World Fantasy’s Safety Surcharge

[swan_tower]

Today the registration fee for the 2016 World Fantasy Convention went up by seventy-five dollars, from $150 to $225.

I registered during the previous WFC, as has been my habit for years. Unfortunately, now I realize that I need to rethink this policy. Because despite being prodded on these matters, WFC 2016 still has not posted either a harassment or an accessibility policy. The con-runner, going by her comments posted there, seems to think that “be nice to one another” and “the hotel is ADA compliant” are sufficient measures in that regard — and maybe there will be policies posted by the time the con begins, but apparently it’s totally unreasonable to ask for those things before the price of attendance gets jacked up.

This is not okay. It amounts to a safety surcharge, because if you want to attend WFC, you have two choices:

1) Buy your registration early, in the blind faith that the con will do its duty and put together an acceptable set of policies before you arrive.

2) Wait for the policies, and pay more money in exchange: seventy-five dollars more now, another fifty if they aren’t posted by mid-April, literally twice the membership price if you pick your membership up in the fall (y’know, around the time the harassment policy got posted last year). To say nothing of the difficulty in getting a hotel room if the block has sold out, which it often does — a situation that might put you in a different hotel entirely, and yeah, like that won’t cause you problems if your mobility is limited.

Oh, and let’s not forget: this is a con with a membership cap. Waiting to register might mean you can’t attend at all, because they’re sold out. So really it’s heads they win, tails you lose, because if these things matter to you, then you wind up paying more money to the con, or not showing up at all.

I’ve said that I will not attend a con without either a harassment policy or an accessibility policy. As it turns out, that pledge needs to have a rider attached to it: these things must be posted sufficiently far in advance of the con. I already have my WFC membership, but if they have not addressed this problem in a substantive way by the end of the month, I will ask to have my membership refunded. That gives them four weeks: more than enough time to look at the many fine policies posted by other cons and select their menu options. If they can’t do it in that amount of time, I really don’t have faith that they care enough to do it properly at all.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

James Nicolls posted a link to this

http://www.jasonsanford.com/blog/2016/2/world-fantasy-con-doesnt-care

so your hopes look pretty dashed right now. You would think that concom would do something.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I linked to that at the beginning of the post -- a friend sent me that link this morning, which was the first I'd heard of it.

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

*rubbing sleep from eyes and seeing the color difference* oh, my bad.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

No worries!

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

I really should clean my computer screen too..