One more second. Okay. Backup recording is on. Tim and Shar, it's all yours. All right. Thanks, Sean. Go ahead and share my screen one second. Welcome, everyone, to the Identity Implementers Special Interest Group for March 7th. Today we are joined by Andrew Smith to give us a presentation on Jumpstart and Cloud Agent Identity. Thank you, Andrew, for joining us today. Before we pass it over to you, we have a few updates on some working groups and some announcements. So as far as announcements go, Sean, did you want to take these or I'm unsure? Yeah, I can jump on the two of those. April 2024, IIW Internet Identity Workshop is happening in Mountain View, California at the Computer History Museum. This is a two times a year event where the different clans of the identity community get together. Some folks are talking about decentralized identities. Some folks are big on open ID and there's going to be a lot of discussions around wallets. So I'm wondering if we in the Identity SIG would like to spark a conversation maybe in the next ID SIG call, talking about what folks want to talk about and present and who's coming. And maybe that could be like a five or 10 minute thing. Secondly, Open Wallet Foundation next Thursday has its first anniversary. I'll post in the ID SIG Discord channel link if you'd like to attend the registration. Basically, the presentation is going to be talking about the accomplishments for the last year and where the Open Wallet Foundation is going in the next year. Zero Knowledge Proofs and ZK Programming and Blockchain Application Development. This is a workshop that the Hyperledger is putting on. It's happening in April. The Zero Knowledge Proofs are part of decentralized identity and so that felt like a good fit. And then, thank you to Char, I believe, for putting up the recording for the Identity Plus Interop workshop that DSR put on. It was a great event and you all should definitely check it out. Also at the bottom of the working group reports and release plans, there's a note. The EU, EUDI, Reference Architecture has been, Reference Implementation has been released on GitHub. There's a link right there if you want to check it out. Open Wallet Foundation is going to do a workshop on it in a week or two. But it's not approved yet. So once it is, I'll post a link to the registration in the IDSIG Discord. That's it for me. Thanks. Awesome. Thanks, Sean. We'll jump into some quick working group updates here. It looks like the Hyperledger Indie contributors working group met on the 27th just recently in February. Was anyone able to attend this session that would like to give us a quick summary? Yep. Yep. We met last week. We had a presentation on a plugin to support self-controlable and devolvable group dids. So this is about having a did to represent a self-evolving group of dids where members can join and leave at any time. So that was really cool. Got some updates on the Indie Bezu project as well. And there was a release completed for sovereign node 1.2.0. Yeah, it's a good meeting. All right. Sounds good. Thank you, Shar. It looks like Hyperledger Aries working group met just yesterday to discuss some credential protocol reversions. Was anyone able to make this session that would like to give us a quick update? All right. Well, if you'd like to check out what exactly they were talking about, you can follow the links in this document and are on this web page rather. Aries Cloud Agent Python met a couple of days ago on the 5th. Was anyone able to attend the Aries Cloud Agent Python user group call? Yes. Yes. We met this week. We had a demo about a non-creds in W3C verifiable credential data format, data model format work. Let's see. Let's see. We also talked about updates on the non-creds RS in Akapai work. That's going well. Indorsure support just got merged in. The status of Akapai 0.12.0 release candidate 1. I believe there will be a release candidate 2 coming soon. And updates on did peer and AFJ interop and then moving closer to Akapai 1.0. Awesome. Thank you, Shar. It looks like the maintainers group met on the 27th of February. Was anyone able to attend this meeting? Yep. Pretty much what you have there just going over PRs and figuring out what needs to be done to merge them in and discussing release 1.0. So, yeah. All right. Awesome. The hyperledger non-creds met just recently here on the 4th. Was anyone able to attend this session? All right. Well, yeah, we have a quick summary here. If you'd like to learn a bit more, please feel free to go to these links here. I believe we've met since that meeting. These have all been gone through. For the TOIP Ecosystem Foundry, it looks like they've met since our last meeting together. On the 29th, was anyone able to attend this TOIP Ecosystem Foundry meeting? All right. Looks like they saw a presentation from Moby on Web 3 Battery and Burst Certificate Credentialing. So, if that sounds interesting, go ahead and check them out. The Concepts and Terminology meeting looks like they've had a meeting since our last session. Was anyone able to attend this TOIP meeting? All right. Looks like once again, some updates right here to their engine. If you want to learn more, always the link. These have not met as far as I can tell. All right. Well, if anyone has been to one of the Diff, either Didcom or Interoperability Group meetings, it was difficult to find any info on those. But if you'd like to share if they've met recently, now would be the time. All right. Well, in that case, the last box to check is the IoT Special Interest Group. It was unclear. It doesn't look like they've met. But if anyone would like to correct me here. And that brings us to the end of working group updates. Is there any working groups that anyone has attended that we just don't have here that they'd like to share a quick update on anything interesting happening in the community? And with that, I think we will hand it over to Andrew. Yes. Thank you. Is there a way I can share my screen? Have I got permission to do that? You should. Go for it. Andrew, good to go. We can see your screen front. Great. Great stuff. I know it would turn this jumpstarting cloud agent identity, but it's very much around how we've actually spent some time with Microsoft Azure and how we can seamlessly make that experience of getting AcroPy up and running in Azure a lot better, actually. Before I go into really too much detail around that, it's a quick bit of information around who we are. Some of you may know, some you probably won't. We're a sovereign steward. We have been for about two years now. I'm actually personally the chair of the steward council at Sovereign. As IDC Global, we're an endorser, an issuer of digital identities. We kind of focus a little bit on individuals, but seems to have, as of late, been dealing a lot more with kind of like identity for businesses and trying to get businesses more engaged with the whole SSI kind of ecosystem and things around that. Because of that, some of the work we've done over the last 12, 24 months has been very much around funding things like open source initiatives. We've done a lot of work with Animo, who I think are quite a well-known organization. And one of the things we've been doing is building some kind of like open source tooling ourselves. And we built something around the Bluetooth connection list, Seren Approves, which allows basically two mobile phones to share a zero-knowledge proof or actually a full credential, if you wish, kind of like over Bluetooth. It's kind of a very cool way of doing that with mobile devices. But a lot of the work that we were doing was kind of like showing us that actually there's a ton of great things out there around SSI, but there's some problems when it comes to getting up and running quite quickly. So we found that even when we were talking to some of our engineers trying to get them to start work with us as part of their onboarding process, that things that I understand in the SSI principles was a little bit tricky at first, but then trying to get things up and running, especially with an acupy agent, that became quite, not tedious, but it definitely wasn't a quick, easy process. This kind of got reiterated back to us when we were talking to a number of businesses saying that, why don't you deploy this? We'll get a Docker instance. And they started to have to understand too much of the infrastructure below that. So while there's many workshops and samples around how to kind of work with Acupy and kind of embrace SSI, getting the agent up and running needed a bit too much domain knowledge, information to really understand the workings of Acupy. We've all been engineers or we know engineers. They like to get things up and running pretty quickly, right? A proof of concept. They want to do that as quick and seamlessly as possible. So how could we jumpstart that? And the reason why we ended up doing this work with Microsoft Azure was more to do with actually, when we started looking at certain business segments, and my background was originally or is still very much in financial services. When you get to sort of regulated businesses, they don't want to really look at on-prem anymore, but they're looking at certain cloud providers and certain infrastructures that they can leverage or platforms within those cloud providers. So we've got very much some very firm feedback, shall I say, saying, look, if this works in AWS and I can just deploy it or in Azure, great. Now Azure seems to be more of a platform of choice for financial services, and it does give you more of that platform as a service kind of experience. So we've kind of wandered our way into how do we get occupied deployments up and running as a managed application as easy as possible for anyone in the community to use, but on that Azure infrastructure. And the way we've done that is we've built something called an Azure Managed App. You may know it as an Azure Container Application if you're familiar with Microsoft Azure.   You don't need to see any of the infrastructure or any of the workings underneath Acupyre. It's downloadable from the Azure marketplace. The configuration that you require of that is actually the same stuff as you would see in Docker, but it's just presented in a very Azure friendly or Azure singlass way. The underlying infrastructure at that point is then administered by Microsoft, so they'll maintain the scalability of it. Make sure you've got that elastic scale up and down, the resilience, the performance aspects of it. And if you have any problems with it, as we as IDCrypt global can go in as an administrator and have a look at if there's something underlying wrong with your agent. But apart from that, it's your agent. It runs in Azure. It's in your subscription. It's in your tenant. You maintain it, you control it. It's just there, right? If I just stop sharing this screen and then share a different screen, I'll walk you through. Actually, I'll do a deployment, right? So we'll actually go through what it looks like in Microsoft Azure itself. Bear with me for a moment. Yeah, so I think everyone can see the screen now. Yeah. Yes, looks great. Great stuff. So I'm just in my Azure subscription, my tenant, and there's the usual things that you can see here. But if I just draw you straight away to the marketplace. So if I go into the marketplace itself, you then get presented with, well, you can browse all of these things. But these are basically thousands and thousands of services or components and tools that you can add into your Azure subscription and download into your tenant. