Something that often comes up during election season is the idea that changes bring more work. A lot of people say they will do certain things, by certain times, and sometimes we don’t always respect the boundaries of others when we’re making these plans. What do I mean by that?

This club has some amazing people. There are some people who will take on any role, any responsibility, with just a simple request. They do it because they love the club and they want to help out. That’s great, but what happens if we burn those people out? Something that Adam and I discussed in the context of the Community Organizer/MAC is, ‘how much can one person be expected to do?’ I am big on boundaries - meaning that I have the firm belief that people should know their limits and be direct with what they can and can’t do. That doesn’t translate to asking people to step back from roles, it translates into being understanding when the answer is, “I’m too busy to do that right now.” People should feel comfortable saying that to Adam and I, because if they’re not, and they keep taking responsibility, they will probably end up finding the club a not very fun place, which isn’t our goal.

Our club has a number of ill defined roles, and we tend to shoehorn a lot of responsibility into grey areas, and expect people to live with it. The Internet Department suffered from this at times. MAC suffers from this now. Another place where this is sadly very visible is with freshly graduating cadets, who are still learning their limits as writers here. I remember being a new graduate and being immediately recruited into tons of ships. I had little sense of what I could realistically manage RP-wise. I lasted about six months, and burnt out. I had no role at all in the club for some time after that. We do that a lot, it’s something that I’ve seen over and over again. I wonder how many people we’ve lost doing this? I don’t have numbers on that.

I know, however, that we operate in a similar way with government positions. You’ll often see people holding multiple roles. Nothing is wrong with people wearing many hats, so long as they are fully agreeable to the situation. Something that we would like to do is check in with people who may be holding several government roles and ensure that they are still comfortable with their tasks. If they are - great! No problem. If not, it’d be a time to talk about what we could do to help them out.

Respect has many forms, one of them is respect for personal boundaries in relation to workload. Something that should be first in our minds when we discuss changes to roles is “is this rational for one person to handle?” Some in our club discuss downsizing of the government, and that can be done in a considerate and thoughtful way. What we can’t do is lop off parts without thought, and then dump their responsibilities on the few left standing. We stand to burn out our most invested members. By being considerate in how we staff and respectful of our members, I think we’ll see much better results.

-Thomas B
–Adam W / Thomas B