When Convention Committees Go Nuclear
If you read nwhyte's journal (and is there anyone left who doesn't?) you'll be aware from this post that Irish fan slovobooks has been banned at short notice from attending Octocon this weekend, seemingly on the basis of unspecified conduct or comments relating to his criticism of the current committee.
Can they do this? More importantly, should they?
In various con-running panels and discussions I've pointed out that in legal terms a convention committee are in general terms entitled to refuse entry to a prospective member or, in certain circumstances, tell a member to leave. A member has a contract with a convention, and, following court rulings in other cases where people have been ejected from events they paid admission to, that contract is deemed to include implied terms about the attendee behaving in a reasonable manner for the event. If he or she doesn't, then the contract is terminated.
This is significant because in English law, you are by default a trespasser the moment you enter property owned by someone else. The reason you aren't thrown out of everywhere you go is that the law also recognises a range of express and implied permissions - called licences - to be on someone else's property. If I invite you round for dinner, in legal terms I'm granting you a temporary licence to be in my flat, which I can withdraw at will if, say, you pour your soup on one of my other guests. If you walk into a shop, you are exercising the implied licence that the shop has granted all lawful visitors. But that licence only extends to the public areas of the shop, and if you go through the 'Staff Only' door you are trespassing. And if you go to the cinema, then by selling you a ticket the management have granted you a 'contractual licence' to be present for the duration of the film. And this is where the point about contracts comes in, because the courts have held that if you violate the terms of such a contract - including implied terms about reasonable behaviour - then as well as the contract being terminated, so is the contractual licence to be on the premises that goes with it. In other words, you become a trespasser and so can be ejected.
When is it reasonable for 'The Management' to terminate a contract of admission? Well, when the attendee's behaviour is unreasonable. Of course, 'unreasonable' will be very variable; what is reasonable at a rugby match may not at a cake-decorating class. I would suggest that one definition is 'behaviour that seriously inconveniences the management or upsets other attendees' and certainly for sf conventions this is the guideline I'd follow. Indeed, I'm aware that some convention committees have avoided the ambiguity of implied terms by expressly including such a condition in their membership forms.
What about refusing someone membership? Well, nobody is forced to enter into a contract, so in principle a convention committee has absolute right to refuse to sell a membership. This is in practice tempered by anti-discrimination law so a committee cannot refuse admission on the basis that a prospective member is black, gay or disabled. (Although, to pre-empt one discussion, under the Disability Discrimination Act they can refuse admission to someone on the basis of a mental health problem that would lead to unreasonable disruption of the event.)
Now, having laid down the legal grounds for not admitting or ejecting a member of a convention, let's turn to practical issues: when should a convention committee do this? The answer, I say, is as rarely as possible. Fandom is a culture that is not only for the most part inclusionary, but one that likes to pride itself on being so. Exclusion is by definition antithetical to fandom's view of itself - yes, a view that is not always matched by reality, but one that most fans would consider one of fandom's most attractive aspects. It should be the proverbial nuclear option, rarely threatened and hardly ever followed through.
I've been involved in one incident where a fan was ejected (or rather would have been had the person in question not been removed on other grounds) and subsequently banned. It was an exceptionally severe and unpleasant occurrence that was genuinely traumatic for the committee in question and was definitely at the top of the scale of unreasonable behaviour. Moving down the scale a bit, at both the 1995 and 2005 Glasgow Worldcons I personally witnessed behaviour - in each case by a very arrogant self-proclaimed Big Name Fan - that was so abusive of convention staff that it bordered on being grounds for at least threatening ejection from the event. But I've also seen people have what, in the RAF, we used to term 'a funny five minutes'. Conventions are fun but also stressful, and a combination of little sleep, lots of booze (or coffee!) and the sheer giddy excitement of it all can put people in rather unusual head spaces. I think it's part of the whole con-running experience that sometimes you have to put up with this. If it blows over quickly and does not significantly disrupt the event as a whole, then it should probably be allowed to pass. Blowhards soon get a reputation in a culture as small and incestuous as fandom, and obnoxious jerks are likely to find that what goes around comes around.