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to quickly search at the top here for what we call as the IDC agent. Let's close that. And then you get this IDC agent available here. So you can see it's an Accombi compatible cloud agent. It's actually just pure Accombi at this particular point. We do have other agents that we've also badge under IDC agent. So you have to be a bit aware of which one's what. But yeah, you're looking for the Accombi compatible agent. Click on that. I get the kind of like standard as you're feeling, right? If I was downloading SQL database or downloading any other component from Microsoft, you get the same experience. So I can have a quick overview and read through what am I actually looking at? What am I deploying? There's some plans and pricing as in how much is it going to cost me to run on the infrastructure? What is Microsoft going to charge me for the privilege of leveraging this software and technology? And there's some usage and information support. So you can go to our website. You can call us for support. And there's some other categorizations around the service itself. As I said, you're looking for a particular addition. It's the community addition, which is your pure Accombi, the latest version. And I'm going to press create. And when I come into the creation here, this is kind of like, well, this is a deployment template essentially. So what we're going to do at this point is just go through the basic setup. So the subscription I've got, that's my Azure subscription find the resource group. Now I can actually create a new one or I could select one from an existing resource group. So I'm just going to grab Andrew's test to be honest with you. And then if you're familiar with Azure, if you've got your component available in a number of regions, you can select which regions you can deploy into. Now we've decided that actually you can deploy this anywhere in the world. So I'm in the UK. If I want to select UK South, that will be the Azure region that I select. For on the East Coast of the state to go East US. But you can see all of these different regions that Microsoft supports. And therefore our IDC agent or the Accombi agent itself can be deployed anywhere you want around the globe. And we'll leave that as East US. And application name, whatever you want to call it, right? I'm just going to call it my IDC agent. So you can get a little green tick. So I know that actually this particular part of configurations are great. And then I carry on when I get into the agent and the vault. So we call it a vault. And it's just funny enough. It's just a bit of marks, you know, terminology that we've kind of landed on when we spoke to some regulated businesses, they didn't like the term wallet. I don't know why, but they kind of feel it's not appropriate for something that's sitting in the cloud. So we just rebadged it as your vault as opposed to your wallet. I can select the sovereign network we've set this one up for. So testnet or mainnet and then leave on testnet. And then you'll notice I've got these little information tool tips that give me some information if I'm very new to Accombi and understanding what I need to put in these configuration. So a little IDC, sorry, a little agent, agent label. So I'm just going to call it my IDC agents. And then you've got the seed. Again, this is two of your tool tips say exactly has to be 32 characters long. I'm just going to go grab one or create one over on another screen. And then my API key, again, little tool tips going to tell me exactly what that's for. As you can see, this is all to try and make everything as easy as possible. You know what I mean? It's a user interface. There's no command line prompts. We're just trying to keep everything as simple and as quick as possible. Your vault name, what do you want to give it as a name between three and 30 characters long, whatever you want. I'm just going to call it the IDC agent vault. And then a vault key. I don't know. I'll just grab one here. Obviously, I've managed my passwords and stuff a little bit better than I'm doing right now. And then I'm going to provide a password for my admin. And I'm going to confirm that. OK. So the little green ticks mean I've basically passed the initial validation that these were valid, valid inputs or parameters for configuration. Everything looks great to me. So I can press next. And then you'll see some information around kind of like your subscription who owns it. So Lauren Woolton actually is the CEO of IDCrip Global. So everything's in her name at the moment. My contact email address there, my number. So the pricing information here is how much is yours going to cost you to run that as a managed service. So that's for your AKS cluster or your Flex TV at the back end. We're not using Postgres, but use Flex and all the infrastructure behind that plus the IDCrip managed service capabilities there. So we've already seen a little bit of a disclaimer about co-admin access permission. So this is kind of like break glass. So we don't access the infrastructure underneath. So we can't get into the wallet itself and start looking around as IDCrip Global. We can't do that. But we can request kind of like permission from the subscription and the tenant owner if there is actually a requirement for us to do that, in which case it's kind of like a break glass process that would then allow us to access it and have a look. The reality is we wouldn't do that, bro. Some final bit of information, just confirmation at the bottom here. So here's the basic information that I put in on that first screen. And then here's my agent of bought information that I put in. I'm all happy with that. So I can just press create. And then your notes in the top right of the screen starts to initialize my deployment.  So that's actually deploying into my Andrew test resource group. Now it'll take a little while to deploy it, but once it does, this screen gets replaced with kind of like an IDCrip logo. There's some brief information around what does the managed service mean to you, as in you don't need the main specific or specific information around how this this ACAPI agent works at all. You can rely on that being run by Microsoft and IDCrip in the background. The last little things to bring your attention to and I jumped back to the PowerPoint actually whilst this is deploying. Yep. So you can see that it's just part of that managed application. There's the agent resource. And that'll take probably between 10 and 12 minutes to actually go through deploy, finalize everything and deliver what we call the outputs. So I'm just going to jump back to presentation. Where is it? It's good. So flip screens again. Benefit of multiple screens. So actually skip the slide really. A quick recap really. All we've done is we've found the IDCrip agent in Microsoft Azure, the marketplace. We've selected that. Gone with the community addition. As I said, it takes between 11 and 15 minutes to actually deploy and that's with all your parameters and everything's up and running. You don't need to worry about the underlying infrastructure. So you can just focus on building, building your software, your components, learn about SSI, run some of the workshops or things you's finding in GitHub and basically get up and running very, very quickly. The thing to bring your attention to, obviously we went through the configuration on the left, but on the right here, is once it's deployed, you'll see as a resource group, you've got your overview, your activity log. You can set additional control parameters around who can access that. So that's your access control management, authorization. There's a ton of the usual seamlessly integrated Azure stuff, but the key one to bring your attention to is your parameters and outputs. So the reason I say that is that once your agent is deployed, you need to know where the port is for your DITCOM communications and you need to know how you can access the admin API. And that's kind of randomized based on where it's deployed. So once it's deployed, it will give you the full URI for the admin API and how to access that as part of those outputs. So you can quickly go to parameters and outputs, see all the parameters you originally put in, and then you can see all of the outputs there that allow you to basically get up and running and utilize it. The final thing to say is obviously I've gone through that very quickly as kind of like get up and running. However, if you're actually looking to do this as more production based, you're just likely to lock it down considerably more with the access control functionality. But that's all seamlessly integrated into Azure. So if you want to create a VNet around how you access the admin API and only certain Azure service functions, for example, can access it, you can tie that in very quickly in the same way you would do with any other piece of Azure software. I don't really want to bore you guys and carry on and go back to the screen where you're just waiting for something to deploy it. So all I would say is if there's anyone who wants any information on this, there's an email address here at the bottom where you can reach out to me directly. We do have other additions of AcuPy, we call them IDcript agents, but it's basically AcuPy with a number of additional proprietary plugins in there. Some of those we're open sourcing in the next couple of months and some of them are a bit more proprietary to solutions that we provide to some customers. So if you discover those in the marketplace, it's because those customers download it and use it specifically for their use case. I'll stop sharing and say any questions or I don't think somebody didn't understand or want to go over again more than happy to discuss it further. Tim here, I'm curious as to what those additional plugins are in functionality above the community addition. I looked at your website, it wasn't clear to me. I just wanted to take a brief overview of which ones you're applying to open source. There's a couple in there. So for example, we have somewhere we're starting to build a plugin that will take files that you've got and encrypt it based on your digital identity, whichever did you wish to allocate to it and that then hooks into something like a Microsoft One Drive or Google Drive and therefore you can store those files encrypted at rest using your digital identity that's been stored in your wallet or in your vault. That's one we're looking to probably open source once it's gone through the final beta testing. We have some other stuff that's not on the website actually that's proprietary to customers who wanted certain things added in. Some of it is just basic stuff like, okay, we want to know how many times we've hit this particular API within the AcuPy agent. How many times have we decided to run through and we've built some plugins to just pull that out and extrapolate that into like a data lake and for business intelligence. So we probably wouldn't open source that stuff. It's quite proprietary we're charging for that and it's only one or two clients are actually using it but the stuff that we think has got more value across the community we will definitely be open sourcing. The final