BOARDS WEAPONIZING CODES OF CONDUCT.

 It's all about power and control. It's all about stifling dissent. It's all about legal harassment allegedly. It's petty little people getting a small taste of authority and control that goes to their heads. They can't get enough of it and hence "mission creep" kicks in. They try to expand their authority and heaven help anybody who accuses them of abusing that authority. The fact is that most people in any kind of authority usually end up abusing it until somebody stands up and says NO ! It even happens with lowly, parking lot attendants if you can believe it. Sometimes they are improperly tasked with tack ons to their job of collecting parking fees from the public. Sometimes they are advised that they are psuedo security guards. Sometimes they are even advised that they are a weird kind of collection agency. That has happened recently at a downtown Kitchener, Saturday only parking lot. The parking Nazi berated and confronted one of the monthly parking clients, who is a vendor at the Kitchener Market, from this private lot. It turns out that the Vendor had paid his monthly parking a full week earlier but the organization had failed to properly update their records and again "mission creep" kicked in as the parking lot attendant somehow felt that it was her duty to confront, berate and insult the alleged only, late paying Market Vender.

My focus has wandered here. Today's Waterloo Region Record, on the front page, has two interesting stories regarding weaponized Codes of Conduct as well as the School Board's (WRDSB) overreaching and attempting to stifle what they view as neither politically correct nor Woke behaviour. All allegedly in the name of supporting the LGBTQ2S etc. community, the Waterloo Region District School Board are aggressively attacking, impugning and harassing anybody who dares to contradict their (sent from heaven?)  opinions. The Board's favourite weapon seems to be their Code of Conduct which interpreted by the Board's like minded majority basically says any debate or polite disagreement is verboten. That is any sincere opinion different from theirs is to be met not with discussion and debate but with retaliation, suspension, dismissal etc. The full force, authority, power and money of the Board is to be used to squelch honest disagreement.

The Trustees (Board of?) suspended one of their own members for his challenging their decision publicly on social media. Boo hoo he may have hurt their wittle feelings. The same Trustees shut down and ejected a teacher/parent who as a registered Delegate dared to suggest that there were some specific books dealing with sexuality in local public schools available for very young children to read which she felt were a little too graphic and premature for these very young children. This very experienced teacher was speaking calmly, politely and respectfully to a group of allegedly, mature and experienced trustees about a matter that she felt required attention and possibly correction. They shut her down and ejected her from the meeting or at least from her own, proper presentation to them.

I suspect that there are other, more involved Agendas at work in both these cases. These other agendas may well be private agendas that various Boards do not want to share with their members, clients etc. but which they feel could be threatened by reasoned debate or discussion of related matters. Therefore if you will the Code of Conduct violations are merely red herrings to distract both the individuals and onlookers from what's really going on behind the scenes..