Talk:Sam Light

Meeting to Discuss this Issue
All are encouraged to attend the Hampedia Board of Trustees Meeting to discuss this issue, which is tentatively scheduled for this Friday, November 13th, at 4pm, in ASH 221. Agv07 03:10, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

SAF Misuse
This needs to stop being covered up, because it is completely factual information, and pertinent to this page. With a position as high profile and responsible for the use of Hampshire student's activities funds as Mr. Light's comes a certain measure of accountability.

The deletion constitutes a serious breach of NPOV on Hampedia.

The deleted section is as follows:

Misuse of SAF funds
In the spring of 2009, it was brought to the attention of CLA and FiCom that an unusual amount of purchases at the school store were being charged to Hampshire college's SAF account from COCA. After further investigation, it was found that Sam Light had taken a clear leadership role in the excessive misuse of the account.

Since this is the first time Hampedia has encounters a situation of this nature (privacy vs NPOV), The Hampedia Board of Trustees will meet next week to determine what is the proper procedure to deal this situation. In the mean time please do no add any content to Sam's profile (Jaf05 18:04, 7 November 2009 (UTC))


 * In addition, if you "Search" Sam Light's name (instead of hitting "Go"), one of the top results is FiCom's page, where all this information is provided. It is already public record. I also encourage everybody to look at Hampedia's Policies page. Of note: The Behavorial section. "Avoid escalating conflicts" (Do not "edit-war") and "Article ownership" (The only article which you own is that about yourself.) If you take issue with any of Hampedia's policies, I encourage you to bring those worries forward (please email hampedia@hampshire.edu). Agv07 02:56, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Article ownership is all well and good, but if something added to your article is publicly stated fact, public knowledge, deleting it constitutes a breach of NPOV. Does Hampedia want to be a wiki, or another Facebook or Myspace? ( Rob 18:21, 8 November 2009 (UTC) )


 * Stating that the information is 'already public record' and easily found, contradicts the reasoning for asking for a freeze on Mr. Light's profile... This information is not private. Mr Light was acting in a public office, with public funds, and information about his infractions are public. I would ask anyone who decides to blank this information please describe on this talk page what part of it you found to be 'private' information. As I quote from the ficom page, "Given Sam's position as a representative of the student body to student government and the administration, FiCom has decided that this investigation is a matter of public record." If Ralph Hexter were embezzeling money from the students, shouldn't that information appear on Hexter's hampedia page? I would argue the only differences is the non-neutral POV on the side of editors who are on Ficom or COCA.....There are several other Policies of Hampedia which I think are important. and "Personal information is censorable at the request of the subject. "...or in other words this censorship should only occur at the request of Mr. Light, and only private information should be censored. Finally, this is particularly striking: "If you cannot manage a disagreement with another editor, do not fight; rather invoke a mediator or arbitrator". I would like to point out that this controversy is over Mr. Light's page, who also happens to be a member of the Hampedia Management Board. "Treat all significant views in one article and do so fairly, giving each perspective equal weight." I would also advise those editors who have been removing this information, as well as the members of the Hampedia Board of Trustee's who will discuss it, to recognize in what ways their POV might be affected based on friendship's with Mr. Light or their public position's on Coca and Ficom. Hampedia should be a place for information pertinent to the community, whether or not it makes individuals or the institution look poorly or not. I respect ficom for putting the initial report up, and wish members of the editorial staff would stop censoring public information... Furthermore, I am particularly struck by the fact that you are asking people to avoid escalation, while continuing to remove the information, while also clearly having an partial POV due to role in ficom which is involved in the controversy. I am adding the information back to the page, and before anyone takes it down, please respect the Hampedia policy on mediation, and find an impartial administrator to agree that there is a privacy concern in the first place.Jvb07 00:08, 10 November 2009 (UTC)jvb07

After reverting the edits and asking for the initiation of a mediation process with a neutral arbiter, Sam Light himself blanked my changes. '''I would like to point out that Sam Light owns the page Sml07, and if he chooses to, he can remove information concerning him from that page. but that the page Sam Light is a public document which should include all relevant (non private) information about Sam Light, including his involvement with Coca. Sam Light's removal of this information from the Sam Light hampedia page is not giving perspectives other than his own equal weight, and is in complete disregard to NPOV'''. Please, stop turning this into an edit war. If you think there is a legitimate privacy concern, voice it here, or contact an impartial moderator. Jvb07 01:37, 10 November 2009 (UTC)jvb07