one I should say is we're starting to do something called AMP which is Authentic Media Protection so we've got some work we've done around that. We're using DITCOM as part of the way that you can verify media files and we are open sourcing the entire verification library that we've built for that and that will be available once we've out of our Early Access program so as soon as we've finished that with a number of content creators and companies we will open source that verification plugin. Thank you. I'm just sorry, one quick follow up. Do you have endorsement in your Azure deployment? Yes, we are not in the community edition or well whatever is in the community edition but we do support endorsement but we go through a bit of a process and try to understand who we're endorsing so we do some quite enhanced due diligence on them so that if we do endorse them and give them endorse a right so to speak that we know exactly who is right into the ledger that we have endorsed so we're not just going we'll endorse your where you go there is quite a process that we go through. Thank you. Go on Brett, sorry. So out of curiosity are you employing vector technology at all in this? Vector technology you know like mathematical physics context you know magnitude, direction that kind of technology or no? No, no, no so this is purely occupied that you've seen that we're deploying there so we haven't really tinkered with it at all it's kind of been made the integration has been made into the Azure marketplace and into your Azure tenant and the way that we do that and then we provide the managed services underneath to make sure that it stays running and scalable within Azure. So that's all we've really gone through. Okay, thank you. Do you have insights into why the word wallet wasn't very popular? Yes, so we spoke to actually we spoke to a credit union, a couple of credit unions and I think there's about five of them came back and said that wallet to us sounds insecure it just doesn't sound like it's something that should be sitting in the cloud it sounds like something in my pocket or on the phone I don't secure, I don't really visualize wallet as a meaning security so they kind of got it for interoperability and some of the things we discussed they just didn't like it so we changed ours to vault and funny enough the people who objected at risk let it go through. So I find it quite almost childish but if it's a bit of marketing and a bit of spin then fine so we've rebranded everything to vault instead of wallet. Yeah, that's really interesting. I think when we start talking to regulated businesses it's quite funny because the people who make buying decisions aren't very technical and therefore they base their decisions a lot on perception and some of their perception I'm trying to be polite here some of the perception is maybe not from recent technology it's from slightly older technology so when they hear things like vault they think of a safe with a big lock on it so to speak and it's really secure and protective and great that's what we like wallet I think is saying you can just open and pull your credit card debit card out so it's just that kind of association of words so we've played and we've found the vault lands very well but wallet doesn't. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean it makes sense. Most of us have probably lost a wallet at one point or another and can't really get it back so yeah that's interesting. I was curious as well about the co-admin access permissions could you just explain again what that means and you said that you also can access the admin API as a user? So no, so as ID Crypt we cannot access that right so all we see is the underlying infrastructure as in what Microsoft presents back to us so by default when it's deployed into someone's environment we can't see anything we just know that there's an agent that's been deployed at say you know John Smith's company that's all we see and we see a health status that's it so we can't really do anything with it apart from monitoring that health status. The co-admin does allow us though to ask for permission so if we go back to John Smith's business and say we believe there's something wrong with your agent do you want us to look at it they can actually say yes they give us permission and Microsoft essentially then allow us at that point to look at the underlying infrastructure so we could have a look at if you're running Postgres or Flex in our case look at that particular database or you can look at the logs we can access those things but without that break class permission we don't have any access at all. Likewise you as the company that own it you don't have any access you can see you can configure it in terms of security you can figure it in terms of your outputs and things like that but you don't know what actually makes the underlying infrastructure so if you come and see the agent deployed it just presents itself as IDC agent that's it you don't see the resource groups are underneath it so you don't see Postgres you don't see AKS clusters you don't see the network you don't see anything you just see the IDC okay we've actually found that that adds another layer of security funny so if you think about bad actors with inside an organization if they have permissions to get into into the vault or the wallet and start poking around they could actually start seeing dids they can start seeing a lot more information they can access proofs that have been shared in the past everything else right but because it's presented itself as like this black box no one has that access so you as a company that's using it you don't have to worry about bad actors because they can't get access to it likewise we can't access it because we haven't got the break glass Microsoft doesn't access it themselves because they don't know what it is they just see it as a bunch of AKS clusters and other things so that means that there's an additional layer of security that is actually quite helpful when you start looking at regulated businesses yeah interesting gone Brett so with regards to data analytics what would be the functionality with the data analytics in terms of what we can collect yeah so if we want to collect analytics let's say from a plugin that we've added to an agent it has to kind of like we call it call home so it has to send the analytics either out into their own tenant into like a data lake or it sends the analytics out back to a permissioned kind of like tunnel so we can't see too much information inside well we can't see anything inside the agent so if you create analytics and you store it within ACAPI itself no one can access it so you need a way of pushing that information out so in the plugins that we've looked at or we've put together we've pushed that out into data lake or into data bricks in Azure or we've actually sent it back to ID crypt itself for a standard virtual API that's been permissioned and allowed to connect to that endpoint only very nice how does the process you walked us through differ for individuals versus businesses it doesn't at all so that process is exactly saying sorry when you say individuals trying to run ACAPI yeah like you said at the beginning that you serve both individuals and businesses so I guess individuals who are your your customers your users yeah so individuals if they're engineers and they want to get an agent up and running it's exactly the same process the billing looks slightly different to them because Microsoft builds individuals different to corporates so that's quite interesting likewise if you're a corporate on Azure and you have something called an EA agreement you kind of pay for stuff up front and then you have three minimum spend with Microsoft which your agent then becomes this becomes free it disappears in terms of a cost because you've already pre-committed costs across the wider Azure infrastructure that you utilize we also service individuals as in we're just finishing off a mobile application like a wallet again it's called a vault for us and that's basically your SSI based wallet we've signed to try and make it compatible with the EU stuff that's coming out obviously us being from the UK we're looking at that though I'm not a great fan of what the EU is doing so we've started to put that application together ourselves and our wallet we're kind of based it around a high level of confidence in an individual's identity so we don't allow people to just self-attest to start you have to have government based documents before we'll issue you an identity into that wallet it's a standard SSI wallet you can use it in any way you want anybody else's credentials that can come in and out the app is fine but the identity that we issue is kind of like that high confidence level and then we tie that into our experience with financial services so we build a digital identity risk profile off the back of that that can be shared as credentials or as a service base if you as a user wish to share that the ultimate benefit there is that we believe if you do that you can then go to bank accounts and open them correctly because the risk profile is actually more important than the UK YC believe it or not Interesting, thank you and that app should be out in the next couple of or actually going to the States right so it won't be out in the States for a while it's just released here next Monday, right? Nice, that's exciting Yeah and part of that is also so when I said businesses and individuals I mentioned the Bluetooth open source tooling that we did the SDK we do have a business app that's called just verify that allows your corner stores for example to face to face just verify your credentials or your age, so you can do age verification you could ask for your password verification if you want to for the purposes of voting and that goes over Bluetooth between the two devices we're just starting to showcase that next week here in the UK hopefully we'll get some traction but it's quite it's quite slow trying to get people to understand some of these concepts Are the verifiers are the corner stores set up to be able to verify that information? So no, but they can download the verify app and it's free and they can have the phone and then we're going to try and get them educated and understanding how to do this if you're not charging for that what we've made sure is services that are related to like an audit behind that so if you had an investigation did you sell cigarettes to someone under the age of 18 at least you could prove for an audit trial that actually they did the right checks and everything else so we would sell them the service not the capability if that makes sense right, right yeah that's awesome and that's what we hope to do in the next couple of weeks if you've got individuals and businesses in time and together it's all good because you have that chicken and egg whereas businesses say we'll use it if you've got millions of users who've got your app and likewise if you give it to users they go well I can't use it anyway I'll say it's pointless you deal with that that kind of nuance anything else I can go over very quickly or anybody want to recap just out of curiosity did the deployment complete out of curiosity it is still running at the moment but because you guys I shouldn't think you'd want to see it I did just stop it oh all good but yeah it just deployed I can show you