Hi Laurie,
This week George addressed a group of folks in the common area outside of Sudo Room and the Public School regarding the presence of minors in the building. His behavior was confrontational, hostile, loud, and very upsetting to many of those who were present, including some parentally-accompanied minors. There has unfortunately been a series of miscommunications about this issue, and we are dedicated foremost to resolving it amicably.
First, thank you for communicating the building's policies on minors via email. Unfortunately, due to a lapse in our own internal communication, the contents of your email were not conveyed sufficiently to the relevant sudo room members before Wednesday of this week. Please understand this was a lapse in communication that has been rectified.
Secondly, since early June, every Tuesday evening parent-supervised minors have attended sudo room. We provide no supervision services for minors. In fact, we provide no services to customers (we don't have customers) as we are a membership association. It was unclear that this event was specifically of any concern since it followed the requirement of supervision by parents. We are willing to meet the necessary requirements to ensure that you and George are provided with the appropriate advanced notification of any planned future sudo room events involving supervised minors and their parents. It is relevant to note that in the past we have allowed accompanied minors to be in the "Art Room" and not use common space, but in recent instances the common room has been used as well. Further, since we are interested in being as accessible as possible to different communities and demographics, we would like to clarify what opportunities there might be (through city services, insurance, waivers, etc.) for minors to be in the building in ways other than those outlined in your email.
Thirdly, regarding the damage to the bathroom you discuss in your email, we understand your concerns and are sorry that it happened. We have raised awareness in hopes of preventing instances like this from happening in the future. While we are happy to take shared responsibility for ensuring the bathrooms are clean and usable, we want to communicate that we are not aware of any evidence that the minors who have been at sudo room were responsible for the damage. We fully support your desire to keep all parts of the space (including the bathrooms) vandalism-free, clean, and usable, so we have made all sudo room members aware of this incident, reinforced the expectations surrounding bathroom cleanliness, and reiterated the policy that children should not use bathrooms unaccompanied. Please let us know if you encounter any problems with the bathrooms in the future so that we can take appropriate action. However, we also ask for understanding that if there are problems with a shared space in the building, that absent specific evidence, sudo room may not have been the source of a particular problem.
Finally, we would like to share with you a few of our expectations as lessees that we hope will help us continue to stay in this building that we have been very happy to rent for the last 9 months:
Our Expectations:
That issues with our use of common space or our use of our rented "Art Room" be conveyed in writing, with disrespectful confrontations being completely unacceptable, in any circumstances.
Consistent with Sudo Room standards, that minors continue to be able to participate at Sudo Room, provided they are accompanied by parents or a legal guardian.
To work together with you as we grow, which requires we be accessible to more communities and demographics.
To consider options for mitigating liability through additional insurance, waivers, etc.
// Matt