serious talking/planning/brainstorming time about hopes and dreams and plans for how we want the league to go? Kind of a retreat - but probably in town and without an obstacle course, since we don't have any money. But could there be a day before our home bout where we all just try to hang out and talk and first dream for a really long time, and see if we can come up with a vision that we can all look to - then see if we can come up with a collective plan to work toward that vision? I'm thinking half a day - maybe a long Sunday afternoon in lieu of practice? I think it could really help if we all get to talk about our goals and dreams for derby to each other, all together, and get them all together where we can see them.

I know that this is going to take some time, but I would love to see a new bylaw by the end of March...is that being pushy?? I just think that the sooner we have everything set in stone the better and I would be more than willing to help out in any way...I know that there are several things that we have vote on as a leauge that need to go into this exp: attendence, skater transfers...so on that will need to be include, so Wrecka should prolly help also.

Thats all

Camp I think its a great idea the sooner the better. I have said MANY MANY times this team is the BEST of any league from all of the outings I have helped NSO or wash cars, drive vans, drive parades, MOVE MissFits (I could almost make that a full time job), make the shirt rack, bring the cooler and plan to add alot more to this list in the coming years. Why do I do it? Because all of you are like a BIG family and I really enjoy being involved with ALL of you. Do not take this the wrong way, I do NO where near what all you ladys do but together we ALL make it work.
What do you think about having Howser and a few of the GUYS involved in the process. We are a different view of things.

Going off Painbow's proposals for revising HR & Jerzii's comments -

I hadn't really seen the benefit of having a HR/Grievance committee that's separate from the BoD - but after Jerzii's post, I totally do - and NOT a Committee of One! (I can't imagine why any sane person would want that job!)

Separation of Powers has proven to be a pretty effective concept in government, after all :-)

And Mark, I really think we'd want Refs & NSOs involved in some way. I know some league members have strong feelings about certain levels of participation being reserved to skaters (competing skaters, not skating refs) - so we want to respect those sentiments, while also respecting the hard work of you and all our other volunteers. WFTDA has specific requirements about ownership and management (although ownership is kind of a nebulous concept for an NFP), so we have to follow that.

My personal thought is that everyone involved, absolutely, needs to be able to know what's going on, to offer ideas, to ask for information, to express opinions/preferences, and to have grievances addressed. Specifics of voting and representation - that's more complicated.

Should we get a master list going someplace of all these ideas/proposals/things to talk about? I can start pulling things together on Sunday - or maybe that's something for someone in a more official capacity?

Yes please I would love to be a part of re-writing the fundraising/sponsorship part of our bylaws! Just let me know where and when! I will be already coming up with changes and/or addition recommendations.

And Mark you are part of this league as much as anyone of us! I as all of us appreciate everything you do! Your awesome! I mean really super duper awesome! You dedication is amazing and I'm glad we are friends:)

Painbow, thank you for getting the ball rolling with all of these potential solutions! I have some more thoughts in my head, that are directly and indirectly linked to this, so I am posting this here.

I will disclaim this as well that I am not attacking a skater/committee, but just throwing out some ideas to better the league as a whole.

I would propose that all committee heads be elected. We are entrusting all of them to do make the best decisions for our league as possible and therefore, the league should be able to have a say in the people who hold greater responsibility.

I think that for a committee like HR, bylaw committee, and other potential committees that i will get into later, all members should be elected. They are dealing with highly sensitive and highly confidential information. So we need people in that position with according qualifications. (Again, this is a not a personal attack on any skater, because if I had voting power, I would not hesitate to elect the people currently in HR to still remain in those positions. We have asked a lot of them and they have answered the call in the way they thought was best for the league. So it turns out they messed up, we all do it and it couldn't have happened to anyone given the state of things. For me, it is not how you fall, it is how you get back up that matters. And all the current members of HR are smart, strong, resilient women capable of springing anew from the ashes that this situation has left us in.)

