The WGPO Board of Player Representatives (BPR) and Executive Committee (EC) met this afternoon to discuss the recent decision by NASPA and Hasbro to remove slurs from their North American tournament wordlist. Here is a short summary of our discussion.
Our bylaws clearly state that any “change from the existing primary official tournament word list, and any subsequent editions of it, to some other source shall only be made by a referendum of the total membership” (Article VI: Section 6). This means that if we take no action, our organization will be using an expurgated wordlist with slurs removed when WGPO tournaments resume. Because of the primary importance of the wordlist and our mission as a player-run organization, both the BPR and EC feel that it is important for our membership to be at the center of our decision-making process regarding updates to the tournament wordlist, culminating in a binding referendum later this year. Here’s how we expect this process will unfold:
We will develop a short survey to hear from the membership. Look for this survey to be sent out in the coming weeks. This survey is not the binding referendum, and is instead meant to get a sense of what our members think about a range of possible options. The BPR will use this survey to guide future conversations, and narrow down the possible options to carefully create a clear and credible referendum for the membership to vote on. This binding vote will be run according to our bylaws and start no later than December 1st, 2020.
Many of you have very strong opinions regarding the lexicon, and we look forward to hearing from you in our survey and in other formats.