“After February 11th, 2025, Owen Cotton-Barratt will need to appeal to the boards of EV US and EV UK to participate in any overnight events or to be a member in an EV coworking space.” I note there is no path for Cotton-Barratt to become a typical member of the community again. Personally I guess I want this for restorative justice. Such standards might be very high, but some notion of community forgiveness/normalisation is important to me.
The Boards’ action only applies to the EVFs—and so the post-2025 restrictions only have effect insofar as the EVFs continue to exist, and (sponsor overnight events or run coworking spaces). I think the probability of those things holding for more than 2-3 years is less than even. There’s also nothing to preclude future Boards from removing these restrictions on Owen’s petition—in fact, it would be somewhat difficult for the current Boards to bind future Boards to not remove them. Moreover, I don’t think a requirement that two specific forms of participation be approved at a higher organizational level is a meaningful departure from being a “typical member.”
More broadly, I don’t think forgiving misconduct means ignoring the consequences that flow from what happened. For example, allowing Owen to have certain roles carries some legal and PR risk—potentially for any organization, but especially for EVF. Forgiveness wouldn’t absolve the Boards of their fiduciary responsibility to consider, manage, and mitigate those risks.
Likewise, forgiving someone for cheating on you doesn’t imply that you need to lift the real-world consequences of their behavior (you broke up with them, you still won’t get back together with them, etc.). One could argue that forgiveness implies remission of any sanctions imposed for the purposes of retribution and/or specific deterrence (i.e., persuading you to behave in the future), but I don’t see those as the main drivers of the Boards’ action here.
The Boards’ action only applies to the EVFs—and so the post-2025 restrictions only have effect insofar as the EVFs continue to exist, and (sponsor overnight events or run coworking spaces). I think the probability of those things holding for more than 2-3 years is less than even. There’s also nothing to preclude future Boards from removing these restrictions on Owen’s petition—in fact, it would be somewhat difficult for the current Boards to bind future Boards to not remove them. Moreover, I don’t think a requirement that two specific forms of participation be approved at a higher organizational level is a meaningful departure from being a “typical member.”
More broadly, I don’t think forgiving misconduct means ignoring the consequences that flow from what happened. For example, allowing Owen to have certain roles carries some legal and PR risk—potentially for any organization, but especially for EVF. Forgiveness wouldn’t absolve the Boards of their fiduciary responsibility to consider, manage, and mitigate those risks.
Likewise, forgiving someone for cheating on you doesn’t imply that you need to lift the real-world consequences of their behavior (you broke up with them, you still won’t get back together with them, etc.). One could argue that forgiveness implies remission of any sanctions imposed for the purposes of retribution and/or specific deterrence (i.e., persuading you to behave in the future), but I don’t see those as the main drivers of the Boards’ action here.