 * A concern has been voiced, and thus, the information is staying off of Sam Light's page, awaiting the discussion of the Board and any individuals who wish to participate. Jose Fuentes, an administrator, made this decision. Please respect this decision and cease contributing to this edit war. Agv07 02:04, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

SAF Misuse: Continued
Who decides for our community what information about our elected officials is considered appropriate for this medium? It is not an issue of privacy, it is an issue of public record, not to mention one of deceit, abuse of power, administrative silence, and theft. The issue of privacy violated here was when Sam Light quietly stole from his peers, an act that Hampshire College seems oddly mute about. It is important that Hampedia be used to share public information, especially when it directly concerns our student government. Sam Light's position of power in this community cannot shield him from this process. Hampedia, to prove its legitimacy as a reflexive, dynamic medium that aids, not deceives, our community, must stop avoiding the truth: Sam Light's role in the FiCom Disciplinary Hearings is a matter of public record, and a matter that cannot be stifled. (Jel08, November 7th, 2009)

New Page?
What if we resolve this issue by making a new page with the information on his SAF misuse? This would solve both the privacy issue and the public record issue well... (wkr08, Nov. 7, 2009).


 * If Hampedia is to be a true wiki, we should be making it easier to find pertinent information, not harder. I'll reproduce what I emailed to the Hampedia trustees:

I don't believe there's any issue of privacy at stake in Sam Light's wiki-page:
 * 1) Sam Light is a public representative for COCA, and thus Hampshire Students' SAF.
 * 2) Sam Light's actions were deemed public by FiCom.
 * 3) All information added to the wiki-page was cited, and is fact.
 * This is not facebook; this is not myspace; this is not deviant art. If I wanted that, I'd have an account and a page at those sites: this is an encyclopedia of Hampshire. Its absurd that we're realistically debating the presence of relative, factual, cited information on an article of a person who is not only a student but administers funds at Hampshire college.


 * People need to start taking responsibility for themselves and their public actions. If you are a public official or representative, you are just that: representative of something, and just as public as that thing is. You are an extension of it.


 * So if Sam Light wants a facebook page, he can get it at Facebook: we all can. (Most of us do already.) But this is an encyclopedia, correct? And Sam Light is in charge of our money: we deserve to know what he has done with it. (Rob 18:05, 8 November 2009 (UTC))

Admin Freeze
This is the page which is designated as belonging to Sam Light, to answer some implied questions above; moreover, being a pain in the ass about it is not going to solve anything before Hampedia meets and decides on the issue. As an admin (and someone tired of watching this page oscillate in Recent Changes) I've protected the page so we don't have to deal with more of this for the time being; once the board has met and the issue been decided the page can be unlocked and changed to the appropriate state.

In case this was also a question, Ananda and Jose are both members of the Hampedia Board of Trustees and thus are appropriate people to make such a call; everyone involved understands that this is not necessarily the best course of action, but a temporary decision needed to be made on which side of the edit-war this page should stand in, and this decision has been made. Any issues of relative bias and such are to be discussed at the upcoming meeting, not here.

My personal opinion (and I suspect that of many of those who have been reverting edits to the designated currently-proper state) is that this information should be on the page. However, I also respect the process which ensures that the opinion on Hampedia policy which is enforced is not simply the one backed by those with the most time to edit-war (that is, the process of meetings and arbitration by the Hampedia Board of Trustees).

Thank you all for your cooperation (however forced it needed to be, a fact I regret). I encourage you all to attend the Hampedia meeting and to continue discussing the problem on this Talk page. Ihm08 02:16, 10 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Note to Jvb07: I'm also sending you an email clarifying my position; I may or may not additionally put it here. Ihm08 03:26, 10 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Have the Hampedia oligarchs reached a consensus? (Rob 22:09, 16 November 2009 (UTC))


 * I have no idea. I haven't heard anything from them since the night I did the freeze. Ihm08 22:48, 16 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Nobody outside of Board members showed up to the Friday meeting. As a Hampedia Board member, I did not feel comfortable coming to a decision without engaging in a dialogue with people outside of the Board. It hurts to be called an "oligarch," when I am constantly fighting for more democratic decision-making processes at this college. I'd love to see more individuals coming forward with an interest in participating in Hampedia governance. If anyone would like to come in and truly engage in a dialogue, that would be awesome. I hope that we can have a better discussion this upcoming Friday. Agv07 00:59, 17 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I've already submitted my formal complaint and views concerning this matter to Jose, and I think this discussion panel sums up everything the student population has to say on the matter. The current (in)actions of the Hampedia Board come across as a stalling tactic to me.