what one looks like actually can I show you what one looks like yeah so I've stopped it so it's gonna save value to provision but let me just share this screen so I can show you how it presents itself yeah so this is one I've just stopped actually I just terminated a few seconds ago but if I go in so obviously this is palatable vision because I've stopped it but that's how it presents itself so that's all you get really you get this little logo what was application to blur some information at the top here and then your parameters and outputs if you clicked on that I mean the outputs have stopped because I've terminated the deployment but you can see here's my original parameters that I put in and then the outputs as I said that would have your admin URI and other information but that's where you the rest of it is all just standard Azure that's integrated to it so if you want to look at your internet access you want to add some roles and role assignments who can deny you know all those sorts of things you can do that through the standard Azure interface but yeah your parameters and outputs is the key point they're good yeah thanks for showing us that so guys thanks for having me if that makes sense I know I've kind of run through it very quickly if anyone's got any questions in the future or anything I'm happy to take those whenever and we're having to try and publicize a little bit more about some of the open source stuff that we're pushing back out into the community we haven't done a great job I don't think doing that because the bluetooth component has been there for probably six months now I don't think anyone's aware of it nice yeah that would be great thank you so much for joining us this was an awesome demo and presentation and Andrew if possible you could get Shara myself some links about idcrypt and the solution so I can make sure it's included in the youtube video this way folks want to find out more they can they can get in touch I'll ping you that later sounds great yeah and if you'd like to send me the slides from your presentation too I can add them to the meeting page for those who are watching the recording and want to follow along as well yeah I will do great thank you so much lovely thanks for having me I'm going to drop off just because here in the UK it's quarter to five and you can drop the hint I've got four kids so I can hear them in the background noise and some of that noise is dad wears mine then so I'm going to go and play daddy game really great to meet everyone and I'll share that information as soon as I can great thank you so much Andrew lovely thank you alright well that does bring us to the end of our meeting today thank you everyone for coming and I believe it was streamed live to youtube so if you missed anything or want to rewatch you can find the recording there sounds great thank you so much everyone thank you everyone later thank you


Thank you for honoring us with your presence, sir, in the conditions for this redestination Thank the great Marines and sailors of the band in this regiment for their high standard execution of this ceremony. It is so inspiring to see the flags of the United States and Japan flying with the colors of this great red. Clearly a change in designation, but a strategic evolution, a direct response to the dynamic defense landscape that we face in the 21st century. A quick precedent for adaptation and change, a testament to our course, flexibility and foresight. Third MLR has also provided valuable lessons learned from their transformation process, which we have adapted and applied to the plan for 12th Marine Litual Regiment. 2023, the United States, Japan Security Consultative Committee, or 2 plus 2, detailed the future of 12th Marine Litual Regiment, affirming our strategic direction and the critical role we will play in regional stability. This 2 plus 2 was historic for a number of reasons, but perhaps the most consequential outcome was the reaffirmation of Japan and the United States commitment to shared regional security. Our alliance is strong and our picture of the threat landscape is clear, focused and shared. These steps by our civilian leadership provided strategic direction for now and into the future. So on this day, November 15, 2023, we begin a new era with the redesignation of the 12th Marine Regiment to the 12th Marine Litual Regiment. As stated in the 2 plus 2, this change is threatened and informed, ensuring that we remain at the forefront of operational readiness and effectiveness. So for that, we say we choose one thing. To reach my best resolve, protect our nation, allies from Japan. Thank you again for honoring us with your presence. Your service to your great nation is distinguished. And your attendance today is a testament to the importance of the occasion. We look forward to watching 12th Marine Litual Regiment continue to strengthen its capabilities and its integration with the Japanese self-defense forces. Thank you, and separate but else.


G'day all. We're getting some data in from people like the CSIRO, from the Bureau of Meteorology, that give us the seasonal outlook. And what that's suggesting to us is that the summer season could start earlier this year, as early as October. So that could mean for us campaign fires, it could mean longer. And it means we need to start to get our head into that space of seasonal preparedness. On the back of that, CFA, we have decided to bring our preparedness stuff early by about four weeks, and DELP and Parks Vic are doing exactly the same thing. So we're all getting ready for an earlier fire season, if you like. So now is the time and we'll do it more formally with you. So this is just a heads up that, you know, we're going to be asking that all crews do the burn over drills. We're going to be asking that there is some hazard tree stuff out this year that we want all crews to do to make sure there's safety on the fire ground. But we will be doing some operational preparedness. We'll be checking IMTs. We'll be checking the EMO user in place. We'll be checking everybody from headquarters, the chief officer's role to our partner agencies, municipalities, all ready for the coming fire season. So this is the heads up. Early advice is that it's not that far off, potentially eight weeks away a fire season. And we just want to make sure that all our people are ready for it. We want you to be safe. We want our community to be safe. And that's our priority moving into this summer. So thanks for the opportunity to talk to you. Thank you.


So we have figured out that we can open this hearing and and proceed with the hearing. We will not be able to deliberate as a board and make a decision tonight because we do not have a full quorum but we can revisit that. So we are going to go ahead and conduct the hearing and then the policy that we're working under anyway gives us 45 days to come up with a decision and get it back to the complainants. So I am calling this meeting to order at 6.39. The purpose of this this hearing is to hear the complaint from the NAACP of Rutland and the Gadokina regarding the Randolph Union Middle and High School mascot image and name. This complaint is being brought in accordance with the Orange Southwest School District non-instructional operations policy F2 school mascot and branding. This is a policy required by the state of Vermont. The policy can be found on the OSE website under policies and procedures. The policy prop or the process for this hearing will be as follows. The spokespersons for the NAACP of Rutland and Gadokina will be asked to explain their complaint to the board. The board will then have the opportunity to ask questions regarding the complaint. Once the board has received the information that it needs, there will be an opportunity for the board to hear public comment. The process for public comment will be the same as it is when the board has its regular meetings. I will review that process before we begin public comment. At 7.30 the board will either make a motion to extend the time for public comment or to enter executive session to deliberate. The board will provide a written response to the complainants within 45 days of this hearing as required by policy. Are there any questions regarding the process for this hearing? Board members? General public? Because at least we can get that part done and then we can come back to it so that we can move forward. The board members can hear but they can't vote. So you are correct. It sounds like we won't be going into executive session. We'll have to hold off on the executive session once everyone is sworn in and we have that opportunity so we'll have to do that at another time. Not during the executive session. The executive session is just so there will be public comment after we hear. So we've arranged this hearing quite a while in advance so that we can hear from the complainants. So this is their opportunity to give us a presentation of their complaint. And public comment will be after that. Going to get together with more board, you would make a decision and get back to the NAACP within 45 days. Correct. At that point, before you get back to them, will the public be able to have input on this again? No, I would say not. So the board members that aren't here can will be using ORCA and we will be informing them as well with what we heard. We have a quorum here. It's just the two are not sworn in. So they will be here for all the public comment and will be here for the presentations. Again, just to try to help a little bit. So again, it's an unusual circumstance and I think people are trying to move forward. Given that unusual circumstance within the bounds of what we're able to do. Please recognize that two of the board members who are not currently sworn in because the vote was just yesterday are here with us tonight. Are here for the discussion. They can actually ask questions or make comment from the floor like anyone else. So they will be able to partake in everything that happens here tonight. They just couldn't vote or comment as a board member yet. But they will have the full exposure that all the other board members will have from tonight's meeting. Five. And we have four. We have six. Myself, Chelsea Sprague, who is online, Rachel Gatiss and Koucha Evans. And we have our two board members who've been voted in. Hannah Reyes and Sam Hooper. But they haven't been sworn in yet. I'll explain sort of how that works. So basically we're going to hear the complaint and then we're going to hear from the public. And then at a later date when everyone is sworn in, we'll have an executive session and come up with a response. This is to respond to a complaint. No, no, this is to respond to this particular complaint. We have to follow the policy and the policy says that the board needs to hear the complaint and then respond within 45 days. And who swears them in? Is it a justice of the peace? The town clerk, as far as we know. Yeah, as far as we know. Yes. Okay. So we are going to move forward. So where was I in all of this? Had I gone through? I went through everything. Okay. So, Grace, right, we were checking in on questions. So I would like to ask the spokesperson for the NAACP of Rutland to present their complaint to the board. Are they, they were going to show up online? Are they here? Thank you. Is there someone in the audience who is here to speak on behalf of the NAACP of Rutland? Is