And at times complaint is justified. I nearly lost my temper at a convention about a decade ago when bugshaw was put in a difficult position; what angered me was not the problem (things go wrong or are missed) but what I saw as complete disinterest from the ops manager at dealing with it. As con-runners we are to some extent providing a service in exchange for money, and whilst I'll strongly argue that the volunteer and non-profit nature of events means that the level of service expected shouldn't be pushed too far, convention members should at least be treated with respect and a recognition that they are the people who have funded the event. To be blunt, if you as a con-runner don't pull your weight or ignore the legitimate expectations of the people who have given you the money that let your con go ahead, don't be surprised if they start to grumble about it.
If you want to run conventions, you need at least some degree of a thick skin. You can't please all of the people all of the time, and fandom has more than its fair share of nit-picking back-seat drivers, so you will take a degree of flack or at least grumbling no matter what you do. Some of it may well be emotional and ill-considered, and rather more public than you might like. At times, people at the event itself will be what the newspapers used to call 'tired and emotional' and again you'll be on the receiving end of this. 99% of the time the appropriate response is to ignore it, or at most be polite but firm in reminding someone that this is everyone's party that he or she risks spoiling. Actually ejecting someone should be the last resort, always preceded by a strong warning, in cases where the person in question really is (and will not stop) seriously disrupting the event - and this included monopolising the con committee's time and effort - or badly upsetting or abusing other members.
Now, all the above is in legal terms based on my professional knowledge of English law. But I believe that in many jurisdictions the legal position is broadly similar, and the moral and practical considerations ought to apply everywhere. In the Octocon case, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the committee are being very thin-skinned and grossly over-reacting. As other people have pointed out, the best response to complaints that you are running a poor convention is to demonstrate that you can run a good one. And by the accounts of several of my friends who are regular Octocon attendees, it does sound as if there are at least some grounds for criticising the way it's been run over the last few years. Irrespective of the rights or wrongs of what slovobooks has said or done, the Octocon committee's ill-judged and excessive reaction is only going to damage Octocon's reputation still further. And this is a point that all con-runners should remember: reputation is the currency of fandom, and it takes years to build but only seconds to lose.
EDIT I am very pleased to see that there has been an amicable resolution.
Can they do this? More importantly, should they?
In various con-running panels and discussions I've pointed out that in legal terms a convention committee are in general terms entitled to refuse entry to a prospective member or, in certain circumstances, tell a member to leave. A member has a contract with a convention, and, following court rulings in other cases where people have been ejected from events they paid admission to, that contract is deemed to include implied terms about the attendee behaving in a reasonable manner for the event. If he or she doesn't, then the contract is terminated.
This is significant because in English law, you are by default a trespasser the moment you enter property owned by someone else. The reason you aren't thrown out of everywhere you go is that the law also recognises a range of express and implied permissions - called licences - to be on someone else's property. If I invite you round for dinner, in legal terms I'm granting you a temporary licence to be in my flat, which I can withdraw at will if, say, you pour your soup on one of my other guests. If you walk into a shop, you are exercising the implied licence that the shop has granted all lawful visitors. But that licence only extends to the public areas of the shop, and if you go through the 'Staff Only' door you are trespassing. And if you go to the cinema, then by selling you a ticket the management have granted you a 'contractual licence' to be present for the duration of the film. And this is where the point about contracts comes in, because the courts have held that if you violate the terms of such a contract - including implied terms about reasonable behaviour - then as well as the contract being terminated, so is the contractual licence to be on the premises that goes with it. In other words, you become a trespasser and so can be ejected.
When is it reasonable for 'The Management' to terminate a contract of admission? Well, when the attendee's behaviour is unreasonable. Of course, 'unreasonable' will be very variable; what is reasonable at a rugby match may not at a cake-decorating class. I would suggest that one definition is 'behaviour that seriously inconveniences the management or upsets other attendees' and certainly for sf conventions this is the guideline I'd follow. Indeed, I'm aware that some convention committees have avoided the ambiguity of implied terms by expressly including such a condition in their membership forms.