This goes hand in hand with the election of our board officials. I was thinking that we could elect these committee heads on a different rotation of when we would elect the board so that way there would be easier transitions and more continuity within the league.

I would also propose a new committee: a processes/review committee (this may go hand in hand with the bylaw committee- so maybe this is just an expansion of that to make the bylaw a permanent committee and not a once a year thing.) These people would work with everyone to get all the job descriptions of every committee/committee head/board member/captain/etc, so we may have a foundation and clear definitions of what is and is not expected from members within each subunit. This committee would also be in charge of reviewing ideas/issues that individuals have and creating a process for proceeding. We all know that the forum gets wordy and filled up quickly with ideas and comments and such (and that is awesome and encouraging) but it is gets cluttered and messy and sometimes people may want to comment but they are so overwhelmed they don’t know what the issue/idea/topic really is anymore (I know I have felt this way on several occasions and you may feel the same why right now reading all of my ramblings). So this committee would be moderators of issues of sorts. If an idea came up, they would set a deadline on the forum for discussion. At the end of the deadline, they would review the thread, start a new thread bullet pointing the main ideas, issues, important comments, and create a plan of action (which may include presenting issues to the board, creating polls, asking for nominations, sending ideas to a specific committee). I think this would foster better discussion and solutions by creating more organization, instead of saying “You have an idea?! Batter up! ” If this were to be a new committee, I think that these members should be elected as well.

I also think this committee should be in charge of creating structures for voting. There are a lot of discussions and opinions and everyone wants to be heard. That’s what is great about derby. We have to shape this league how we feel works best. We aren’t just sitting on the sidelines hashing out our multi-million dollar contracts and paternity suits waiting for some dudes who have no emotional investment in our league to tell us what we are going to do and what the future holds for us. We hold our own future. And that tangent aside, I think that once we get process in place, directs future issues to the right process. I don’t know if I am saying this right, so I will just come up with an example. Like replacing skaters for the All-Star team (and whatever we decide should go for the Wanna B’s yeah?, or any team for that matter). Who should that decision be up to? Should the captains of said team choose the skater since they were the ones in charge of forming the teams originally? Should it be a team decision? Should it be a league decision? Should we hold try outs? Should we just designated an alternate that will be the first to be called up if we need them? And at what point should we say, yes we need to fill in this spot? Once we have all these questions answered, this committee, would spell it out and then when/if the situation rises again, they make sure the process is followed accordingly. This creates consistency, which I for one, am all for.

A potentially less controversial thing is bout themes. You can have all the ideas in the world about whether there should be one, what is should be, etc, but if you really want to have a say in it. Join the committee. Go to the meetings where the league really decides such issues. Yes your idea is important and considered in matters, but if you aren’t there to fight for what you believe in, ultimately the people who do show up are making the decisions. That is pretty much how bout planning has always worked. Should it? I think yes, because that’s why we have committees, so people who don’t care don’t have to worry about it, and those that love it get to do what they do.


Okay, so I think I am out of ideas right now, and I hope I articulated well enough that you all have idea of what I am talking about. So I will leave you with one last thing. I have been watching a lot of Friday Night Lights (the series) lately, and their motto is “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.” And the first time I heard that, I was like, MissFits, this is the MissFits. This is why we celebrate when we are number two. This is why we all act in what we feel is best interest of the league. This is why we skate together. This is why we learn together. This is why we encourage and lift a girl who has never been able to skate to save her life to gear up and get out there. My heart is so full of derby and while my eyes have been a little hazy lately with all the fixable situations that have challenged our league as of late, I know that we can get beyond all of that is plaguing and when that day comes, we won’t lose. We will refuse to. I stand up and refuse to now. I have refused to since the first day i stepped on the track to NSO. I fell in love and I have never looked back.

Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose. My friends, that is the MissFit way.

Awesome ideas here. I 100% agree with the processes committee idea and would love to be a part of it!