there anybody here? Okay. Is the spokesperson from Gattakina here? Or online? If you're online, please put your hand up in the chat box. Okay. Is there someone in the audience that's come in person? So there's no one here. So there is no one here to present the complaint to the OSD board regarding the mascot name and image. Seeing that the complainants are not here to present, I would like to ask the board for a motion to adjourn this hearing. The purpose of this meeting was to hear the complaint. Can we read the written complaint? Yeah. Okay. Do you need to open it? Yeah. So the policy, however, is that they need to be, they need to hear before the hearing is heard. So it, yes? I have a question. If, when you record on something, if the complaint does not show up, the whole thing should be dismissed, there should be a non-issue. Right. Well, that's how I'm concerned. Seeing that you have a number of people who obviously feel very strongly, and unfortunately considering who the complaint was filed by, you may not go quietly into the night. And I think considering everyone took time out of their schedule to the school board, should it please allow everybody who came here to speak on the subject to have your say? What's the point? Well, it's not quite that. Because if they contact these people without anybody knowing it, at least everyone here gets to say what they came some time out of their day to say, and the board moving forward will understand what the majority of people feel and what's said about the fact. So if it does come up again, we have a starting, instead of starting all over, we've already established that the majority feels this way, and it's a good public field, and we'll alone argue. And everybody came here, and they obviously feel passionately about it. They should speak to the board, so the board understands where people are coming from. So moving forward on issues like this, they're the commonality. I'm looking at the policy. To appear before. Yeah. I understand you think you can't. Yeah. So I'm going to interrupt. I'm reading right from the policy that we need to follow, and it says in terms of complaints, an individual may request an opportunity to appear before the board for the purposes of presenting the complaint, relevant facts, and further explanations. The board shall hear the complaint in a fair and just manner. We've set ourselves up here to do that. The folks who have brought the complaint have not arrived. We have not heard from them. I have a question. Do you have a written complaint? Yes. They sent a letter, and it was sent out to you. We should be able to respond. Didn't we hear it? But that's not what the policy says. That isn't the procedure for hearing the complaint. They send a letter, and then we provide a hearing for them to show up. And they did not show up. So yes, they've known for several weeks. That's their choice. The board actually requested accommodations to be here tonight, one of which was the meeting was going to be in person. They requested to be able to do this through remote session, which we allowed that accommodation for. So yes, they were well informed, and we were making changes to try to be accommodating to them as a district. I think we've met all their requirements. Yes. According to our, we are following policy, which is what we have to do as the governing body. You can at least read it. And let us know what the complaint is. The complaint, well, the complaint is irrelevant now, because they didn't show up. Have you tried contacting them? I have a question. We could send them. We can email them back. Someone had a question. A question back here. So I came all the way from North Carolina, but they didn't come down the street. But so are you guys going to do this all over again? Or is it done? I think that's why everyone's confused. It's a confusing situation. It's a confusing situation for us as well. So we are trying to follow the policy. The policy is that the complainants come before the board and explain their complaint. They're not in the audience. They're not online. So therefore you should give the people that are here to express their feelings. Well, they shouldn't, you dummies. Well, hold on. So what I'd like to do is adjourn this hearing. We aren't having a hearing anymore. The complainants are not here. So what we could do is we could, we will adjourn the hearing because the hearing is not taking place. The complainants are not here. And we can have an open forum where people can express their feelings. Sure, we could read the complaint. No, it would not be a meeting because the purpose of our meeting as a board tonight was to do a hearing. So they're not here. So we are adjourning that purpose of the meeting together. It sounds like folks would like to share, express, they've all arrived to express their opinions about the mascot and the name. We can transition over to an open forum where folks can just talk. It won't be a board meeting. It will just be a community meeting where people can share their views about the mascot and the name. Does that seem... Yes. Yes, yes. We have a policy that has to be followed. Are you prepared to dismiss the complaint right now? Well, I need to have the board actually vote to end this hearing. We can adjourn without... We cannot vote to dismiss the complaint without a forum. So we have to wait until we have a forum to dismiss the complaint. Right. Are you prepared to do that because they didn't show up? Yes. Yes. Good. I can read it. Okay. Can I have a motion to adjourn the hearing? I moved to adjourn the hearing. We have a second. Okay. All those in favor? We don't have to vote. We don't have to vote. Okay. So we have adjourned the hearing and we are no longer worrying about having a quorum or this is not an official board meeting, but it sounds like there are a lot of folks here who would like to come up to the mic perhaps and express their views on or their feelings about the mascot. But before we do that, perhaps Mr. Millington can let folks know sort of where we are in the mascot situation. About reading the complaint. Oh, and he could read the complaint. I'm happy to... Here. It'll take probably three or four minutes to read through. What I was not going to read as part of it, if that is all right, is they filed a collective complaint against eight schools around the state. I will read the part that they spoke of in terms of Randolph High School, if that makes sense. Folks want to hear the other ones. I'm happy to do that as well, if that's the time that it takes. Right. So to the Vermont Agency of Education, Secretary Daniel M. French, the undersigned are writing on behalf of ourselves as people who are and who represent organizations in support of indigenous natives of Vermont, as well as national civil rights organization. Mascots are an issue that is often avoided by schools because of controversy and reaped in a fallacy of historic tradition. School boards listen to stories of, it's our legacy, it's always been, it's our history, with little to no understanding that this legacy is painful and offensive to too many. It's not a positive memory for anyone, everyone. According to the Oxford Dictionary, mascot means a person or thing supposed to bring good luck or used to symbolize a particular event or organization. According to Miriam Webster, it means a person, animal or object adopted by a group as a symbolic figure, especially to bring them good luck. With this in mind, it is denigrating to be used as a symbol of good luck, especially for peoples who have been long subjected to violence because of their racial and ethnic identity. We are at a point in time where we must remove this symbolism in order to remove the legacy of white supremacy which harms all students and people. There is another argument that using the names and symbols that are connected to natives is actually honoring them, but in fact it is actually objectifying them. An example would be when an opposing team is getting ready to compete against one of the schools with these mascots, they often burn their mascot and effigy during bonfire pet rallies. The National Congress of American Indians and over 1,500 national native organizations and advocates have called for a ban on all native imagery, names and other appropriations of native culture and sports. The joint letter includes over 100 native-led organizations as well as tribal leaders and members of over 150. Federally recognized tribes reflecting their consensus that native mascots are harmful. Deb Harland approved in March 2021 as the first Indigenous Secretary of the Interior has long advocated for teams to change Native American mascots. Below is a comprehensive list of mascots that we have identified to be using mascots' names and or imagery which will be recognized as upholding harmful legacies that continue to harm our children. We are submitting this letter to formally file a complaint against the following schools as part of Act 152, an act relating to non-discriminatory school branding. I'll read the names of the schools and then I'll read their specific complaint relative to Randolph Union High School. So, Missisgoy High School in Swanton is one, Vermont Commons in South Burlington, Brattleboro Union High School in Brattleboro, Leland and Gray Union Middle and High School in Townsend, Randolph Union High School in Randolph, and U32 in Stowe, as well as Green Mountain in Chester. In terms of Randolph Union High School, they write, the begalloping ghosts of Randolph recently tried to repaint the clear image of a KKK rider and make it into something more ghostly. Legacy is strong here, history is strong here, this change will not change history. The painful reminder of the KKK will forever be with us, a story of a long-standing African-American Vermont legislator recently told me he was going to a basketball game to play the kids from Randolph upon entering the gym and seeing the galloping KKK ghost. He was frightened, he froze, he could not play, he could not concentrate and to this day he remembers those terrible feelings. Once again, there is a deep legacy attached to this image newly painted or not. The image and name must go. Let's see. They conclude by saying, we live in a world where school shootings occur regularly, black and brown people are regularly recorded on the news as being killed by in places of worship and grocery stores. How can we continue to promote violence in our schools by having a mascot called the Bullets, the Rangers, the Minutemen, the Marauders, the Patriots? We live in a state where we are encouraging new arrivals daily. Schools are the deciding factor in where they settle often. If your child has come from a war-torn country, would you want them attending a school with a mascot called the Bullets? Violence promoted symbolically surely encourages violence to happen in real life and it has a delirious effect on all people. During the insurrection that occurred on January 6th, people destroyed, killed and maimed, people protecting their capital and many of them called themselves the Patriots. Furthermore, there are organizations that exist in Vermont who are confirmed hate groups by national law enforcement officials who label themselves as the Patriot Front. They have been known to litter our state and in particular our universities with hateful propaganda. At the southern border, there are groups of vigilantes