in which i got Dooced

When I was 16, I was a free spirit. I was a free thinker. And I was definitely, most assuredly free with my tongue.

It's safe to say that before mid-May in 2001, I'd never really met anyone my age like me. I had plenty of friends, sure, but it was not an unobserved fact that they did not have the same passions as me, the same thirst for knowledge, the same sharpened wit. But something happened to me nine years ago this weekend, something very important and very seminal -- I became a HOBY ambassador. So that's where they'd been hiding everyone just like me.

I've written here several times in the past about the impact that HOBY (Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership) had on me as a teenager and has continued to have on me as a volunteer entering my tenth year of service with the organization. And were circumstances different, this very post might have been about that very thing. Because were circumstances different, I might have been returning today from the Tennessee HOBY seminar, a seminar I organized, orchestrated and led as a 21-year-old college senior just three years ago. But I didn't make the trip to Nashville this year, and it was by no choice of my own -- in February this blog (and that sharp wit and free tongue) earned me an unamicable, unceremonious divorce from the very organization that taught me to value such qualities in myself. I got Dooced.

Back in February I wrote a post that talked in frank terms about sex -- less a how-to, more an opining on some tales from my own personal (often awkward) history. Just two days after the post went live, I got a phone call from my Director of National Programs with HOBY. A parent had called the HOBY International office and complained because their child had read the blog post.

And let's qualify the word "child," before we go any further: this would have been a teenager of at minimum 17 years of age, as the student was an alumnus of the program.

I'm completely blind sided. The next thing I hear is, "You've violated the HOBY Code of Conduct." That punishments are possible, that those punishments might include suspension or complete expulsion from the program. I'm flabbergasted. My heart is racing. My DNP tells me I can either take the post down or I can increase security settings on Facebook so that underage friends wouldn't be able to access links to the blog from my profile page. I did both. And I waited.

Just two days later I had an e-mail in my inbox from HOBY Tennessee. It simply said that HOBY International had directed them that my services wouldn't be required for the next three years. I was devastated. I was too overwhelmed to finish out the day at work.

That weekend, a certified letter arrived for me letting me know that on a national level, the jig was up. And that was it. Just like that, a "code of conduct" violation happening so far outside the grounds of my work with the organization, the first offense in an otherwise exemplary and stellar career as a volunteer, had made me persona non grata, and never once was I offered the chance to plead my case. That weekend, I submitted a letter of appeal, a lengthy letter in which I cited this very fact, that I hadn't been allowed to participate or even be aware of the process, as well as the fact that the code of conduct cannot govern the lives of volunteers 365 days per year and that other prominent volunteers and employees post equally questionable (by HOBY's standards, not my own) content on their own Facebook profiles or social media accounts.

This letter went unanswered for more than two weeks. After multiple follow-up e-mails from me and numerous empassioned letters from fellow volunteers, I finally did receive an e-mail accepting my request to speak by phone. When this phone conversation took place, I was told that "something had happened" and "they hadn't received my e-mail." Now, were this 1995 and we were all using AOL mail and I was chatting you up on IRC, you could probably still convince me that the big bad purple people eater that lives in your internet cables ate my e-mail. But when I'm sending you something from a GMail account, the 15 people who were blind carbon copied on the e-mail all received it just perfectly fine, and shucks, y'all, it's 20-effing-10? Please excuse me while I laugh riotously. Should only take a moment.

Naturally, during this phone call I asked pointed questions about the policies behind this decision, including the Swiss cheese level of holes in the organization's code of conduct that includes the phrase "while serving HOBY," yet apparently applies year-round. Naturally, all of those questions were (not) answered with beating-around-the-bush, not-really-saying-anything-but-still-managing-to-talk-endlessly answers. Finally, at the close of the call I inquired again about an official appeals procedure, knowing that, just like the official policies that dictated my suspension, there wasn't one. I was told, "I'm a person you can appeal to." Here's the thing. I'm pretty decent with the English language, and there is a difference between "your official appeals process" and "appealing to" someone. This is not a Save the Children campaign, and I am not Sally Struthers. I'm not appealing to your emotions for you to donate $10 a month so a starving kid can eat dinner tomorrow. I couldn't give three shits about your personal opinion on this matter. I want to provide you with an official appeal.

Nonetheless, I had nothing in front of me but the options she'd given me. So I compiled a letter, yet again, and sent it off to her the next day. I proposed some alternate solutions. If they were so concerned about my online identity being connected with HOBY, then I would go through this blog to remove all mentions of the organization and do the same with my Facebook profile, even going as far to simply defriend any HOBY alum under the age of 18. This, along with the illumination of the heinous double standards and complete lack of policy, I felt would be sufficient to resolve the situation.

Apparently it was only sufficient in getting me a one-year reduction of sentencing. You'll pardon me if I'm not falling at anyone's feet to thank them.

I'll spare you the exact play by play of every step of the fight from then on, because it's been waging since February, painstakingly, constantly, and it's only recently died down. I have pursued this matter to every possible board, entity and individual within the organization, to no avail. Knowing that the people at the top were the decision-makers in the matter, I went above them and contacted the Board of Trustees -- as did many other volunteers on my behalf. The board of alumni and volunteers who advise HOBY International were expressly told they were not to discuss my case, because it was under appeal.

And here all this time I thought there was no official appeals process! Silly me. Oh, wait. Yeah. There's not one. Glad we got that cleared up.

When it became clear that the fight was a futile one, I began considering this post. And what I would say. Because all along, when the sentence was handed down I knew that I could never realistically see myself coming back to an organization that had hurt me so, so deeply. And I know that it's not about those people, or what they think. Everything I've ever done for HOBY, everything I would've done in the future, is about the high school sophomores who get to experience the change in their lives that I did nine years ago. And they are the reason that this weekend was a tough one to get through. Because of course I want to be there. Of course I do. But the scorn I feel? The anger, the resentment? Those feelings aren't going to go away.

And since I knew that, I felt a little bit more sure of writing this post. Because I knew writing it would be a death sentence. Writing this post means that even at the end of my shortened, merciful two-year term of suspension, I won't be coming back. And it rips my heart right out of my chest just to type those words because every ounce of who I am has been touched by HOBY in some way.

But I can't stand up for the principles and ideals of an organization that taught me to be who I am and then slapped me right across the face for it. I no longer believe in what they stand for. And if HOBY taught me anything, it's to stand up for what I believe in. And only what I believe in. And I believe in the power of my pen. I'm a writer and a humorist and the post I wrote was goddamned funny. Yes, it was about sex. It was about a late-bloomer girl who has crazy, hysterical misconceptions about sex and finally figures out the answers and lives happily ever after. If you want to know what I really think? Seventeen-year-old me could've really used to read something like the post I wrote.

So hopefully that kid, whoever they are, learned a little something from what they read before mommy got on the horn with HOBY. Because if, by chance, this student had been an ambassador at the seminar the year before, they would've been part of an impromptu sex education discussion that happened when an AIDS speaker misunderstood the direction and shape her remarks should take. And if by chance, she was there for that, she would've heard another ambassador voice something that he believed, at 16 years old, to be fact:

"Oral sex isn't sex because sex doesn't happen unless a sperm fertilizes an egg."

But yes. Let's keep sex from the children. Who knows what awful things could befall teenagers with such dangerous knowledge.


cheers,
elizabeth