These are a selection of questions that have reached us, we hope that our public answers here give you more insight about ARROW.
ARROW began as a conversation between several officials, in the course of which more officials were added in and more defined goals or desires were expressed amongst the group. The founding members of ARROW have joined only after being invited.
The long-term goals of ARROW are as specific or general as expressed in its mission statement. Within the next year ARROW hopes to have open enrollment for any interested roller derby official. ARROW’s goals beyond that are to serve that community as best we can: that means dedicating the organization's time and resources to address and solve the issues or requests identified by that membership.
ARROW will be a membership organization.
One of the ideals that came out of the original conversation which sprouted ARROW was that the officiating of our different versions of this sport had far more in common than they had differences, and that we had a lot to learn from one another which we'd up until now been eschewing by focusing on largely superficial differences. We believe that sharing resources and opening the discussion brings more voices and options to the table.
ARROW has no intention to act as a governing body for any segment of the sport. We are a training organization seeking to fill training voids which are identified by our membership, and to partner with the various governing bodies to improve officiating in general.
ARROW was formed to supplement, not supplant, what exists: to provide our membership with tools they cannot, or are not getting, elsewhere for whatever reason; to make sure that nothing stands in the way of them becoming the best officials they can be, whether it be money, time, locality, or a dearth of internal training. If an organization recognizes a lack of resources to create training for their own officials, we can work with them to create a program for or with them. We recognize, and have no intention of challenging, an organization’s right to maintain their own standards and interpretations. We are adding additional, centralized, and transparent support to those existing bodies, by offering our help to continue training and improving and standardizing the core of officials available to them.
ARROW is still in its formative stage. Until ARROW is fully and legally established as a membership organization we cannot accept new members at this point. However we want to be open for new members as soon as possible. If you want to be notified about membership options and opening please sign up here: http://rollerderbyofficials.org/about/membership
At present ARROW trainers have already proven to be successful with their independent officiating training and training officials for other organizations and/or leagues. In the future a process to become an ARROW trainer will be developed.
Assessment is a huge topic that we will work on in the future. It is an acknowledgement of the needs already expressed by our membership and the community at large, that immediate feedback allows for immediate improvement. We will work on ways to improve continuous development of officials, which could include e.g. a mentorship program. However this is something we want to work out with our membership once we are able to take in new members.
At no time has ARROW membership, or any of the organizations that have contacted us, expressed a perceived need or desire for us to be directly involved in the staffing of tournaments. However, if the need were to be expressed for us, as an organization, to assist in that duty, we would openly investigate how we could do or assist in that task.
We do not see any conflicts, only synergy. Our goal is to progress the sport of roller derby through the improvement of its officials. We look forward to working with any organization within the sport.
This is inaccurate. ARROW is a not for profit organization. While there are member officials who have advocated that officials deserve to be compensated for their work officiating the sport, ARROW has no official stance on the issue, nor any plans to take one any time soon. If you look at other answers in the FAQ you’ll notice the trend of offering resources for officials to succeed rather than doing things ourselves, so even if our membership identified compensation as a pressing issue which we should help with, it is more likely that we would help create resources for them to make that a reality themselves, rather than organizing any sort of action.