who harm and sometimes cause violence specifically to people seeking asylum. They call themselves Minutemen. These so-called Patriots and Minutemen are the very people that took our land in life ways. Patriots and Minutemen in today's world signify fighting war and violence. We are urging you to consider each of the statements above as we are officially filing complaints with the full approval of our organizations. We are available to discuss any of these issues with you to go more in depth. We are certain Vermont can do better and lead the nation in becoming a safe and welcoming environment for all people, whether we are white, brown or black, and whether we are new immigrants or the original caretakers of this land, we all desire to have safe, happy, healthy communities and children free from imagery and names that perpetuate harm. Isn't this what you would want for your children and your grandchildren? Sincerely, Judy Dow and Mia Schultz. So we'll run this like we would our public comment even though, again, this is not an official, this is just an opportunity open forum for folks to express their views. So we'll have folks come up for three minutes. Can we just sit here? Well, just like us up here at the table, it's probably easier for everyone to hear you if you come up to the mic. From the microphone, yes. Are you able to comment if you are online? Will you be reading online comments? We're not reading comments, but if we can hear you and we can put this mic over near the owl and it will pick your voice up. Because you came across very loudly. You're going to need to put hands up if you are online so that we can see that you would like to comment. So if folks, I'm sorry, it's really hard to see people. That's why I keep putting my hand up on my... If you want to just come up one at a time to the microphone and it would be helpful if you would just say your name just so folks know who you are.  Would I be jumping the line? Yes, you would be jumping the line. We'll let folks who are online know because it is hard to see. Is it? Sweetwater? This is my kiss in it. I didn't turn on the house lights. It has not been possible. We need to do some massive renovations in this space. So are you ready? If you're ready, I'm ready. Cool. My name is Dylan Smith. I grew up here. I live in Charlotte, North Carolina now. I mean, I had a lot to say because I was really curious to hear what the complaint was and everything. Obviously, that's a little different, but I do want to at least say this, that for me, when I was here, our mascot was so unique. It was unique to us. It was unique for our school and our town and the kids and the people in our town. When I was here, we went through a lot. We had a lot of loss from our school. A lot of kids were lost while we were here. There was something about this mascot that just kind of brought it together for us. We always were able to rally together because we were different. I think that was part of the mascot. It was just so unique to everybody else's. When we were at events, it was we believe in ghosts. It's not... I understand why people feel the way they do. Times have changed and I get that. But even right here, the Justin Morgan horse is right there. I think us being galloping ghosts means a lot to a lot of people. I feel like a lot of people in this community have been here their whole lives. They've never left. This has been a part of their life and changing that. Even for me, I don't know if I'd be connected to coming back. I've never missed a basketball season. I don't think yet, Jeremy. I don't think I've missed a basketball season since I graduated in 2010. But if everything changed, then I'm not connected to here anymore. When I'm around and where I am, all over the country, people are like, where are you from? And proudly I say, Vermont. And then I say, Randolph. And they're like, wow, never met anyone from Vermont before. I'm like, I dance here.  And then they laugh. They laugh at my population by leaving. So they keep calling me to come back. And they laugh at one. But it's center pride. I love being from here because of this community. And nobody here has ever made me feel like I didn't belong if I shouldn't be here. And I got my jersey on right now. And I used to love playing on the court and on the field. And it would be it would be devastating. I think honestly for a lot of us if it was changed completely, if you want to give a little ghost on hiding the horse, like whatever, that's not what it's about. None of our stickers, none of our march, really has that on there.  But just the horse and the ghost part, that's what we care about. The gout part. It's cool. It's different. And that was all of my two cents. I wish I was speaking to the people that were curious actually about it. But I think that it's safe to say that if they're not willing to show up and put in the effort for you guys, I mean, that speaks all that. I really need to hear from them. So appreciate it. Thank you. Move to somebody online next. So Emma, and I think if I hold this... Yes, are you able to hear me? Hi. Thanks for calling on me. I was thinking about this earlier today. I'm an educator in the district, New to Vermont. I will say my high school mascot in New York was the generic Indians. And my high school has been, people have been working for years to try and change that mascot. And I am excited that this district has an opportunity to also think critically about history and about the future and about the kind of values around diversity and inclusion that the district stands for. I kind of felt earlier, summing it up as if you have to ask, if your mascot could represent the KKK, then maybe it's time to change the mascot so that that's not something people have to wonder or ask. And there is so much worthwhile and important flora and fauna in the area that would serve, I think, as a really powerful mascot as well that would not possibly be offensive or contain a history of violence towards marginalized and oppressed people. I think the district has an opportunity to kind of step up and take a stand about the history of oppression in the United States. So I just hope that it takes the opportunity to really think about that. Yeah, and that's what I have. So thanks for listening. Hi, one second. I just have something quick to say, and I want to say this is really directed specifically at the Randolph mascot and not others. So I think I agree with Dylan a lot. I recently graduated about five years ago and there is a lot of pride in the, like, we believe in ghosts. I also found it very kind of mystical and something that I felt like a bunch of people could get behind because it's not, like, very sport-centered in that type of way. And it just created a lot of community. And I think recently Randolph and the student body has been really working on bolstering their community and making this a place where everyone feels accepted. And I think a big part about that is the uniqueness of our mascot. And in the complaint, in the end, they said something really important. They said we deal with schools like a lot of mass shootings and a lot of mental health crises. And so my question is why aren't we focusing on that instead of focusing on this mascot that I don't feel like it's... Okay, do we have somebody online? Do we have anyone else out in the audience? I see someone coming down. You can't do that. Just barely. I'm on the stage. Hi, I'm Don Wood. This is real personal to me. My father was the original Galloping Ghost. In 1939-40, those 16, 70-year-old boys, Saddle, went over to Rutland. Unknown. They were the Randolph white shirts. They weren't even supposed to be there. They were playing Division A. We were B. They were A. And we beat them with fast breaks, determination in those pure white uniforms. That's where the name came from. Although Marusi asked Coach Gades if he could start calling us the Galloping Ghost, and he agreed. That night, when we went in there, there were white shirts unknown. When they came out of there, they were the Galloping Ghost and proud of it. Nothing is racist in their beginning. And we never had thought of it that way. My suggestion to hopefully calm things down, get rid of the ghost on top of the horse. Let's have a horse that's Galloping and proud. Because that's what we are. That's what we're supposed to be. And it seems to be falling off here in the last few years of a proud Galloping Ghost area. I don't know what's happening, but maybe you should start thinking more about being the Galloping Ghost again. Thank you. We have another person. Yes. Come on down. Hi. My name is Karen McGinty, and I've lived in this town for 20 years as another black person, but I have a different view. Maybe it's because I'm a little bit older. I have not one, two instances of history of the Klan. And I'll tell you what it's like to see a Klan from a horseback, because I saw one.  When I see the Galloping Ghost, I think of the Klan. No people here don't. And I don't expect anybody to stand in my shoes, but as a black person, it is devastating. I have cried about this. And I don't have children. I have supported every educational budget in this town. I come to school suppers. I try to do all that, because I believe in public education. But if I had children, I would never allow them to wear that uniform, because that's what it stands for to me. There's a history of my seeing them in the 80s. There's a history of them shooting up my grandfather's town because they were upset, because he was a successful black person down south. My friends have bullet holes in their walls and slept with double-barrel guns because of the Klan. And so when I see that, that's what I think of. And it's hard for me to erase it. It's hard for me to say, oh, it's the history, it's the legacy. I don't hear that. It's the history. But times have changed. And we have people who don't want to teach black history anymore, because it's upsetting to white kids. This is white history that's upsetting to black people. And it is. And I might be the only one standing in this room who agrees. No, I have someone here. I might be the only black person in the North's room who says that. But I have to say it, and I have to be here. I've never come to one of these meetings. But this upsets me so much. I can't even tell you. You need to get rid of this. There are a million animals out there. You could be the polar bears. You could be the flying squirrels. But this is a racist symbol. It is a galloping horse, a person on a galloping horse.  And there, you can superimpose them. That's all I'm going to say. That's how I feel. And I just... Please, please let people finish speaking. You will have your turn. I'm going to sit here and listen to everybody who disagrees. So please, don't shout at me. I feel this way. I'm not going to ever feel differently. So if you keep this mascot, that's your choice. But don't kid yourself and say, oh, it's just history. It's a legacy. It's funny. Ah, it's not. There's nothing funny about this mascot. Anybody online? We'll just try to go back and forth. Nobody online? Do we have some folks in the audience who would like to speak? Oh, there we go. Sorry. I'm black. I'm like a techie. I've lived here for nearly 30 years. Can you tell us your name? Tamara Morgan, East Randolph. My daughter went to school here all her life. The minute I drove into town, the minute I saw this mascot, I knew exactly what it was. I knew exactly what it was. It's a clan's person. It's the Ku Klux Klan. I'm sorry. You might feel differently. You might have grown up thinking of this symbol very differently. Obviously, you did. And you didn't ever have to fear the clan. I've never had to fear the clan. But I've educated enough to know that it's a horrible symbol. And I'm educated enough to know when I see it, I know what it is. It's racist. It's wrong. I've been embarrassed about it the whole time I've been here. We've gone over this and over this and it's time to put a stop to it. This is the wrong mascot for the school. If you want to have pride in your school, I agree with Mr. Wood.  