Standing disputes
Since 1988 the convention has been that where a house objects in writing, the objection is printed beside the decision, in full, and is not answered by a summary. Three disputes are open. Two of them are older than most members.
Each dispute is bound with the circulars it argues about and the papers it cites. A dossier prints as one continuous, paginated report on your own device.
DOS/A
6 items · one continuous report
The papers governing what happens when a member's participation stops being continuous: the review procedure, the separation circular, the designation dispute, and the correspondence cited in each.
Section 9 of PRO/1991/02 is not printed in any edition of this dossier.
DOS/B
4 items · one continuous report
Everything the public edition holds on the four years in which the Journal did not appear. The two surviving accounts of the decision are bound together and are not reconciled.
Issues 14 to 21 are not held. The chronology records the period as concluded.
DOS/C
4 items · one continuous report
The accounting line queried by the auditors in eleven of the last twenty years, with the annual report in which it is stated and the handbook wording relied upon.
The figure is reported. What is being returned is not stated in these papers.
The full binding order is kept at the dossiers page.
2025–present
4 papers
Whether a corrected, superseded or disputed record should ordinarily remain available, and what is owed to former members, their families, and the people named in papers they did not write. The stewardship has not adopted a rule and does not expect to adopt one this year.
Principal records
MEM/2025/04
16 April 2025
G. Sørhaug, Archivist
Memorandum to the stewardship
The archive is asked, four or five times a year, to close a record that someone would rather were not read. The requests are seldom frivolous. My position is a presumption and not a rule: where the law and our obligations to living people allow it, a record which has been corrected, superseded or disputed should remain available with its status plainly stated.
A record cannot be corrected in public if its earlier form has been made impossible to examine. What we are then doing is not correction. It is replacement, carried out by the same body whose earlier judgement is in question.
Curiosity is not a reason to publish anything. A reader's interest in a document creates no entitlement to it. Where a former member disputes what the Record says of them, the first remedy should ordinarily be annotation, dissent, correction or a counter-record in their own words, rather than deletion, because deletion removes the disagreement as well as the entry.
I accept that this cannot be the whole answer, and that there will be cases in which the annotation is itself the injury. I do not know how to write the rule for those cases.
MEM/2025/07
2 September 2025
N. Whitlock, Steward of Orchard House
Memorandum in reply
I agree with most of the archivist's paper and with none of its presumption. We hold what we hold because people trusted us with parts of their lives, in most cases without being told how long the holding would last. Continuity is not the same thing as indefinite possession.
A record kept public against the wish of the person it describes is not a neutral object sitting on a shelf. It is a thing being done to that person, repeatedly, by us, on a schedule we control. Historical interest is not sufficient.
Nothing in this paper would close a record because it embarrasses us; embarrassment is a reason to publish and I would support a rule saying so. Nor would I remove a document because a reader finds it uncomfortable.
The archivist is right that deletion removes the disagreement. My difficulty is that preservation sometimes removes the person, and I do not know how to weigh those two losses in a circular.
COR/2025/188
11 November 2025
Correspondent, name withheld
Request on behalf of a former member
Nothing in either item is untrue and nothing in them is shameful. I am not saying you have done anything wrong by keeping them. I am saying that they are findable, that she is findable, and that the two facts together are doing something to her that the items themselves do not contain.
I am also aware that she is one person and that your archive is for a great many. If the answer is that the photograph stays, I would like to be told that plainly, with the reason, rather than be managed.
MIN/2026/02
12 February 2026
The Stewardship
Minutes, item 3
No general rule was adopted. Existing closures will be reviewed individually until the question is reconciled. The criteria at PRO/2026/01 are to be used in the meantime and are not to be treated as settling the principle.
N. Whitlock asked that it be recorded that a review conducted annually is, from the point of view of the person waiting for it, an annual refusal. It is recorded. G. Sørhaug asked that it be recorded that he agrees with the preceding sentence. It is recorded.
Where the matter stands
No general rule was adopted. Requests are handled singly under PRO/2026/01, which states criteria and expressly does not settle the principle. Closures made in the meantime carry a review date. The matter is carried forward to February 2027.
1986–present
4 papers
The designation memorandum introduced the phrase “no longer continuous”. It has been objected to in every decade since and has not been withdrawn.
MEM/1986/09
3 June 1986
The Stewardship
Memorandum to all houses
It is proposed that the Record adopt a single form of words for members whose participation has ended, in place of the eleven forms presently in use, several of which are unkind and one of which is inaccurate.
