Report from the Grand Council: October, 1999

To the Directors, Greetings.

We continue to work on refining proposed changes to banishment and sanction procedures, and hope to begin sending you specific language in the near future. We regret not having specific language to send you in time for the October deadline. It is a complex process, but we believe we are coming close to completion.

Items Requiring Board Action

No action is required at this time.

Status Report

We hope to begin sending you specific language shortly. We have broken the proposals down into different subjects, as follows. If you would like specific topics within these subjects broken out as individual items, please let us know. If you would like to look at the current drafts, we would be eager to share them with you, since any feedback you can give us as we are completing them would be helpful to us.

Royal Justice: Removing the current "banishment from the realm", and adding a range of different gameside sanctions as explicit sanction options. Absolute banishment redefined as a ban on attendance.

Assizes: as discussed in previous proposal draft.

Board Sanctions: Generalizes procedures for invoking R&D to other board sanctions, rewrites procedure to recognize existence of multiple SCA corporations, and no longer defines effect of R&D in terms of "absolute banishment," since that section might be deleted or revised. Also defines necessary documentation and allows Board to delegate review if desired.

Review Panel: Specific language for proposal previously submitted.

Notification: Who notifies who in cases of major sanctions.

Due Process: Subject of major sanctions given specific right to know charge and evidence against them.

Sanctions Guidelines: Suggested Material for Soc. Seneschal Sanction Guidelines.

Procedure: "The Royalty must inform the Kingdom Seneschal of the intended banishment. The Kingdom Seneschal is responsible for ensuring that the procedures outlined by the Society Seneschal are followed. The Society Seneschal will keep the Board-approved Policy on Banishment Procedures and make it available."

Other: We may have additional proposals, such as procedures for a thirty-day ban on attendance, or explicitly allowing the Soc. seneschal to return procedurally flawed sanctions.

We continue to strongly recommend relaxing the current secrecy requirements, if legal advice determines that this is practical. It is our understanding that you wish to defer asking for legal advice on this issue from paid counsel until the other changes are finalized. We understand the reasoning for this, but perhaps the SCA Legal Committee could begin looking at the issue, since we can make no further progress on this front without legal guidance. If you wish to submit the matter to the legal Committee, we could write a summary of our questions and concerns.

Once again, any comments from you on our work so far would be valuable in helping us to complete our work.

Summary

The Grand Council continues to work on refining proposed changes to banishment and sanction procedures, and hopes to begin sending the Board specific language in the very near future.

Respectfully submitted,

Will McLean (Galleron de Cressy)
Secretary, Grand Council
29 Sam Hill Rd,
Malvern, PA 19355
(610) 827-1360
mclean1382@aol.com
cc: directors@sca.org, GC list