The rider is the dangerous thing. The horse is not. A rider in a sheet is not a ghost. It's a man in a sheet looking for black people to glitch. Now, that makes you comfortable. That's fine. But it's the wrong mascot for your kids. Okay, we have someone online. Sierra Bond. Yeah, we're going to put the mic fire by the owl again. I'm really glad that we're having this discussion around this mascot because I think there's like, you know, a lot of people have different opinions on it. But I feel like even if the mascot wasn't intended to portray a Ku Klux Klan member, that doesn't mean that like the impact can't be this figure that is very polarizing to a lot of people, especially given a lot of the stuff that's happened in the community in the past few years. I feel like having that symbol sort of as the forefront of the school just sort of like continues to be sort of polarizing to people and giving out this sort of message of a not welcoming place in this community, which I know a lot of people right now are trying really hard to fix. And so I think like hearing what people are saying, I'm hearing people say some really awesome things about how they were feeling in this school. And I feel like that in order for a community to work together and you know, celebrate our sports teams and everything, it does not, we don't need to like fully rely on a symbol of a mascot to do that. And so I think that like if we, our current symbol is causing harm to people, there are plenty of other things that are like representing Vermont, representing Randolph, that we could definitely use that does not create an uncomfortable space for so many people. Thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. Millington, do you want to, I believe there has been some movement toward changing the mascot. Do you want to? Oh, there's somebody else? Okay, then we'll go ahead and maybe. Hi, John Hellfant, Brookfield, Roxbury. So down by the gym there's a, I don't know if it's called a letter posted, Mr. Wood talked about some of it. I'm going to read some of it. It says, with Randolph always wearing a white uniform and always broke down the floor fast, Galloping. It gave him the idea, Galloping Ghosts. He asked Coach Gavis for his consent. Coach came to the locker room and asked all of us, the students, the team, and we answered yes. So the Galloping Ghosts were born in 1940. None of that has to do with the clan. None of that has to do with racism. The history of the Galloping Ghosts, 83 years of history, is about a basketball team. So these comments about it being part of the clan just have no basis in history. I also pulled up some yearbooks. The original Ghost Rider is skeletonized. And I believe Mr. Millington brought that up in 2020 that it was a skeletonized rider. The clansmen that exist today are human beings who are racist. This is a skeletonized rider, not a human being. And I brought several photos of yearbooks, different colors from different years. None of them look like the clansmen. None of them. I also went to the Southern Poverty Law Center and got a photo of clansmen. And if you were to look at the photos, you can see they're not even remotely close. So I would suggest that the rider remain on the horse in a skeletonized fashion, as it was originally made in the 1940s. That does not look like a clansman. And it can just have a cape. It has nothing to do with the clan, ma'am. And, well, here's a picture. The original Gallif and Ghost. And this is a clansman from the Southern Poverty Law Center. They don't look anything alike. They do. The comments are directed up here to the... So that would be my recommendation and that it be tainted back on the wall. And the school spirit that many of the kids, our former students talked about here, could really begin again. They could coalesce around it. A skeletonized rider in a cape is not dressed like a clansman. The origination of the name had nothing to do with the clan. And we shouldn't throw it away. Thank you. Next person? My name is Brooke Sargent. I went to school here. And I'm a little bit offended by people who are saying this is like a clansman because I played under this mascot. No, don't shake your head at me. I'm so serious. There's really nothing racist about this. I am not racist. People, please. I'm just letting you know. I actually played under this mascot and now you guys are making it sound like it's racist. It is.  I am absolutely racist. You are. No, I would love to stop this. Then she has a right to save her peace. Undisturbed. So please leave her undisturbed. If not, I will have to ask you to leave. Thank you. I'm sorry. So I've been asked to kind of speak. I'm lame only until I am a superintendent. I can give a little bit of history, which I think is probably important for people to know. I can talk a little bit about the decision that was made four years ago. I think it was four years ago. It might have been five years ago at this point in time. But the issue was brought up at the time. I think I was in either my first or my second year here. And I did do a considerable amount of research on the historic mascot, which as Mr. Helfand has said, was a grim reaper on a horse. It was a skeleton with a scythe sitting on a horse. There is still an image of it that is on a plaque that is out in front of the school if people would like to see that. And I also had the opportunity to go up and spend an evening with the alumni. They used to run a good alumni dinner up in Brookfield at the old town office up there. And what was interesting at the time is they had brought in yearbooks that went back to the 1930s, I believe. And I spent some time kind of flipping through the yearbooks. That historic image of the mascot was never officially changed. What had happened during the research was sometime in the late 1980s, early 1990s. My understanding in talking with folks was that the yearbook committees would get together and would ask the students, you know, what does the galloping ghost mean to you? And the students would produce artwork. That would go into the yearbook. But they were never the official image of the school. For some reason, people decided to use some of those images up and around the building. And when I did my research, what I saw, again, my perspective in trying to find the right solution for the community at the time was that there was a racial overtone to the later images. And that was why I made the decision at the time that I did to have the image removed from the wall. There has not been an image represented of this building or this team for the last four or five years. The equity coordinator that we have now that has been brought on board and the high school has been working to reimagine that image. There was a picture of, you know, what they were looking at in the town paper about a week ago. And it is merely a ghostly horse to change that image. When I did my research in terms of the Galloping Ghost name, there was nothing that I could find that associated it with stereotypes, with discriminatory practices, or anything at that point in time. But again, there is ongoing work about reimagining that image. And I think the work that folks have been doing towards that end has been very positive and is putting things in the right direction. My name is Laura Churchill. I've lived here all my life. I went to the school here. I agree with Woody. We all know that that wasn't intended to be a Ku Klux plan. For 30 years, we've added ghost stickers. I've been doing these for, I don't know, well over 30 years. I started painting them on when Amy was in seventh grade and then we turned them into stickers. Since then, one of my daughters has a...  I have a grandchild that's half black. So this puts it in a different perspective. So I talked to Latina on Sunday and if we could get the galloping ghost back that the artist painted in the gym, that he was a beautiful horse, not the one that was on the paper last week, but a bareback horse and our little stickers and our little chance that we believe in ghosts, I think that would be a good compromise and just check off the writer that's offensive because even the ghost or the sweatshirt to Tina and Bruce is offensive. So I would like to go with Woody's compromise. Shane Weyford. I graduated in 1993. I have coached here. I'm a wrestling and wrestling coach and coached baseball, coached soccer, coached all these kids, still a man out of the school. I'm also, forgive me, I'm not a good bubble-teaker, but I'm married to a black woman and I'm raising a child to mix ethnicity and so we have open dialogue all the time. I talk to them about these events and things I'm hearing at school and I have conversations with them. I ask them, you know, is this a thing that responses always, no. He said he does not deal with racism within the school. He loves his mascot, he loves the ghost. My wife is wearing her ghost sweatshirt tonight. I brought her in and showed her the image a couple years ago before I was taken down and I asked her what she thought because that's the conversation we needed to have and she did not see this as a big deal and imagery is what you make of it, what you perceive it to be. I changed the mascot to whatever we want, the Care Bears and somebody's gonna have an offensive outlook, someone's been balled by a bear. We could do this all day. What we need to do is just go to the ghost, leave our name on it. There's a story tradition here. I remember when I was in school, every kid from all walks of life, they were out there on the soccer field when we had a home playoff game. They were wearing ghost stickers on their cheeks. Everybody had shirts, there was pride there. So, I don't think we need to abandon that and I'm sorry to the people who feel different. I'm sorry for your experience. You should not have to endure that, but that's not here. And I know 99% of the people in this room and I'm comfortable having my wife and my kid around these people. These are my community and I know them well and this just is not an issue. So, I think it's an issue. Please let people speak and if you want to come up to the mic, you can come up to the speaker. This is an issue for some people and for some people it's not. As I said, I have open conversations with my wife. My wife is black. My wife has experienced real racism before, threatening physical violence. And if she's comfortable with it, then I'm comfortable with it. So, I'm going to switch to the online folks. Denise Preston. Denise Preston. