As an organization created for and by the community it serves, it’s our priority to create as safe a space as possible for all who join us at our events. We want to ensure attending members who are from minority groups that are generally under-represented in spaces like ours find a welcoming environment at Penguicon. To our deep regret and dismay, this year, we made decisions as an organization that played a role in those folks feeling unsafe at the convention, and we have to own that and do better in the future.
Due to how our convention has operated since inception and the desire to empower each year’s volunteers, the Board of Directors is intentionally not involved in day-to-day event planning operations. Thus, they may not be aware of issues before they present a problem. Every volunteer from the bottom to the top is an unpaid community member with outside responsibilities, not a professionally paid event organizer. Thus far, this has served our community-run convention well. We each learn and grow as we produce the event together and frequently change positions with others who step forward, including at the Board level. Sometimes, that dynamic interferes with passing along institutional memory and timely guidance, and we must find ways to work better as a team. We want to apologize to anyone impacted and hope those who decided not to attend Penguicon at the last minute this year will consider us again in the future.
It also must be said that over the years, we have occasionally removed people from our events or prevented people from attending when we think it’s appropriate to safeguard our community. This is one of the few actions we can take as an organization that has never hired security to police our attendees. We reserve the right to refuse entry, as listed in our code of conduct, because providing a minimum of care for our fellow attendees is essential.
However, we are not a court of law or professional investigators. We do not officially comment on conduct issues unless absolutely necessary to protect those who report conduct from retaliation.
Unfortunately, that does mean we have to allow people to present their case to the community without retort, even when the incidents, facts, people involved, and timing are entirely incorrect. We would rather our reputation suffer than to put others at risk, and we will not exploit our attendees for posturing, pride, or profit.
We must make choices based on the information we have as a small part-time volunteer organization. The Board wants to assure our community that we work hard with our Operations team to verify information that we take action on to the best of our abilities, to consider contradictory or maliciously presented information for its worth, and seek out multiple sources, witnesses, prior complaints, or points of evidence that point in the same direction.
We will always choose to inconvenience one person to provide safety to the whole. We would rather see the organization cease to exist than allow genuine harm to come to our fellow community members through our actions or inaction. We try to reflect that value in our decisions.
Penguicon is an incredible, unique, and diverse community full of talented, generous, kind people who build the con from the ground up every year. Our most important job as temporary stewards is to safeguard the community’s ability to share their knowledge, art, and joy with each other.
Sincerely,
The Penguicon Board of Directors