Harassment complaints made by several attendees at Context 27 in September resulted in a publicly-announced 5-year ban of the accused staffer. However, two committee members – Steven Saus and Lucy Snyder – resigned anyway, citing the resistance of several board members of the con’s parent corporation to taking public action on the harassment reports.
The combination of internal dissent and public scrutiny caused the board of Context’s parent corporation FANACO to dissolve itself at the end of November (see Official Statement Regarding the Dissolution of Fanaco’s Board of Directors).
A new president, Mark Freeman, and the six other successors to the FANACO board thought the former leadership intended to assist in a transfer of power that would save the convention. Freeman tried to arrange for signing the state form to name another agent of record, and changing the signers on the convention bank account. But according to Freeman’s detailed statement, published by Steven Saus, former president Jan Province has not cooperated. Last week Freeman e-mailed her this warning:
“If you fail to sign on Friday [December 26] as you previously agreed in our meeting on December 19th and on the phone with me after you stood me up on December 22nd, I will recommend to the new Board that we all walk away and make public the documentation of the events that led up to the failure to authorize a new Board.”
And how did that work out? Says Freeman —
Instead, on the day of the scheduled meeting, she had a lawyer send a rather over-the-top email to me saying that she would not sign the form and threatening me with police action if I went to her house, among other things. The new Board is, of course, now walking away.
Steven Saus, who made his own observations in a separate post, believes the convention now has no future:
…All the new people who wanted to be part of the new board, who wanted to see Context survive and thrive, realized that they couldn’t fight a (frivolous) lawsuit and simultaneously prepare a convention. Context is dead.