 * I urge the Hampedia board to treat this discussion page as seriously as they would an in-person meeting: none of us are anonymous here. (Rob 01:07, 17 November 2009 (UTC))


 * There were no stalling tactics and we do not act as an oligarchy. The board members who were present last Friday discussed the issue but made no decisions since we did not have quorum. If the views you have sent to Jose are all you have to say on the matter, we will take them into consideration when we continue discussions this week, but we encourage you (and anyone else, for that matter) to attend Friday's meeting. Mch08 02:21, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Not to suggest that I feel strongly either way on whether the Hampedia Board of Trustees are "oligarchs" but... have public, school wide elections for the Hampedia Board of Trustees EVER taken place? cew08
 * The Hampedia Board was originally put in place as a governing body during Hampedia's creation, and there has never been a need for a governing body since then until now. So, in short, no. If you review the bylaws, you will see that they have been recently revised to include elections, and we expect the first of these elections to take place next semester. Mch08 18:03, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The provision that trustees/board members would be elected has been in the bylaws since the earliest existing revision that is non-empty: https://hampedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bylaws_of_the_Hampedia_Board_of_Trustees&amp;oldid=7332#Tenure_of_Trustees Ihm08 20:40, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
 * (edit) Several people have already left the Hampedia project as a result of the project not living up to its own bylaws in this respect. While it is true that the board of trustees is not designed to be a governing board per se, it has always been in the background as the "last resort" governance group; while it's intentionally designed not to be the primary source of legislation and such, it's still inexcusable for it to have gone unelected since the very start of Hampedia, when this clause entered the bylaws. Ihm08 20:45, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I, too, can't wait for us to actually hold elections. I'm sad about the lack of interest in and support for moving this project forward. If there had been enough people willing to put in the time and effort necessary to hold full elections properly, it could have happened this semester. But it did not. My apologies, I can only contribute so much time. Agv07 21:35, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Unfreeze
So; sorry for my slowness on this; all interested participants in Hampedia who decided to show up (including myself, although I hadn't initially decided to come) met last Friday (week before Thanksgiving) and this decision was made on the Sam Light page and the associated issues: the personal pages policy (page ownership) was decided to trump NPOV for these (personal) pages only. Despite significant initial protest from myself primarily (and from the discussion on this talk page), it was eventually agreed (including myself, in accordance with the consensus decision-making policy).

The (abridged) argument for this was as follows:

The personal pages on Hampedia are treated differently in that they are considered personal spaces in which a person can determine their own public image; despite Sam Light's being a public figure, it seemed unreasonable to not extend the same protection and freedom to him. Several schemes were discussed by which people could have "public" and "non-public" pages, for people of a sufficiently public nature; these were eventually turned down, as they were all hackish and did not address the problem of determining who is a public figure and who is not.

On the other side, the information is very important and should be accessible without difficulty and associated with Sam Light. The issue of the search bar on Hampedia was discussed; although no immediate work is being done, those present agreed that the search function is not as it should be. The search needs to be more effective, and once this is the case search should be the default option before "Go" - an analogy was made to Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, which is fundamentally the same as our "Go" button (except that it is the current default: the action which happens when one hits enter in the search box). After some Google searches it was decided that the information was acceptably accessible (at least to those who attended the meeting), and that the wiki platform outside of Sam Light's exact page had enough flexibility to convey this information without needing to change this specific page.

Additionally discussed was the issue of Hampedia governance; as can be plainly seen from the front page, Hampedia is now holding elections for the Board of Trustees. It also deserves to be clarified that the Board is intentionally designed to do very little of anything - that is, it should only be invoked in situations which are not being resolved other ways, such as in the case of the unproductive edit war which was happening on this page. Even in these situations, the position of the Board is not to make unilateral decisions but rather to facilitate appropriate discussion so that a meeting of interested persons can come to consensus, as happened here. For the sake of appropriate representation, the Board must be elected by the community at-large.

One final somewhat-aborted (due to time) discussion was that of how admins (technologically speaking, as separate from Board members, who are last-ditch administrative persons) for Hampedia should be chosen. This merits further discussion.

