Ipce decides on Ipce - Internal matters

The reports 
New rules for membership 
Ipce thinks and discusses about Ipce 

The reports

The reports of the secretary and the webmaster and the financial report (published in Newsletter # 23) are accepted by the meeting - and thus the policy behind those reports. The secretary, the webmaster and the treasurer will be the same next year. 

The Conflict & Emergency Team is reinstalled for the next year. 
The Membership Team has been changed by the meeting because the team had 'not too much' done in the last year. 

New rules for membership

The infiltration in Hamburg 2004, and earlier in Berlin 2001, presses us to review the membership rules. The start of the discussion about this topic is written in the next text, made and spread during the meeting. 

Precautions

We have safety rules in traffic, we protect ourselves against computer viruses; precautions have become a natural thing to us. But we have learned to do so; it was not part of our natural behaviour right from the start. The mind says “Oh, it will be all right”, and the more we feel at ease the more we tend to loosen up. The experience tells us that’s not what we should do. Accidents have happened and are sure to happen again. Why not try and protect ourselves the best we can? Learn from the past; make it a habit, just like we do with computer viruses and traffic.

And yes indeed, you can never make it 100% fail-safe, but that’s no reason to lower the shields. On the contrary, it means you cannot be precautious enough. It means it’s better to have a multi-layer protection so that when one safety lock is broken, another one may hold.

Think like a pilot. It’s not the amount of risk you are prepared to accept for yourself that counts. Your estimation of the risk at hand may be completely wrong, and you have a responsibility to protect your passengers and others, both in the air and on the ground.

Here are some basic rules I suggest we make ourselves a habit.

Newcomers
Be extra careful when someone new comes to the group or attends the annual meeting. Don’t trust him or her with all detailed information at once; he or she may not be capable (or intending) to handle it properly. 

Signals for raising the protection level are, amongst others:

Respect for privacy
When someone uses a nickname in an internet discussion group, he or she has chosen to do so and that decision should be respected. It’s against normal etiquette to show off your network knowledge by telling everyone what his or her real name is. Just use the nickname as a habit, unless there is a reason not to.

The meeting has accepted this paper as its policy, be it with the next positive criteria: 

In general: ask for verifiable information, take time for a test or a period of candidate membership. Use Google. Try to meet in person, preferably with two existing members.

The meeting installed a new Membership Team. This team will decide about the acceptance of new members, preferably with consensus.

Ipce thinks and discusses about Ipce

1. What is Ipce?

The Mission Statement says:
"Ipce is a forum for people who are engaged in scholarly discussion about the understanding and emancipation of mutual relationships between children or adolescents and adults.
 In this context, these relationships are intended to be viewed from an unbiased, non-judgmental perspective and in relation to the human rights of both the young and adult partners.
Ipce meets once every one or two years in a different country, publishes a newsletter and a web site, co-ordinates the (electronic) exchange of texts and keeps an archive of specific written publications." 
The Meeting decides to maintain this text. 

2. Scholarly texts

In practice, Ipce spreads scholarly texts, unbiased, non-judgmental, unbiased; in short: good science, gathered and sometimes translated by the members and placed by the webmaster.  Members gather texts and discuss on a closed forum IMO: Ipce Meets Online.

Which texts? Which are the criteria? 
Criteria are: by preference an academic level and of high quality. Accuracy is a criterion. Texts, and the website as a whole, should be balanced and more or less of a broad range of interest and open for cross-cultural differences. Some texts should be critically evaluated. Facts can be given, but also important is the interpretation of the facts and figures. This can be discussed on the IMO Forum. 

3. Is Ipce open for young people, e.g. students?

Yes. 'Scholarly' and 'academic' does not mean 'old people who have read and written lots of articles and books'. It can also mean 'young and open to learn'. For young people the same criteria for membership will be used - see the section here above about the new rules for membership and the procedure of the New membership Team.

4. How broad is Ipce's interest? 

Some people whisper or mean that Ipce has only interest in pedophilic matters and has always a 'pro' position, the antipode of people and websites that have only interest in hunting 'pedophiles'. Some ask Ipce to hunt those hunters. But Ipce's interest is far broader, not one-sided, rather balanced. It is the interest of critical humans, critical on society, critical on the way societies handle with youth in abroad sense. 

5. Ipce aims for a high level

Ipce's texts are not easy to read. Many are long files with notes, tables and references. The few images on our website are mostly statistical schemes. Supposedly, young people are not eager to read such texts. Thus, make summaries where possible. We also suppose that the ped-hunters think in simple categories and do not want to read such long texts with lots of nuances. Let it be so. Let it be difficult, we want to maintain our level: 'intellectual', 'academic', 'scholarly' - and broad. 

6. Sometimes, Ipce is an intermediary 

Some people do not want to be a member (because of the whispers mentioned here above), but do allow, or ask us, to place their publications on our website. Some of them are a kind of 'associates', no members, but interested in our publications, and able and willing to send us their articles. We accept that some don't want to be a member, and that we sometimes are an intermediary. 

7. Ipce does not seek much publicity 

Nuancing thinkers about mutual youth-adult relationships, trying to understand and emancipate them, trying to be unbiased and non-judgmental (see our mission statement) are not popular in the public room. They are not accepted by everyone, only tolerated in a corner of society. Let it, for the time being, be so. Much publicity may result in much resistance or maybe hate-mails. Now Ipce receives less than one such a mail per year. Let it be so. Ipce is available and it is possible to find our texts via Google and a serious seeking person will find and read our texts. 

Ipce does not 'shout', does not claim its rights, only very seldom protests. 
In this respect, we differ a bit from Krumme 13, a German kind of action group. On request of our German members, Ipce has in the past decided nor to be associated with this group, neither to combat it. Let is be as it is, the Meeting decided again, again after askinf advise from our German members. 

8. Ipce is not an action group

Ipce as such does not undertake any action, except what is mentioned in our mission statement: being a forum to discuss things, and publishing "specific written publications" - thus nor pictures at all, neither any other kind of action. If members, or other groups, want to undertake action, they do this on their own responsibility. 
The meeting decided to maintain this policy.

9. A list of FAQs or a condensed brochure