For my part, I’m not sure who disagrees with Owen’s current position, or what that would change going forward. Ritually chanting “You Did Wrong” around him doesn’t seem useful to me. I don’t know what I want him to do differently now. Some of that is that it’s harder to talk about an individual that I don’t know than the policies a team should take.
What he did was unacceptable. The existence of repeated incidents of this sort is more concerning.
Right now, I have not been able to discern any plan from the Community Health team more extensive than “Julia screwed up and will try not to do that again.”
I’m not saying that they acted less badly. I have more opinions on what they should do differently going forward. I suspect that that is fairly common.
There is absolutely a point to “ritually chanting you did wrong at Owen.” It’s the same point underlying why a lot of EA leaders issued statements condemning FTX and it’s the reason I’m commenting on this post at all: There are a lot of people, particularly women, who are viewing the comment section of this post to see how we as a community respond to allegations like these and deciding whether this is a safe and welcoming space for them. I know because I spent most of my workday yesterday speaking to at least 6 of them, 1 of whom was in floods of tears. For most of yesterday, the 2nd to top comment thanked Owen and essentially told him to take a break before coming back and running boards again) and the top thanked him for doing the right thing. I have to say that undermined my ability to emphasize the community doesn’t condone this type of behavior. I’m not into retributive justice (I think it’s pretty gross actually) but there are very good reasons to send a solid signal here and people are watching to see if we do.
FWIW I was assaulted (not in EA). It was not obvious to me at the time that people either believed me or took it seriously. Some people go into these conversations with a different sense of what is obvious than others.*
*Please read my tone here as sad/wistful not angry/preachy.
> Right now, I have not been able to discern any plan from the Community Health team more extensive than “Julia screwed up and will try not to do that again.”
(Note that I’m speaking as interim head of the Community Health team)
I’m planning on spending significant time over the next several weeks on the plan I laid out in this comment (which is on a different top-level post, so you might have missed it if you are only reading this post’s discussion).
There will also be an internal reflection process. Julia and Nicole are going to do retrospectives on this situation, which will then get discussed with me, Ben West (as transition coordinator at CEA), and some senior management and/or trustees of the EV entities, possibly looping in others at CEA or EV as well.
Further steps are yet to be decided (and some will depend on the information we learn), but could include having other members of the team do assessments of the process and decision-making in this situation and getting opinions on this situation and our approach generally from other people who do similar or analogous work, in and out of EA.
Discussing retrospectives with senior management, plus whatever other steps are most appropriate, are all ways of feeding into decisions about what we should do going forward, for instance if we should have different processes or approaches to cases, or certain kinds of cases.
For my part, I’m not sure who disagrees with Owen’s current position, or what that would change going forward. Ritually chanting “You Did Wrong” around him doesn’t seem useful to me. I don’t know what I want him to do differently now. Some of that is that it’s harder to talk about an individual that I don’t know than the policies a team should take.
What he did was unacceptable. The existence of repeated incidents of this sort is more concerning.
Right now, I have not been able to discern any plan from the Community Health team more extensive than “Julia screwed up and will try not to do that again.”
I’m not saying that they acted less badly. I have more opinions on what they should do differently going forward. I suspect that that is fairly common.
There is absolutely a point to “ritually chanting you did wrong at Owen.” It’s the same point underlying why a lot of EA leaders issued statements condemning FTX and it’s the reason I’m commenting on this post at all: There are a lot of people, particularly women, who are viewing the comment section of this post to see how we as a community respond to allegations like these and deciding whether this is a safe and welcoming space for them. I know because I spent most of my workday yesterday speaking to at least 6 of them, 1 of whom was in floods of tears. For most of yesterday, the 2nd to top comment thanked Owen and essentially told him to take a break before coming back and running boards again) and the top thanked him for doing the right thing. I have to say that undermined my ability to emphasize the community doesn’t condone this type of behavior. I’m not into retributive justice (I think it’s pretty gross actually) but there are very good reasons to send a solid signal here and people are watching to see if we do.
Thank you. It’s hard for me (and I think for many people) to remember to say what feels obvious to them.
FWIW I was assaulted (not in EA). It was not obvious to me at the time that people either believed me or took it seriously. Some people go into these conversations with a different sense of what is obvious than others.*
*Please read my tone here as sad/wistful not angry/preachy.
I would like to see the top comments say things we all agree with about the object level but I don’t really feel like writing it.
Hi Keller -
Regarding
> Right now, I have not been able to discern any plan from the Community Health team more extensive than “Julia screwed up and will try not to do that again.”
(Note that I’m speaking as interim head of the Community Health team)
I’m planning on spending significant time over the next several weeks on the plan I laid out in this comment (which is on a different top-level post, so you might have missed it if you are only reading this post’s discussion).
Discussing retrospectives with senior management, plus whatever other steps are most appropriate, are all ways of feeding into decisions about what we should do going forward, for instance if we should have different processes or approaches to cases, or certain kinds of cases.