Minor Making Suggested Policy Changes

Minor maker safety committee

The following is the submitted suggestion by the Minor Making Safety Committee to the board on Feb 7th, 2023. The policy was rejected by board vote at the February 16th 2023 board meeting.

The committee would like to communicate our concerns to the board and recommend badge access not be granted to anyone under 18 in the future.

There are rules around minors that are being broken and we feel we need more rules to protect children as well as the organization. The membership committee has clarified that everyone under 16 must be treated as a guest and their host must be in the room with them at all times. Membership says they will clarify their wording, but this must be relayed to membership. This information should be relayed to 3 parents in particular with complaints.

We also fear for the safety of children in the space which is a concern shared by the state. The Kansas supreme court (case gerchberg-v-loney) describes tort liability as it applies to the attractive nuisance doctrine. Basically, if we expect minors to be present, we must make our equipment safe from them being able to use it and accidentally hurting themselves. If a minor was hurt on equipment that a reasonable person would think could hurt a child, then we would be liable. We looked into what our insurance covers, which is $1000 medical expense limit for any one person. We have coverage against lawsuit, but that is less clear.

We are also concerned with minors breaking laws at the space (which has already happened). If we allow minors to break laws at the space, we could lose our ability to do business.

We also have concerns about minors (16 & 17 year olds) bringing guests. We are dropping that concern, because we are recommending we stop granting new badge access to anyone under 18. We feel that the risks to minors and to the organization are not acceptable. We feel that no one at makeict would want to allow an environment that ultimately led to a child being hurt.

Some members on the forum are concerned about censoring art for a younger audience. Many more members and this committee are against censorship. If all minors are treated as a guest, then their host would be responsible for what they showed their guest.

The committee also pondered possible additional benefits to incentivise continued minor membership without badge access and all agree that a good idea would be to give minors a $25 a month (non roll over) credit to be used for classes in addition to their member discount.

A final request of the committee is that IT make a system so that waivers could be searched and verified without creating a class.

Please vote whether we should continues giving badge access to minors.

Sorry, to be clear the change requested for vote by the minor maker safety committee is as follows. Standing rules: section on membership “Minors under the age of 16 need to be accompanied by an adult whenever at the space. Keys are available to members over the age of 16, following the key policy.” Changed to:

“Minors need to be accompanied by an adult whenever at the space. Keys are available to members 18 and older, following the key policy. Minor members with badge access before 1-1-23 will retain adult privileges.”