While I appreciate J-J's rather "delicate" position as a member of the USOF grievance committee, and that there may be unseen pressures on him to at least uphold a pretense that all protests submitted to the committee are considered "serious" until formally ruled otherwise, and that members of the committee might, for lack of a better word, prefer to bite their tongues on public comment lest they appear injudicious, I did have a few questions (for J-J probably, but perhaps others can comment) about what happens to protests and what sort of protests are allowed or should be allowed...

It seems that for a few people, orienteering "competition" may just as easily be staged in the forum of public debate or through o's governing bodies as in the forest. That means, I think, that protests are often filed as a means to personal gain rather than to correct bad situations that don't get corrected through other channels.

Must every protest be entertained? Is it possible to dismiss a protest out of hand on the grounds that it is illegitimate, or, if I may be blunt, "of no merit whatsoever"?

We hear a lot about protests over problems with courses, and real or perceived unfairnesses in competitions. Is this the bulk of what the grievance committee deals with? How many protests are what one might refer to as "nuisance suits"? Are there ever interesting cases that come up? How often are protests from new people and how often are they from "habitual" protesters? Does the system work very well?

-- Mook (everett@psi.edu), September 19, 2000

Answers

A few comments about protests...

One problem we have is that USOF has too many rules (which allow lots of opportunities to protest). It seems like the sport would be better off with fewer rules, but the expectation that the organizers need to clearly tell participants what to expect. There don't need to be rules about how often the organizers need to put water stops. If the organizers don't have water stops -- fine, as long as the entrants know it. It doesn't really matter if night O' markers are reflective or not -- but the competitor ought to be able to find out before they start.

Maybe what USOF rules should do is set requirements for the information organizers must provide in A-meet announcements. For example, USOF could require that an A-meet organizer publicize whether or not they are using maps that are printed on a laser- printer (as opposed to higher quality off-set printing).

If a course is clearly unfair it ought to be thrown out even if there is not a protest. If an organizer forgets to put out a control, then the organizer should just admit they screwed up and throw the results out. The protest process shouldn't be used to ensure that an organizer puts on a quality event. The process should be reserved for the tougher judgement calls (e.g. a control is stolen after most of the runners have already found it).

A good way to decide if a problem with a course is important is to ask "if I were the organizer and I found out about the problem, would I have fixed it?" Let's take two examples and see how the question would work.

1. A control is missing. Clearly, an organizer who discovered a control was missing before the start, would make sure a new marker was put in place before the event began. So, a missing control would be fixed. Throw out the results (even if there is not a protest).

2. The clue sheet shows a water stop at the third control, but the organizer didn't put out the water. Would an organizer put water out if they discovered it before the start? Maybe. But, maybe they'd just announce that the control sheet was wrong. So, this is a case where the problem is real, but probably not enough to throw out the course. Hopefully, the organizer would learn a lesson and would do better next time. But, the results can probably stand.

Of course there are a lot of gray areas. What if a control is removed, but only after most of the competitors had already found it?

Well, my lunch hour is almost over. I'd better get back to work.

-- Michael (meglin@juno.com), September 20, 2000.

Okay, I'm willing to field questions. The grievances relating to the Night-O and Long-O were just ruled on, by the way (I recused myself from these two cases), and basically everything was denied, although it was acknowledged that some things were amiss. The one point that was mentioned as something that needs to be cleaned up is the fact that the USOF rule regarding start list seeding wasn't followed.

In general, we don't get many grievances, and although some of us on the committee had initially envisioned that we would respond to most complaints with "Get a life!", as it turns out all matters have been reasonable enough that we've had to give them consideration and a serious answer. Perhaps the flakiest one was the first one we had to deal with, where somebody was upset because he had received ranking credit that he didn't want (for being a meet director), with the result that he got ranked, and broke his string of unranked years (something he took pride in). Rather than just yank his chain, we posted a notice that he was erroneously ranked and should be deleted from the historical records.

Most grievances during my tenure have been upheld; these most recent complaints were an exception. I will note that the Grievance Committee will in general not overrule a jury, particularly in cases where the jury was able to look at things on the ground that we cannot. We have made decisions that jury decisions should not stand for technical reasons, though. In once case, a jury ruled, then went home, and the complainers kept complaining, so the meet director assembled another jury, which hastily made the opposite decision, then fled to their cars to escape the rain. We ruled that the second jury had no standing. In another case, a selection committee was given information about what their job was that was contrary to USOF rules, and they stated that they would have made a different decision if allowed to. We had them reconvene by phone, armed them with the proper information, and let them come to a new decision (and we didn't care what that decision was, as long as they were properly informed).

On the matter of voiding courses, there is rarely a clear-cut case where a course should be voided automatically. Consider a control that's just plain not there. Automatically void the course, right? Well, (hypothetically), what if it were the second control of a mass- start Long-O? Suppose everyone arrived simultaneously, the feature was easy to find, there was no control there (but there was an unlabeled vetting ribbon), and everyone just continued on the course with no appreciable loss of time. Should the course be thrown out automatically? Even if nobody protests? So that despite the training, vacation time, and airfare that people put into the race, there will be no national champion for the year? Sounds like a bad idea. But what if one person complains, and it's the guy who won? What if it was the guy who finished last, so far back that it clearly didn't matter? What if it was the third-to-last guy? What if it was half the field? Somewhere in here there's obviously a point where the answer changes. It's up to the people in charge to make wise decisions on things like this, and it's important to remember that this isn't research, it's entertainment. Voided courses, particularly one-day courses, don't do anybody any good. Almost any other compromise is preferable. But it all varies from case to case.

-- J-J (jjcote@juno.com), September 22, 2000.

Thanks for the input J-J!

I did have one last thought... Is there any tradition, obligation, or whatever for the Grievance C. to explain or not explain the reasons they have for making the decisions they do? Is it explained to the protester, the victim (the meet director in most cases) or to the public at large?

-- Mook (everett@psi.edu), September 22, 2000.

A report gets written up, and is sent to all "interested parties", meaning the griever, any other affected competitors, relevant meet officials, the VP Admin (who we answer to), and maybe Rankings. And maybe a few other people, depending on the circumstances. A summary of all grievances for the year is given to the VP Admin for reading at the convention AGM. Maybe it would be a good idea if there were a web site somewhere that we could put all grievance reports on for public perusal, but it doesn't exist now, and we've never published them in O/NA or anything.

-- J-J (jjcote@juno.com), September 22, 2000.