The form of words proposed is: no longer continuous. It states a fact about the record and not a judgement about the person. It carries no implication of fault, of disgrace, or of exclusion from any house.
Houses are asked to adopt it at the next reconciliation.
COR/1986/141
19 November 1986
A. Pryke, River House
Objection, circulated to all houses
I have read the memorandum four times in the hope of finding it harmless and I cannot.
“No longer continuous” does not state a fact about the record. It states a fact about the person, in the grammar of the record, which is worse, because it cannot be argued with. A woman who leaves us to nurse her mother has not become discontinuous. She has gone to nurse her mother.
I am told the phrase is neutral. Neutral language is the most expensive kind. It costs nothing to write and it is paid for later by whoever is described in it.
I ask that the memorandum be withdrawn and the eleven forms of words retained, unkindness and all. An unkind sentence can be apologised for. A procedure cannot.
MIN/1987/02
14 February 1987
The Stewardship
Reply, entered in the minutes
The objection of A. Pryke is noted, is printed in full, and is not accepted.
The stewardship accepts that the phrase will in time acquire a meaning it was not given. It considers this true of all phrases and not a ground for keeping eleven.
COR/2019/318
8 April 2019
Members of the Karst circle
Letter, thirty-one signatures
We write to note the thirty-third year of the memorandum and to ask, as our predecessors asked, what the phrase means.
We are content to be told that it means nothing. We would like to be told it in writing.
Where the matter stands
The phrase stands. The stewardship has twice declined to define it, on the grounds that a definition would be more permanent than the usage.
1982–1986
3 papers
The Journal did not appear for four years. The stewardship has never printed a reason. Two accounts of the decision survive and they do not agree.
MIN/1983/07
11 September 1983
The Stewardship
Minutes, redacted 1986
1. RESUMPTION OF PUBLICATION. The chair reported that members continue to write asking for a reason. It was agreed that no reason would be given beyond “an internal matter of continuity, now concluded”.
2. It was further agreed that the phrase “now concluded” would be retained in future correspondence irrespective of ████████████████.
COR/1984/022
2 January 1984
T. Orrell
Letter to the stewardship, not circulated
You have asked me to stop writing about this and I will, after this letter.
We suspended the Journal because of a piece we had already set and did not print. I am not asking you to print it now. I am asking you to write down, once, somewhere, that it existed, so that in forty years a person reading the run of issues does not conclude that we simply lost interest in thinking.
A gap that is not accounted for becomes, with time, a doctrine about the gap.
COR/1984/031
19 January 1984
E. Vale
Reply to T. Orrell
You are right and it will not be done. Those are separate sentences and I mean both.
I have withdrawn from the stewardship and so my agreement is worth very little administratively. It is worth something to you, I hope, privately: I think we behaved like an institution, which is what I said we would eventually do, and I find I dislike being right about it more than I expected to.
Where the matter stands
Publication resumed in 1987. Issues 14 to 21 were not published and no drafts are held. The period is described in the chronology as concluded.
2001–present
3 papers
A line in the annual figures which the auditor has queried in eleven of the last twenty years, and which the stewardship has each time confirmed as correct.
COR/2007/094
30 November 2007
Hallam & Rée, auditors
Management letter, extract
For the eleventh year we draw attention to the line described as Returns. The figure is small and is properly evidenced by house entries. Our difficulty is that the entries evidence the number and not the nature of the transaction.
We would ordinarily reclassify. In the absence of a description we cannot say what to reclassify it to. We therefore report the line as presented and record that we asked.
MIN/2008/01
17 January 2008
The Stewardship
Minutes
The auditors' letter was read. It was agreed that the line is correctly stated and that the description in the handbook (“Returns: members returned to the Record”) is sufficient for the purpose of the accounts.
It was noted, without further discussion, that the figure for the year exceeds the number of members recorded as having separated in the preceding twenty years by two.
COR/2024/207
6 October 2024
M. Evensen, Steward of the North House
Letter to the stewardship
I have been asked about this line at every open gathering I have taken since the spring, by people who are not looking for a mystery and would like an answer they can repeat to a friend.
I do not have one. I have the handbook sentence, which I no longer say aloud, because when I say it aloud I hear it.
I would like the stewardship to either describe the category or remove it. I am aware that I am the eleventh person to write this letter and that the previous ten are in the archive, filed under Returns.
Where the matter stands
The category remains. The figure is reported. What is being returned is a question the accounts are not designed to answer.
Members who wish to add a paper to a standing dispute should write to their steward. A paper is added on receipt and is not edited. It is the only thing the Institute does without a procedure, and a circular exists confirming that no procedure applies.