Public discussion concerning the dispute has happened on the stolen EGG Facebook page, a bubble of disinformation where facts are distorted, incomplete, or invented. The discussion is tightly controlled, and not all voices are allowed to contribute.
Below are the posts that Tobias sent to the stolen EGG Facebook on Oct. 15th, but which were never approved or published by the impostors. This is what they mean by OVA, which spells out, they explain, as Omnes Voces Acceptamus “we accept all voices”. In fact OVA is the Latin word for “egg” (nom/acc pl), and the logo of the OVA site (in the browser tab) is a fried egg. That’s but one more item in their portfolio of deceptions.
At least the impostors are consistent. Their attitude regarding the political control of argument exchange is a perfect fit for their contempt of democracy: we accept democratic votes if they are in our favour, otherwise we make a putsch that overthrows democratic institutions and sets up a self-appointed putschist government.
1. Facts#1
False claim: EGG orgs don’t take seriously incidents reported
2. Facts#2
False claim about the structure of the Egg board
Facts #1
False claim: EGG orgs don’t take seriously incidents reported
The discussion is underfed with facts. Let me provide some relevant items. Here is the first. What exactly are the incidents called unwanted sexual attention? When did they occur? What were they like? How did the EGG orgs react?
The statement of the illegitimate entity on the stolen EGG website mentions that there were some, but do not substantiate. J. Parrott comments at the outset of the feed: “as the board’s statement clarifies, among other things, there have been incidents of harassment at the school that were not taken seriously.” That’s an incorrect statement: JP adds “that were not taken seriously” out of the blue. The statement on the stolen website says “Over the last years there were repeated incidents of (unwanted) sexual attention between participants (including teachers and students) at various EGG summer schools.”
And then a good deal of the discussion is about the EGG organizers not taking incidents seriously. And at some point Noam says
“I find it hard to believe that the organizers did not care that a participant was beaten up because of their sexual orientation.”
I couldn’t find who has made the claim that the orgs didn’t care. That’s untrue. I suppose the incident at hand is the one I witnessed at the 2018 EGG in Banja Luka where two gay students kissed in a bar and one was beaten by a local guy. The EGG organizers (including me) plus some teachers (Hagit Borer was among them) made an inquiry, went to the bar to talk to the owner, who said she was sorry but she can’t prevent her customers from doing that. And of course we talked to the two students, trying to provide comfort. I don’t remember exactly how the issue of legal action was handled, but I think we talked about that with the student who was beaten, and he said that he would rather not go for that, since it won’t go anywhere. Of course the EGG orgs can’t initiate legal action, only the victim can.
More generally: I challenge anybody to come up with an incident of the kind brought to the attention of the EGG orgs where the latter would not have reacted. I talked about that with Berit, who mentioned such incidents when she was a student, like 15 years back, but she could not name a case where a complaint would have reached the orgs and they would have said “we don’t care”. Things have evolved since the 2000’s, and Berit was a board member for many years. So do people who say that orgs don’t care for such incidents mean to say that Berit also didn’t care?
Facts #2
False claim about the structure of the Egg board
The statement on the stolen EGG site says
“Tobias and Eugeniusz insisted that only the following members have a right to vote (on decisions like the gender quota, the CoC, teacher line-ups and the yearly location of the school): the two phonology members (Tobias and Eugeniusz) and the two syntax & semantics members (Deniz and Magdalena). They rejected for the logistics member (Petra) and the second semantics member (Berit) to participate in votes with the reasoning “that they are not proper board members”.”
The board has 4 seats (please or not please you): two for phonology, one for syntax, one for semantics. Back in 2019 I think (but I’m not sure), Petra Charvatová offered to do the logistics work for the board. That was nice, the board accepted and Petra did a great job over the years. It was understood and never challenged from the beginning that Petra does not have the same job description as board members: for example she is not hiring teachers. And she is not a board member: the board has 4 seats. This rule was put down on paper in June 2020, by a *unanimous* vote of the board members, which then were Sandhya Sundaresan, Eugeniusz Cyran, András Bárány, and myself. I append the relevant mail by S. Sundaresan below.
Note that the 4 people who fraudulently pretend they are the EGG board knew about that: I had shown them the rules that are in place in the organization they had joined (freshly for M. Lohninger and D. Özıldız).
Thus it is counterfactual to say that “They rejected for the logistics member (Petra) and the second semantics member (Berit) to participate in votes”. The EGG has rules, written ones, which are the result of a democratic vote. Regarding Berit: there is one semantics seat, not two. Berit had stepped down from the board and her successor was Deniz. She was still around at meetings to to the transition with Deniz. When it came to the vote on the CoC in early June, the board said that Berit and Deniz can work out their single vote together, and they correctly decided that being the regular board member, Deniz would express that vote.
When you join an organization, there are rules that exist prior to your presence. You may or may not like these rules: you are under their spell and follow them. And you may try to change them. The 4 individuals mentioned do not go by the rule, or rather, they do, but only when it pleases them. And then they make incorrect statements fitting their storytelling when they exactly know that they are incorrect.
The same goes with this sentence, also from the statement on the stolen EGG site:
“Note that none of this board/voting structure is set in written statutes or anything alike, nor has it been agreed upon by all current board members”
That’s incorrect, look at the mail below regarding the written status of Petra’s voting rights. And of course it was not agreed upon by all current members. The authors of the text seem to believe that when you enter an organization, the rules prior to your entrance do not apply and only items agreed with you are valid. Think of the absurdity of this attitude in real life for any organization in the world.
Incidentally: the whole purpose of what the 4 individuals at hand did was to impose a CoC, that is, a new rule. They have shown how they respect rules. Everybody can imagine what they would have done in a situation where EGG has a CoC.
——– Message transféré ——–
| Sujet : | Re: virtual |
| Date : | Wed, 10 Jun 2020 13:50:38 +0200 |
| De : | Sandhya Sundaresan <sandhya@sndrsn.org> |
| Pour : | scheer <Tobias.Scheer@unice.fr> |
| Copie à : | András Bárány <andras@barany.at>, Eugeniusz Cyran <ecyran@kul.lublin.pl> |
Hi everyone,
I’m fine with Tobias’ addendum, (and obviously also the rest of András’ formulation since we came up with that together). So the current description reads as follows:
Petra’s job description …
>
> – … involves on-site logistics. These include: dealing with dorms,
> liaisoning with local organizers, registration and payment, attending
> the school and being the on-site person in charge of logistics, as
> well as scheduling course timetables with the teachers.
>
> – She has a vote on matters concerning the above points.
>
> – She interacts with us on other matters (except teacher hiring) but she does not have a vote on these (the issue of whether the school should take place is removed from consideration for now).
Let’s go ahead and vote if we’re all agreed about the main description with addendum above.
My vote is Yes.
Best,
Sandhya
Public shaming
[context: somebody on the stolen EGG Facebook said that there was public shaming in the “clarification” statement of the impostors.]
Regarding “accusations” or “public shaming”: I don’t feel like I was subject to public shaming in the statement on the stolen EGG site (the “clarification”). Nobody talked about my big nose. These terms are instrumental in preventing people from talking about facts: if you say that somebody was “publically shamed”, there is no need to go see what the content is, whether what the person says is correct or incorrect: the content is disqualified by the qualification “public shaming”, no matter what it is.
I am in favour of establishing facts and exchanging arguments. If a correct description of the action of somebody is to be imposturous, they are an impostor. They may or may not like being qualified like that, but the discussion should be about whether this description is correct or not. Not about whether or not it is “allowed” to call somebody an impostor.
The description of the facts on this website are along this. If you think they are incorrect, tell us and we will argue.