Persons who are still concerned are encouraged to contact those involved with the project or to run for the Hampedia Board of Trustees, which will be reviewing the bylaws in their entirety after completely elected. I'll also unfreeze this page as promised; please respect the page ownership policy and do not place things here which the owner of the page, Sam Light, does not want here. Ihm08 00:52, 30 November 2009 (UTC)


 * While I will respect the board's decision, I feel that it's choice to make this wiki merely a web-hosting service rather than an article driven database of collective Hampshire information is wrong for Hampedia. By putting personal administration over cited factual information, we are severely damaging its integrity.(Rob 04:00, 30 November 2009 (UTC))


 * I am having difficulty understanding your point on this matter. Hampedia continues be a space to collectively document Hampshire. We had a long discussion at the meeting (which comprised of many people, not just "The Board," and the decision was one of consensus amongst everyone present) concerning this matter. Hampedia is a space for members of the Hampshire community to collectively share information- but it is also a space to express yourself. I set aside the Sam Light issue and thought about it on a policy level. If the rule for profiles was that information should be hard, cited information, and that Wikipedia-like entries trump personal expression, I would not want to have a Hampedia profile. Whenever students have decided to blank their profile pages (taking down the bare minimum amount of information pulled from the public Directory), we did not then reverse their decision; we respected their freedom to decide that they did not want to share their personal information in this public sphere. In all other kinds of Hampedia articles, as Hampedia's policies outline, NPOV is the rule, and, when possible, cited information is ideal. However, personal profiles are ways for members of the community to document their academic, social, and personal life at Hampshire. I want people to have the freedom to express themselves as they desire. Many people do not have the know-how to create websites, nor do individual websites have the same easy connectivity that Hampedia has. Why can't Hampedia be a space where we are free to express ourselves, as well as a space to collect information about Hampshire? Hampedia is much much more than an encyclopedia- it's been used as a course website, officer hour signup, housing lottery, carpooling system, and student group management, to name just a few. Hampedia is merely a platform for all sorts of creative projects. (Agv07 04:35, 30 November 2009 (UTC))


 * It's just that Sam Light is not just a student here, but a public entity at the college as a signer for COCA. I think the page entitled "Sam Light" should be an open article because of that. That is what I've been trying to communicate (and poorly, perhaps.) I would expect the same amount of accountability for my profile article. We're not talking about calling someone a poopy-pants here, we're talking about documenting something Sam Light did that affects the college. I think its fine to let people administer their user pages, but that shouldn't override public information about them. It has been said above that we should consider the difference between user pages and pages with a student's name - they are separate pages.


 * I am in complete agreement that there needs to be accountability and proper NPOV documentation concerning what Sam Light did, due to his role as a public figure. I was in the room when FiCom decided to make this information public, and participated in a variety of discussions on the topic. That being said, as Ian noted: "Several schemes were discussed by which people could have "public" and "non-public" pages, for people of a sufficiently public nature; these were eventually turned down, as they were all hackish and did not address the problem of determining who is a public figure and who is not. " Essentially, very rarely do members of the Hampshire community achieve a status where they are "public figures" (that is, if you can even define "public figure" in the context of Hampshire). Thus, we decided it was too "hackish" - and also too confusing for the average Hampshire student. Why would there be two profile pages for a student? It's difficult enough getting students to fill out one profile, much less having two separate pages. And if it's going to be on separate pages, why not simply let that other page be a page other than his profile page? In the same vein, however, the point was made that if an average student searches Sam's name, they will go directly to his profile, and probably not know that other pages exist. Thus, we decided to switch the search bar, so that the automatic response to someone hitting "enter" would be to display search results- which would include documentation of what he did in his role as a public figure. In the end, I tend to agree with your points, but I want to respect students' abilities to engage in freedom of expression - and I want to make that easier for students, and not create a convoluted system which may solve this problem, but make Hampedia less easy-to-use for 99% of Hampshire. If Hampshire reaches a saturation point where all students are updating their profiles, then it may be worthy to reopen the question. And I guess my final point is, seeing language like what you put in your "Vote Robert" makes me sad inside, because we're all just students trying really hard to engage in dialogue and make decisions about difficult issues. Yes, we should have gotten the statement out immediately after the meeting, and made points more clearly online, but we're human too. I think it's awesome that you care this much about the project- just please, know that we care very deeply about Hampedia's ideals as well. (Agv07 03:46, 1 December 2009 (UTC))