[SBU Board] Fwd: Important Message from the National Recorder

Tue Dec 31 07:11:31 PST 2019

Seems kind of crazy to say the units have no role in the disciplinary process and then describe in detail the unit's role in the disciplinary process, if you ask me.

Tom

On December 30, 2019, at 10:46 AM, JC Chupack <jc.chupack at gmail.com> wrote:

Not sure who all received this so forwarding as FYI...

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: American Contract Bridge League <emailservices at acbl.org>
Date: Mon, Dec 30, 2019 at 10:00 AM
Subject: Important Message from the National Recorder
To: <jc.chupack at gmail.com>

To: All Unit Officials

CC: District Recorders, District Disciplinary Chairs, District Presidents

As you may be aware, the Units will no longer have a role in the Disciplinary process.

First of all, a housekeeping matter – Our database is running behind our CDR. So, you will still have positions of Unit Recorder and Unit Disciplinary Chair listed. Until the database is updated, please list your Unit President in both roles. But the most important things I want to talk about is the role of Assistant Recorder and how a District Disciplinary Committee should be assembled.

We recognize that all units are not the same. We have Units with 50 members and one Unit with 15,000! Admittedly the latter is an outlier, but the point remains. In addition, unfortunately some Units have frequent disciplinary issues come up, and many haven’t had a serious issue in 10 years. So, we created the “Assistant Recorder” position. An Assistant Recorder may come to exist in three ways:

The Unit President requests one. The request may go to the District Recorder with a recommendation as to who that person should be. The District Recorder should try to accommodate such requests at the outset, on the assumption that the Unit President has a good idea of how “busy” such a person would be. However, the decision as to whether to agree to appoint an Assistant, and the decision as to who that person is, is at the discretion of the District Recorder. If there is a disagreement, the Unit may appeal to the National Recorder who will adjudicate the matter.  The District Recorder may decide he/she needs help and wishes to appoint an Assistant to take some of the load OR because the District Recorder wishes to groom such a person to be the next District Recorder. An individual in a Unit with no Assistant Recorder may request an appointment from the District Recorder. 

In all cases, the District Recorder has the right to accept, reject, or remove, or replace any Assistant Recorder.

Units, please note that this is not a one-time opportunity. If you aren’t sure you need an Assistant, don’t ask for one. You can always ask later. In addition to removing the burden of finding volunteers in small Units, the elimination of the Unit Disciplinary role was done with the purpose of not having to train and oversee 325 different disciplinary apparatuses. 

Now I would like to talk about the Disciplinary Chair role as well as a Disciplinary Committee. As with Units, all Districts are not the same, either in population or geography. In many Districts, the Disciplinary Chair will be unfamiliar with persona and culture of the various Units. Therefore, if a District has a standing Disciplinary Committee, there should be three objectives. The first, obviously, is a person known to be ethical and pleasant at the table, and to hopefully have a good knowledge of how our events function. The second is to have more members than the number who will sit on an individual panel, including at least one or two who can chair a panel. This is so if there is a conflict that requires recusal, there is a person able to step in who has already been vetted by the Disciplinary Chair. The final need is for geographic diversity. It is good to have people who are NOT familiar (or less familiar) with the parties to the matter. In this day and age, it is easy to have Disciplinary Committees by conference call or Skype. They don’t all have to be in person. Please note that the ACBL has a “Conference Bridge” designed to host and to optionally record such calls. Simply contact the Compliance Coordinator and request its use specifying a date and time.

If there is not a standing Disciplinary Committee, for the same reasons as above, the District Disciplinary chairs should try to familiarize themselves with people around the District who would make good panel members, and possibly even approaching them before needed as a precaution.

As always, the Office of National Recorder exists to serve you, and we are always available to assist or answer questions. Simply direct them to recorder at acbl.org. 

Have a Happy and Healthy New Year.

Robb Gordon

ACBL National Recorder

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JC Chupack

* Seattle ACBL Unit 446 Vice President, Electronic Contact, & Publicity Chair

* Lead Technical Product Manager, Store Discovery at Zulily, Inc.

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