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Hello? Yes, we can hear you. So, I asked a question in the chat section. Going back to your process, Laney, I just want to verify and maybe you said it but the audio wasn't always great here. So, if the complainers forfeit their time, is this now null and void or because you don't have a form there, can they bring it to you at a different time? So, at this point, the complaint is not, well it will respond to it, but they didn't come to the hearing, which is the way that we follow the process in the policy. So, anyone at any time can come to us and request a hearing and complain about our mascot and we have to follow the policy, which means we would need to hear their complaint and then deliberate and make a decision. Thank you. Okay. So, do you want to go ahead? Hi Karen, you have your hand up online. You were welcome to speak. If you're muted, please unmute. Okay, do we have someone down front? Yes, it looks like it. Go ahead. My name is Albert Wood. I've lived here, I can't say all my life because I'm still alive, but I've been 75 years old and I've been here since 6 years old. I went to school here, I graduated here, my daughter graduated here, my son's graduated here. They lived with the died here of Galloping Ghost. They played, they wrestled, they did all the things that their Galloping Ghost did and they were proud of it. There's nothing wrong with the Galloping Ghost. It's wrong that we're having problems with races. I have three grandchildren that are black and my racist? No, I love my grandkids. I have 13 and all of them, but I have three black kids and they're great kids. There's nothing wrong with it. I would never, ever trade them off for anything.  I'm doing here a Galloping Ghost which represents the school and represents the kids that are doing all the sports. There's nothing wrong with that. They have a great time. Have they ever been gone out and said, we're racist? No. I don't believe they ever have. I've never heard that in my kids. My kids are great. I hope your kids are great. But that's the way it is. But like I said, I'm 75 years old, I have not a problem. I don't have a problem with anything. But I do have a problem with us trying to change this name. And I think we're wrong. And if we have these people that are so right about coming here and can't even show up, then what is it we're looking for? Are we looking for people to tell us what to do that don't even want to? If that's the case, maybe we ought to do it. But if not, then I think we should stay on our grounds. Anyway, that's all I can say. Do we have someone else from the audience? Sure. Okay. What I'm hearing from this audience of overwhelming numbers of white people is a lot of privilege and a lot of ignorance about racism. Please refrain from comments. Oh, they can comment all they like. No, no, we're not going to have this turn into mayhem. There is a lot of ignorance about racism in this town because until, I don't know, maybe three or four years ago, maybe ten, I'll give it ten, the only people of color in this town were adoptees, white people who had adopted children of color. We have a few people now coming into town who are black or other racists or some indigenous folks. You have been very isolated here and very privileged here and you've grown up in your little community and you think that everything is hunky-dory because you've never experienced anything wrong. It's fine. I have black grandchildren. Ooh, that makes me not racist. It is terrible. It is terrible. Let's try to... Oh, that's racist. Fine. And not patronizing to other people, please. I'm not being patronizing. I'm telling the truth. That's your perspective. No, my perspective. I don't know if you people here can even have that perspective. I understand. This is a ridiculous meeting and I don't have anything with it. No, you're not. Everybody's furious and what are you guys going to do? People wanted to have an opportunity to speak and we're giving them an opportunity to speak. You've been speaking for 20 years since I've come to this town. 30 years, sorry. People have been wanting to get rid of this mascot. Did she get one time? This is my second time up here and there are a few people with my opinion here. It's okay if people want to speak more than once. Oh, I thought it was a three-minute time. It's very difficult, as you can see, to be someone with an opinion that goes against the primarily white opinion of this town. With all respect to Dylan, he grew up here. And that's all he knew. He had to tell the line or he was not going to be safe. He can't speak for Dylan. No, I can't speak for Dylan. I'm sorry. I believe that to be true. Let her speak as well. I just need to clarify that. Dylan spoke very nicely for himself. What I'm saying is that it wouldn't have been very safe for him to think otherwise. And none of you has had to face that kind of danger.  Maybe you haven't recognized the sexism you've faced, but you have. No, I'm a very woke person. Ooh, that's a horrible thing to be. It's about this awful, awful mascot. Okay, your time is up. Thank you. Okay, folks, let's try to keep the comments to yourself. Yes, very much so. And come to the mic if you would like to speak. Go ahead. Okay, first of all, for anybody who is offended by it, I am sorry. But you know, I see things in like every day that I'm offended by. But you know what? It's my thing. I moved here 30 years ago, like you. And when I pulled into this town, I didn't see an offending thing. What I saw, because there actually was a sporting event going on, was a sense of pride, a sense of community, a sense of union, of people working together. The ghost doesn't represent the clan. It represents a history of a town that works together and stands together. When there is a tragedy in this town, it comes together and it helps one another. It is not based on race. It is not based on anything other than a need. That ghost symbol to my husband and so many other people in this room represents different times in their lives when they needed the support of their community. It is a representative of community that stands together, works together, and cares. And as for your attitude of people in this room other than the few minorities that we have, I don't know about you, but I'm a mutt. I got a little bit of, I'm a mutt. I have a little bit of all kinds of ethnicities in me. Yeah, I'm a mutt. I'm a mongrel. I do have African, I don't have African American. I have American Indian. I have Scottish, Irish, everything. All of these people and almost all of our ancestors in one way or another were oppressed, whether it was you were a woman or you were an Indian. My grandfather would not tell people that he was half Native American Indian because he was ashamed of it. Okay, so you can't sit here in judgment and say every person in this room has white privilege. They don't understand being prejudiced against or anything else. Some of us have.  We are all human beings. We should all just embrace each other, accept each other for who we are and stop labeling everything. Instead of arguing, hug somebody, why does it always have to be a fight? Why can't we agree to disagree and there is always going to be adversity and if these students don't learn how to handle adversity in a school system, how are they going to handle adversity when they get out in the college system? Because I know for a fact that four of the alumni from last year's graduating class have already gotten out of college systems because they couldn't handle the adversity when they got there. Three minutes are up, sorry. We just need to be more compassionate. Thank you. I just want to say one more thing. I do feel like, as Lane mentioned, that there was like a recognition of what this mascot did mean and why the process has been made to change it and when speaking about this, I speak about the new mascot, not the old one and just like recognizing that we can like, again, recognize, apologize, and shift which is what we're doing and I feel like that's the right decision but I feel like taking the name ghost out of it isn't needed and I think that's what a lot of us are here for. Okay, thank you. Okay, we'll let one or two more people speak if they'd like. Hi. I'm a junior here. My name is Rowan and I think that the main issue here isn't, it isn't really that people are like offended by the imagery. I think some people feel threatened and like that's a concern and I think the main thing that people feel like is a threatening part of the imagery is the rider in white on the horse and I think I don't know if it's necessary to change the name. I don't know how I feel about the idea of having like a skeleton horse or a skeleton rider on the horse but I think if we were to lose the rider on the horse I think that that would make most people happy. I don't know if, I don't know what everyone's consensus is on that but it seems like that's what we're moving towards so I think that would be a pretty good step to take. That's just my opinion about it but yeah, thanks. Thank you very much. Do you have someone else who'd like to speak? Yes. We have one more. My name is Nathan Snow. I was class of 89. We, our girls and boys teams were really dominant for those years and with the mascot being what it is I'm proud of what it is and I don't think it needs to be changed. We have changed it a little already to comply with some complaints. Personally I think it's time to leave it alone and find something else to complain about. Let's put more of our time into teaching our students and we'll learn a little bit more in the community. At that time in 89 we had a family, a colored family, the Williams's. Super, super, salt in the earth people. Never had an issue, never had a problem. One of them is out in California right now and he could be watching us right now but I don't think he ever, ever felt displaced from it and I'm sorry for you just because I'm sorry for you. And I think it's time to move on. I know we're all trying to evolve and get over things and we're in a sensitive area where everything needs a label but I think it's time for the adults to tell the kids to stop worrying about it and find something else to do. And that's just my opinion. Thanks a little trying to hear that person. How much money and time has been spent on this issue? If you don't care, why are you here? I do care. Let's not have a dialogue right now. We're going to move on to our final comment from the person. If you want to go out in the parking lot and have a dialogue about it, you may, but we're not doing that right here, okay? Katie, do you need help? Hi, thank you. Can you hear me? Yes. I am a teacher at Randolph Elementary School, but for right now I'm putting my parent hat on. And while we're on the topic of racism, perhaps the community would like to know that my son tells me frequently he hears the N word at school. It's a problem at least at the middle school. I can't speak to the high school. My high school student has gone elsewhere. When I was a student in 1995, it would stuck another Vermont Union School. No one ever, ever, ever would have said that. We knew it was wrong. I don't know what's going on. Maybe kids are hearing it at home, but maybe parents of kids who this is concerning to them could talk to their students, but it's not just the mascot here. I'm sorry. Yeah, that's it. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Okay. It is now almost eight o'clock. I think we've heard from a lot of folks and appreciate you coming out. And again, this was just an opportunity for you all to speak once our hearing ended.