What about refusing someone membership? Well, nobody is forced to enter into a contract, so in principle a convention committee has absolute right to refuse to sell a membership. This is in practice tempered by anti-discrimination law so a committee cannot refuse admission on the basis that a prospective member is black, gay or disabled. (Although, to pre-empt one discussion, under the Disability Discrimination Act they can refuse admission to someone on the basis of a mental health problem that would lead to unreasonable disruption of the event.)
Now, having laid down the legal grounds for not admitting or ejecting a member of a convention, let's turn to practical issues: when should a convention committee do this? The answer, I say, is as rarely as possible. Fandom is a culture that is not only for the most part inclusionary, but one that likes to pride itself on being so. Exclusion is by definition antithetical to fandom's view of itself - yes, a view that is not always matched by reality, but one that most fans would consider one of fandom's most attractive aspects. It should be the proverbial nuclear option, rarely threatened and hardly ever followed through.
I've been involved in one incident where a fan was ejected (or rather would have been had the person in question not been removed on other grounds) and subsequently banned. It was an exceptionally severe and unpleasant occurrence that was genuinely traumatic for the committee in question and was definitely at the top of the scale of unreasonable behaviour. Moving down the scale a bit, at both the 1995 and 2005 Glasgow Worldcons I personally witnessed behaviour - in each case by a very arrogant self-proclaimed Big Name Fan - that was so abusive of convention staff that it bordered on being grounds for at least threatening ejection from the event. But I've also seen people have what, in the RAF, we used to term 'a funny five minutes'. Conventions are fun but also stressful, and a combination of little sleep, lots of booze (or coffee!) and the sheer giddy excitement of it all can put people in rather unusual head spaces. I think it's part of the whole con-running experience that sometimes you have to put up with this. If it blows over quickly and does not significantly disrupt the event as a whole, then it should probably be allowed to pass. Blowhards soon get a reputation in a culture as small and incestuous as fandom, and obnoxious jerks are likely to find that what goes around comes around.
And at times complaint is justified. I nearly lost my temper at a convention about a decade ago when bugshaw was put in a difficult position; what angered me was not the problem (things go wrong or are missed) but what I saw as complete disinterest from the ops manager at dealing with it. As con-runners we are to some extent providing a service in exchange for money, and whilst I'll strongly argue that the volunteer and non-profit nature of events means that the level of service expected shouldn't be pushed too far, convention members should at least be treated with respect and a recognition that they are the people who have funded the event. To be blunt, if you as a con-runner don't pull your weight or ignore the legitimate expectations of the people who have given you the money that let your con go ahead, don't be surprised if they start to grumble about it.
If you want to run conventions, you need at least some degree of a thick skin. You can't please all of the people all of the time, and fandom has more than its fair share of nit-picking back-seat drivers, so you will take a degree of flack or at least grumbling no matter what you do. Some of it may well be emotional and ill-considered, and rather more public than you might like. At times, people at the event itself will be what the newspapers used to call 'tired and emotional' and again you'll be on the receiving end of this. 99% of the time the appropriate response is to ignore it, or at most be polite but firm in reminding someone that this is everyone's party that he or she risks spoiling. Actually ejecting someone should be the last resort, always preceded by a strong warning, in cases where the person in question really is (and will not stop) seriously disrupting the event - and this included monopolising the con committee's time and effort - or badly upsetting or abusing other members.
Now, all the above is in legal terms based on my professional knowledge of English law. But I believe that in many jurisdictions the legal position is broadly similar, and the moral and practical considerations ought to apply everywhere. In the Octocon case, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the committee are being very thin-skinned and grossly over-reacting. As other people have pointed out, the best response to complaints that you are running a poor convention is to demonstrate that you can run a good one. And by the accounts of several of my friends who are regular Octocon attendees, it does sound as if there are at least some grounds for criticising the way it's been run over the last few years. Irrespective of the rights or wrongs of what slovobooks has said or done, the Octocon committee's ill-judged and excessive reaction is only going to damage Octocon's reputation still further. And this is a point that all con-runners should remember: reputation is the currency of fandom, and it takes years to build but only seconds to lose.
EDIT I am very pleased to see that there has been an amicable resolution.