Why does ACF have children do its work?

[1.82]

Several years ago, ACF made a decision that it would allow children enrolled in high school to become editors for its tournaments, thereby granting them a pathway to membership. I do not recall at the time any compelling reasons being advanced for this decision, but I am aware of at least one instance in which a qualified adult applied for a position and was rejected in favor of a high school student, indicating that this was not the result of a lack of manpower but instead a deliberate policy decision. I think that this policy is misguided and would like to see it reexamined.

At the present time, perusing the ACF membership page shows two members for whose institution is listed a high school, indicating that they received ACF membership for work that they performed as a high school student. My purpose is not to cast aspersions on their work; I am not an ACF member so I have no idea of the quality of their work, and in any case that is irrelevant to the issue at hand here. I have no doubts that gifted high school students are capable of brilliant work, but in spite of that ACF is the only reputable quizbowl organization I know of that allows minors to perform work on its behalf or admits minors to membership. I am not a lawyer, so I cannot say whether there are legal issues that have led those organizations to elect not to use children to perform labor, but regardless of that, for ACF to place adults and minors in equivalent positions and to have them work together indicates that in ACF's view, those adults and minors are peers. I feel strongly that it is irresponsible for any organization to blur the lines between adults and children in this way. Furthermore, ACF is a project of the collegiate quizbowl community to produce collegiate quizbowl tournaments. High school students are not in any way stakeholders in what ACF does, and it is unclear to me why they should be involved at all.

If someone can explain the arguments for high school students to be granted positions of authority by ACF (perhaps the arguments that led to this decision being made in the first place), I would be interested in hearing them. As it stands, this policy of ACF seems to me to be egregiously unprofessional.

[db0wman]

I'm inclined to agree with Naveed here. At the very least, high school ACF editors should not be offered provisional membership, or at least not until they graduate high school.

[reindeer]

Thanks for bringing this up! This has been on ACF's radar for some time, and we'll announce a decision when we've worked through our internal processes. In the meantime, we'd welcome any additional feedback from the community on this issue.

[Amiable Vitriol]

I think I have a relatively unique perspective on this question as ACF's first high school aged editor and someone very vocal about being negatively impacted by age inappropriate quizbowl interactions as a teenager. Perhaps surprisingly, I don't have strong opinions on this issue. Working with ACF was overwhelmingly a positive experience for me; it was never a direct source of age inappropriate interactions in the way other quizbowl spaces were and I was dealt with extremely professionally. On the other hand, I see merit in the point that high schoolers being apart of ACF could abstractly contribute to high schoolers being seen as peers. I suppose I wouldn't be opposed to ACF moving away from working with high schoolers, but I don't think that would have saved me from quizbowl, unfortunately, or even reduced the ways I was traumatized. It would have to be a step taken in tandem with a lot of other unrelated changes that I'm not confident quizbowl is ready or willing to take.

[Stained Diviner]

This is a complicated issue, and I disagree with the characterization of it as "egregiously unprofessional".

Having children doing one's work is not inherently bad. Our economy relies on high school workers all the time, and our schools have spent the past few decades increasing student leadership roles. Furthermore, quizbowl has had students write and edit questions, run tournaments, and staff tournaments for the past few decades, and many of those students have considered it to be a great experience.

I had children work for me for the Reinstein Quizbowl Summer 2020 Internship Program, which was announced on these forums and received no criticism.

The ACF practice is unusual in that it has students working a level up, and ACF is the largest organization currently using high school students as editors. I honestly don't know whether those two differences make them worse than anybody else, but I can safely say that it doesn't obviously make them worse.

Some of the issues worth sorting out if the practice continues:
1) Does this blur social lines? I don't think it does so inherently, but the potential is there, and this issue is rightfully getting some attention.
2) What happens if a 25-year-old writer does not like what a 17-year-old editor does to their question?
3) What happens if a 17-year-old edits a category in a way that is not received well by 25-year-old competitors?
4) What happens if a high school student gets overwhelmed by the amount of work?
5) What happens if a high school student does something unethical such as giving hints to content or editing in a way that favors a particular competitor? What happens if they do a poor job of safeguarding question content by sharing a password or posting somewhere they think nobody will see it?
6) What happens if a high school student falls behind on their editing work? What happens if an adult head editor does not think that a child subject editor is doing a good job?
7) What happens if a high school student does not respond to messages in a timely or appropriate manner?

