>the first thing to do is work it out privately. [...] Indeed, many people would find it unreasonable to bring in third parties before trying personal discussion.
I actually think that is a really, really bad thing to do in a university. That is because unversities are full of seniority and dependency relationships, and in an unequal relationship informal conflict resolution puts the weaker party at a disadvantage.
Solving things in private is appropriate in a group of peers, say a small company among friends, or a family, but whenever there is an inequality in power, teacher/student, manager/employee, it is important to not handle things in private. It's one of the reasons universities tend to be so scandal ridden, and why you have these stories of say, sexually abusive teachers who somehow are able to brush it under the carpet for decades.
It's also the reason why the military tends to be hyper-formal when it comes to complaints, because it is so hierarchical. Solving things privately when one party exercises authority over the other will inevitably produce some very screwed up results.
Academic departments are just as political as corporate org-charts. There are massive power imbalances and total opacity in important decision-making.
"Solving things in private" actually means that the power-brokers will have private "off-record" discussions to determine the fates of people who have no say in the discussion and don't even know the discussion happened.
It's a quaint principle though. Something for graduate students to aspire to while they're grinding away in the lab at 3am.
Yep, “RPP” one of those positive illusions that the naive cling to, while the sociopathic leverage its rhetoric to advance up the ladder. Or to impress the status quo onto new entrants of the social hierarchy.
It’s a very scary thing to live in the real world.
well if everyone was reasonable we wouldn't even have the need to talk about the principle of reasonableness right. Kinda like saying "why doesn't everyone just use common sense?"
Problem is obviously that in any institution like a university faculty the line between reasonable issue and unreasonable complaint is really blurry.
for a few thousand years we've been debating how to design institutions, if it was just 1. be reasonable, 2. don't be unreasonable, 3. don't be offended we'd have fewer problems than we do
No, we'd have different problems than we do, not necessarily fewer. The problems that arrive from a litigious culture like the one you describe are potentially worse than the little unfairnesses that creep in through informal dispute resolution.
Ironically, the post is not a command, and edict, or an enforced policy. It's an informal request. If you have an issue that you don't think fits, you are free to disregard it. That is the power of the RPP.
The RPP sounds more like a clause in a corporate mission statement. Trite, insincere and, I'm sure, broken regularly and with glee by everyone who matters in the organization.
I’ve studied and worked in many institutions and organisations over many years. Yes I’ve come across a few prepped who sometimes abused their positions, but this was rare and in all but one case were manageable using the practices established in those organisations.
I’m sure abusive organisations exist and all I can say is if at all possible, and it’s almost always possible, please leave for your own sake. There are better places to live and work. I do not recognise the world you describe.
Informal complaints to bring to your disagreement partner and then maybe your TA or professor instead of directly to your department chair, dean, or ombudsman:
I can't see the writing. We're learning OpenCV, but I never learned Python. I think my paper was graded incorrectly. My dad passed away, so my coursework is suffering. I should've been in the acknowledgements in my lab's paper. One of my group members is useless. My lab partner smells... like, a LOT. So-and-so keeps taking our oscilloscope. Our workspace is too cold. The professor always calls on women (or Indians or the front row). Why do all groups need to bring a vegetarian option to their presentation but the group with the vegetarian doesn't need to bring meat? The Greek groups all share old exams with each other but not with anyone else. Why does the department need to find a minority instead of just hiring the most qualified applicant? Why can't people just let personal insults roll of their back if their research work can stand on its own?
People from a ton of cultures and backgrounds are jammed into one institution. Of course there will be friction, and it shouldn't be the job of the university president to tell a chronically offending student to only take one slice of pizza at the Friday research talks and go back in line for getting seconds. Also, everyone has a different opinion of what "a big deal" is. Thus, for the sake of everybody and everybody's academic and social development... just be cool. Be reasonable.
The law has been debating the "reasonably prudent person" standard in torts for negligence for hundreds of years. Possibly trillions of dollars in lawyer time has been spent over the last two centuries debating the meaning of this very term.
> Solving things privately when one party exercises authority over the other
Is'nt this the case for pretty much any relationship?
A father-son relation or even a spouse relationship in many cases?
The formal process should always be available, but more like a last stop. It can document what informal steps were taken, (they likely failed - thats why they are doing it). Now both parties are sort of shamed if there were steps missed?
Is there harm in trying out a private meeting, knowing one can always have formal channels available at their disposal?
> Is there harm in trying out a private meeting, knowing one can always have formal channels available at their disposal?
Possible negative outcomes:
1) The senior person is sufficiently abusive and skilled as to shut down discussion and convince you that formal channels would be fruitless (or even actively harmful to you)
2) The senior person now thinks less of the junior and will subtly sabotage them (especially harsh/pedantic grading, a lack of mentorship and support, etc.)
