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Originally posted by chels
1. What do you think of a member of your board approaching youth leagues,summer highschool leagues and offering his services as an assignor to get officials to officiate these leagues at a fee less than our board now charges. We are an IAABO board but believe that unless they are scholastic games we cant do anything about it.
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I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know your by-laws or your membership rules, or the agreements (if any) that you have with these various leagues; so it's very difficult to comment intelligently on this question. So, I'll comment unintelligently, and just give you my guess.
Unless you have some sort of exclusive assigning contract with these leagues, I would think that anybody could offer his/her services as either an official or an assignor to the league(s) in question. Around here, there is a sort of agreed-upon assignor for most leagues and he assigns only IAABO officials to those leagues. But for some leagues, they get who they can get. And if another organization came to the league and said, "We'll do your games for $15 per official, instead of the $20 that you're paying now", I'm not sure there's anything really wrong with that. Unless you have some legal reason that prohibits another prospective assignor from trying to outbid your organization, I don't think there's much you could do about it.
Would I like it if somebody tried it within my board? No way. But I'm not sure there'd be much I could do about it.
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2. This official and a few of his friends also are claiming discrimination with regards to not getting enough varsity games.
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Is the assignor discriminating against them? Let's not pretend it doesn't happen. If they are good officials but not getting schedules commensurate with other officials of similar ability, then that's wrong. If they're just frustrated b/c they want better games without going to camp, or meetings, or whatever, then oh well.
There will always be people who face genuine discrimination. There will also always be people who try to use the issue of discrimination to their advantage, even when it doesn't really apply. The problem is figuring out which is the case.
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3. What appearance standards do your boards have with regards to facial and acceptable hair styles. How do you enforce them without crossing into discrimination.
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We have guidelines, not rules. Officials are discouraged from any facial hair at all. But we have several varsity officials who have either a mustache or a goatee. Some of these officials are of African descent, but some are not. It's not a racial issue. I think the bottom line around here is, "We really don't like facial hair; but if you're a good enough official, we'll tolerate it."
If you try to put a rule in place about facial hair, that's ok. But you better make sure that: 1) you enforce it uniformly across all racial lines; and 2) that the rules do not prohibit anything that might be reasonably construed as "aimed at" one particular racial or ethnic group. For example, if 99% of all goatee wearers on your board are black, and you only prohibit goatees, you will be in trouble, and deservedly so.
Don't know if any of that helps you, but those are my 2 cents. Good luck.