Another issue is what provisional membership means. The ACF website says, "Provisional members are community members who have ably assisted ACF in the past and, if they do so again in the future, may be invited to apply for full membership." This seems like something that is entirely appropriate for high school students. I don't know whether it involves having access to chats and meetings. For what it is worth, IHSSBCA has liaisons who are present at meetings, and it does not seem to be problematic, though IHSSBCA Steering Committee members tend to be older than ACF Members, so the blurred social lines are much less of a problem. No high school student has any access to internal PACE discussions, though there would be little problem if they did outside of the occasional vetting of people and the potential appearance of favoritism. If ACF allows high school students in its meetings, then that could raise the expectations for professionalism in those meetings, though I'm not sure about that because I have no access to internal ACF discussions myself.

All of the issues I listed are problems that can and do occur with adults, but with children the problems need to be addressed in a way that is good for the growth and well-being for that child. Responses to adults should not be abusive, but they can be critical without being constructive criticism.

An outcome I want to protect against is a community decision that people under the age of 18 should not have anything to do with quizbowl other than play it. Nobody seems to be making that case, but if ACF decides to stop having high school student editors, then it raises questions as to what is and is not appropriate. Also, it seems to be an extension of the question "Why does ACF (or anyone for that matter) have children do its work?" I think it is good to have a discussion as to what work is appropriate and what the conditions of that work should be, and I do not have answers as to what ACF should do.

[caroline]

In the interest of people being able to make informed judgments, I just wanted to note (since I am always saddened to learn that other people do not spend their time reading the ACF Constitution for fun) what being a provisional member of ACF actually means, as there doesn't seem to be much general community awareness of this (or what ACF membership really constitutes).

Per article 5 of ACF's constitution:

1. A quorum shall exist at any meeting of the membership where at least 50% of the Full members are in attendance.
2. Meetings of the Academic Competition Federation will be called by the President as needed, and members are expected to attend if at all possible. They will be held in a chat room or some other convenient venue.
3. Reasons for holding a meeting include: member approval, editor assignment, discussion of amendments to the constitution and/or the rules, and Carper voting.
4. Full members are eligible to attend and vote at all meetings. Provisional members may not attend member approval meetings, may attend but not vote at editor assignment and amendment meetings, and may attend and vote at Carper meetings. Emeritus members may attend any meeting but may only vote at Carper meetings.

I will also note that, as far as I know, ACF members don't really have any formal requirements or work obligations in order to remain within the organization, with the exception that if you're a provisional member, you will lose that membership if you do not make a satisfactory contribution to ACF within three years of joining, and full members will also become emeritus members if you do not make a satisfactory contribution for 3 years. The definition of "a satisfactory contribution" has a fairly codified definition which is outlined in article 3.

More informally on my part, I don't believe ACF membership is some huge burden to anyone, since you basically have to do one thing every 3 years to stay a member—a position which has the main benefits of "discuss internal ACF issues if you so desire, before they're introduced to the public" and adding a shiny name to your forum signature—and that's it.

[alexdz]

...for ACF to place adults and minors in equivalent positions and to have them work together indicates that in ACF's view, those adults and minors are peers. I feel strongly that it is irresponsible for any organization to blur the lines between adults and children in this way. ...

Is it equivalently irresponsible that I, as a high school student, worked together with adults at a movie theater in the same role? Like David Reinstein said above, there are certainly points to be made about the ways ACF might choose to deal with age differences in assigning roles and supervising work. But I think it's pretty harsh to suggest that at no point should a minor and an adult ever work together. As long as that minor can legally work and chooses to engage in this work consensually, then I fail to see how the quoted point really holds water in this argument.