3) The junior person no longer trusts the senior person, and this will sabotage the junior (refusing mentorship and support, ignoring genuinely useful feedback)
4) A lot of issues are "twenty people all have this minor complaint" - the senior can gaslight all twenty people that no one ELSE has ever made this complaint so clearly they're too sensitive, and no one else ever realizes there's more than one victim so they write it off
5) Twenty people ALL have issue with the same one comment the senior made, and he's now getting mobbed - and once people realize it's twenty-on-one, mob justice mentality kicks in and they feel emboldened to say that the senior DEFINITELY needs to be cancelled
6) Twenty people all have DIFFERENT issues with the same one comment, and the situation is now a 50-page-long flame war before an administrator finds out and locks the thread.
7) People assume that the policy should be interpreted as "we don't care, please don't bother us" and just fail to bring up issues at all
8) People with anxiety feel like they need to do the big scary personal confrontation first, and thus fail to bring up the issue at all
(These are not just hypotheticals - I've either been in the situation or seen friends in that situation.)
these are all great points; what can be draw from this - and still consider a path of private settling before taking it publicly?
More awareness and resources provided to the victim? There can be a 3rd party org, a private arbitration that is sworn to privacy that can guide the victim so that he does not suffer from the above weaknesses?
Knowing that the issue is being watched even though privately should cause the more powerful person from abusing the situation?
> It's one of the reasons universities tend to be so scandal ridden, and why you have these stories of say, sexually abusive teachers who somehow are able to brush it under the carpet for decades.
a Reasonable Person would understand the principle is a guideline for behavior within a community, and your judgement as a person is still required.
Abusive behavior is different from a disagreement between paths forward on a research project, for example, where working it out with peers is better than escalating it up the chain. During disagreements assume the other party is also a Reasonable Person vs. assuming ill will until proven otherwise.
There may be power dynamics, and this doesn't change those. A person in power can be a bad actor with or without these guidelines. Taking the extreme that this helps those in power be bad actors requires more evidence, as it assumes people will blindly follow this even when the other party is obviously not a Reasonable Person.
If you DO decide to handle things privately...for the love of bob, cover your ass. This means record the interaction, that way if things go poorly...at least there is an impartial record of it to prevent he-said-she-said situations.
Friendly reminder: in several states it’s illegal to record the interaction if both parties haven’t consented so you should record yourself asking the other person for consent and their agreement if either one of you are in one of those states.
They may mean at the very least write down the conversation afterwards. I've noticed this can be helpful as well, because people tend to respect written records even if they are not 100% impartial.
I would document all private interactions between coworkers. Not for any paranoid reason, but just as a CYA and having the notes to refer back to what was discussed later on. Especially if you’re a manager.
Good point, but it kind of confines "Reasonable Person Principle" to the realm of equal relationships only. At that point you can get stuck in a hyper litigious culture.
Please don't do the "Karen" thing on HN. I know there are lots of different arguments about such things but on HN the bottom line is that it's (a) a tired trope, and (b) a predictable provocation, and we don't need either of those.
Can you suggest a similarly compact (doesn't even have to be one word, I'll settle for three or four words) I alternative that conveys similiar meaning?
The reason the term gained popularity overnight is that it fills a hole in the (informal) English language.
The phrase "Going Full Karen(TM)" in your post didn't add any information; it was just a gratuitous trope. Your comment says the same thing when that bit is deleted, and says it better. Therefore my suggestion for an alternative phrasing would be the empty string :)
So there's only "private conversation" and "full karen"?
There's only the option for "full bureaucratic hell" as the 3rd party involvement?
Most attempts to work together are just complaints about misunderstanings?
Nothing about this seems right. I've experienced nothing but middle grounds for each of your extreme positions. For example, going to your direct supervisor to mediate is not bureaucratic hell, nor is it "full karen". Asking the mediation team for $workplace to help out isn't usually a bureaucratic hell, nor is it "involving an authority" in the way you suggest, since they usually do not have termination powers (or police powers or whatever else you're imagining), its the step before going to those authorities.
Also, you seem to completely ignore the basic truth that sometimes when people have hard feelings towards each other a third party can serve as a catalyst for productive communication.
I think there is most definitely a line where there can be no reasonable or safe way for someone to try and communicate privately and should definitely go to a third party to sort this out as a first step. I've heard of stories in academia where freshmen are literally physically cornered by staff, where someone is being stalked by a student who is unstable, where a student is physically threatened, where a student is offered extremely inappropriate quid pro quo for grades/research opportunities, etc.
The point being made is that you are not "narcing to the cops before talking to the other party". The other party is a cop. You are at a massive disadvantage.
The option to escalate up doesn't go away simply because you've tried to right things privately. If someone with power over you wrongs you you should still make a good faith effort to reconcile it with them directly, they might not even know they've done so(!).
