Club Penguin Romans

Greetings, to the Roman legionaries and Club Penguin army community members reading this: It’s Dj. I am going to forgo the usual camp and theming to a deliver a message that I deem too serious and important for the future of the community.

If you have been paying attention, you are surely aware of the drama relating to the RPF’s mishandling of their staff members’ misconduct with their subordinates that has rocked the community over the past couple weeks. Since my last post, there’s been a number of developments that have led to further anger and deterioration in trust towards the current presiding league. Much of this can be summed up by Ugly’s post here, but I have thoughts of my own that I’d like to get out there.

Firstly, I’d like to discuss why I got involved with this movement to begin with. Without my input on the decision, Roman leadership decided to join The White Order when it initially formed; In fact, I initially advocated in favor of the RPF’s position based on what I was being told by my Rebel Federation contacts when I found out about this. However, as more information was unveiled and the RPF continued to avoid taking adequate action, I changed my attitude towards the situation. I opted to step in, pushing TWO away from fighting a losing war against a monolithic army and failing to accomplish anything; Instead, on my direction, we opted to take the political route, directly approaching the CPA org. To support this initiative, I founded an organization dubbed the Club Penguin Army Safety Committee to advocate for change within the community, with the long-term goal of providing future victims a safe space to report misconduct. With this in mind, I personally wrote the following demand letter to submit to both the org and the CPA Legends Council:

With these demands written and approved by the various leaders involved in the TWO movement, I was added to a pre-existing group chat between the TWO leaders and CPA admins where I presented said letter on behalf of my organization in addition to TWO with the expectation that our concerns would be taken seriously and with a degree of professionalism: They were not.

Instead of negotiating with us, the CPA org administration publicly responded to our demands, blowing us off in the process and giving the RPF a punishment so minor I wouldn’t even consider a slap on the wrist in the form of a 0.6x multiplier on their top ten point calculations, for a measly two weeks.

Furthermore, in response to our attempts to promote internal community reform when it comes to sexual misconduct and predation, the Club Penguin army organization administration maliciously took it upon themselves to go digging for one-off examples of potentially distasteful/insensitive behavior within TWO to schmere the alliance as a white supremacist group, or at least a group with racist undertones. I want to make it clear as someone who was present in TWO’s leadership channel, is left leaning and enforces a code of conduct against such behavior in Romans: This rhetoric is categorically false and incredibly inappropriate given the circumstances. The fact that the CPA org also opted to apply to same punishment to TWO (albeit for a single week vs two) as they did RPF in the form of a 0.6x multiplier is laughable.

On top of all this, most offensively as all, the CPA org administration responded to my attempt to work directly with them to establish a veteran led safety committee to provide victims a safe space to report crimes, evidence and misconduct by insinuating that this organization would be used to politicize, manipulate and weaponize victims’ experiences. As the person who specifically made this demand and has already started work to create such an organization, I am both appalled and enraged at this grievous mischaracterization of what is a well-intended effort to provide victims a space to safely report instances of misconduct, as opposed to the standard public exposes seen in this instance and previous incidents of abuse within the community. Allow me to make something abundantly clear: I do not give a damn about Club Penguin army politics or melodrama. I am a successful professional who returned to the community in recent months to help bring the Romans back, and after a short temporary return distanced myself up until I was drawn into this situation. After nearly two decades worth of sex scandals, generally including minors, no such organization or place for safe reporting exists despite the clear need for one. The idea that any of the other veterans that make up the committee or I would dare use the victims we aim to protect in anyway is outrageous and outright libelous.

The administration’s response has left me disheartened by the state of modern armies, specifically those who have deemed themselves the governing body of club penguin armies. Despite their talk of being solely responsible for the safety of the community, they have failed in their duty to protect victims and punish abusers. The Club Penguin army organization, like all power structures pseudo or real, derives its authority from the armies that participate in it, from the people who make up this community. The CPA org has regularly made both missteps and oversteps that have shaken the community’s confidence in its ability to govern; This latest incident just happened to be the final straw.  It’s in my opinion, in addition to the opinions of the various community members aligned with me, that the Club Penguin Army organization is not equipped to ensure the safety of their community’s youngest participants, and therefore have lost their mandate to power over the community. 

What are the Club Penguin army community’s options going forward?

1.) The community can continue to accept the status quo and let a heavily flawed, malicious, unprofessional administration govern their community.
2.) We can start over, and learn from the CPA organization’s mistakes.

A number of us have opted to go with the second option. I’m elated to announce that after a round of negotiations, my team and I are taking over 32op/Vanish’s Club Penguin Army League (CPAL) and continuing where they left off; Additionally, Club Penguin Armies Official (CPAO) will be merging into our organization, importing their assets and staff. On top of that, we have established a partnership with the Small Medium Army League (SMAL), who we will have a symbiotic relationship with similarly to how Club Penguin Army Central and Small Medium Army Central used to function back in the day. Our goal, ultimately, is to establish a league that draws heavy influence from earlier iterations of the community, while implementing modern standards and necessary reforms that the CPA org administration view as unnecessary, in addition to returning governing power to the armies that make up this community, with oversight from a committee of unbiased veterans. While we will be extending direct invites to all currently active armies in the coming days, we encourage all members of the community to join us over at the CPAL Discord while we work on establishing ourselves and what we hope will be the future of Club Penguin armies. Expect much more in the near future!

Ad Majorem Gloriam,
Djgtjvgyhxgy, CPASC Chair, Roman Emperor (ret.)

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