As PM of CW, I have been making my populace sign new waivers for participation to get updated information. When I took over this office, most of the paperwork hadn't been updated or purged since the last time I was PM for my land over 5 years ago. I submit this as a serious concern. I believe that in order to have a waiver hold any form of accountability (as the same listed in the corpora for statute of limitations to retain paperwork) a precedent needs to be set for how often waivers should be updated. Physically holding onto the records, as far as I'm concerned, does not qualify as "maintaining" them.
Many of us move, paperwork can get lost, phone numbers change, people become legally responsible for themselves, emergency contacts change, etc. If we are to put any weight of reliability, or make it our responsibility to get someone the help they need when they need it-- I consider a signed waiver no longer valid information if older than a reign or two at the most. I also don't believe (in CW at least) that waivers are getting checked for accuracy as they should. A good portion of the waivers are not filled out correctly or legibly; again it raises the concern of a supposed legal document and it's validity. Not to mention: how helpful can it be if I can't make out the phone number to call if you're unconscious? I realize that these instances are few and far in between-- but someone is really going to be in trouble when we need that document and it's worthless.
My requests/concerns:
1) I think the general waiver of consent needs to be updated. It can be simplified so that people will actually fill things out correctly-- not to mention who has a pager nowadays?? I repeat: it's outdated. Please see attached word doc "revised amt waiver" for a potential solution (revised from the Iron Mountains waiver to fit WM). Aside from the document format itself, I hope this really encourages monarchy out there to realize that we are the advocates if someone gets hurt--- don't you want to make sure you can read/find the information you need?
2) There needs to be a timeline for how long a waiver is considered valid, and this requirement needs to be added to the corpora. I would assume this would best be under the local PM's responsibilities and overseen by the WM PM.
3) Demo's/Cons and waivers-- Please fill me in, but when we do a demo/event somewhere, are we not covered by their insurance anyway, making our waiver process superfluous? It's an absolute mess and waste of paper/funds to get 200+ signed waivers for a single day for someone in majority of cases we'll never see again. I see this as a waste of resources and am not sure if we actually need to have waivers at events like these since they would already have insurance. If we do, I submit that the top of the form should have the waiver legal stuff and then below listed things like "name, signature, email address". We don't really need any of that other stuff, but an email would be nice to try and get them to "like" our FB page or invite them to events etc.
/end rant. Thank you for your time and serious consideration.