I fail to see how the other party having power over you has any bearing on how the situation (beyond setting the norms of how you'd approach them about it or potentially limiting your communication channels to them, which would apply to any topic you approach them about regardless of if you've been wronged).
The option to escalate can severely get compromised if you give your superior the opportunity to approach their superior first.
Not only have you given your boss a chance to compromise your position but you won't have the rapport with their boss that they do. You are just a complaint and until there is a trend of these complaints they most likely will be handwaved away.
Maybe you haven't been through the circlejerk enough but the politics of a place totally shoot down your argument.
Oh, you know throwaway0a5e, they are a troublemaker. I have been trying to deal with some of their performance issues off the book to keep their record clean but you know don't like that and are now calling me out for whatever. You trust me, right boss?
If that boss is of the opinion that you unnecessarily escalated the situation, you can easily get the troublemaker label completely on your own, plus get some bad faith from the accused party if said boss talks to them.
In my opinion, this depends a lot on the severity of the issue anyway. If we're talking about workload assignment or some comments, talking directly will be the best solution. If the issue is serious (sexual harassment, academic fraud etc), directly escalating is warranted.
The only way I can see justifying the "narc first, negotiate later" approach is if I don't expect the "negotiate later" part to ever happen and am simply seeking to be a vindictive jerk and want to cause problems for them.
No, I am asking you to engage with the argument in good faith, and making some token effort to understand what the argument actually is.
And it should be obvious, to you, if you do engage in good faith, that the "simply seeking to be a vindictive jerk" is not the reason anyone would have to make this argument.
The ability to appropriately negotiate/challenge/confront/reject authority is critical. It takes practice, you'll screw up, there will be consequences. But if you don't practice and learn this skill the hard way you'll be a victim your whole life.
> "Do not be offended if someone suggests you are not being reasonable."
I don't think they consulted with a psychologist before coming up with this "principle".
Telling someone they're not being reasonable is one of the worst things you can do in any conversation. And if you feel offended by it, that's entire normal and, well, reasonable.
Telling someone not to be offended is similarly completely counterproductive.
When you're in a difficult situation, you should generally avoid focusing on what you perceive to be personal characteristics of the other person, or on telling them how they "should" be responding -- and instead focus on objective realities that you can use shared problem-solving techniques on.
To put a finer point on this, a very small percentage of people, when confronted with "you are being unreasonable" will react in a positive and/or productive way. I personally have never witnessed, in the conversations I've had or observed, it ever having a positive impact.
I’ve had the opposite in my social circle. People generally try to be reasonable and so that suggestion is extremely rarely made. When received, it tends to be positively received as a time to self reflect and evaluate.
That said, the wording used is more like “are you sure you’re approaching this reasonably?” rather than as an assured statement of “you are being unreasonable”, and I feel that difference may be significant in terms of distribution of response.
Coming at it from the other direction though, the very small percentage of people who, in my experience, do have a good reaction to "you are being unreasonable", have ended up realizing that they were in a scenario where they needed to think about conflict resolution. This attitude, although rare, has been extremely useful.
Maybe this suggests the robustness principle: "be conservative in how you behave but liberal in what you accept from others".
Yes I read that principle description and that was my first thought.
One should not tell others that they are unreasonable and be reasonable enough to understand that someone might still tell them that they are, then act accordingly.
> I don't think they consulted with a psychologist before coming up with this "principle".
This is ironically and needlessly confrontative. I think you are not being reasonable. Now don't get offended, I'm just the voice of reason telling you what is, and I already have my principles in place that won't be challenged. Me, unreasonable? That's quite the offensive thing to say, how dare you!
The point isn't that telling someone else they're "not being reasonable" is a useful, or even productive tactic. The point is if someone else comes up to you, and (tactlessly) tells you that you're being unreasonable, that the smart move is to stop, take a step back, and fully consider their feedback, and not, as most people would do, immediately reject the advice. It would be entirely understandable, as a reflex involving hurt feelings, to disregard their feedback and blame it on some selfish petty motivations of that person. It might even be true. But if you don't want to surround yourself with yes men, take the time to strongly consider that you may actually be the unreasonable one in this circumstance.
Unless you still throw temper tantrums when someone says you can't have or use something of theirs that you really want, our natural responses can be retrained. If this principle is part of training for staff at CMU, then receiving this comment could become a trigger to take a step back and reflect, rather than a trigger to become angry or defensive.
The challenge is that a reasonable person has high functioning in understanding and kindness. Both of these qualities depend very much on sociological pressures (group behaviours).
The "reasonable person" is also the implicit basis for a modern, civilised legal system.
That said, I am not convinced that a "corporation" is a reasonable person.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
…according to Shaw, who's the unreasonable man in his example.
I'm gonna say that's bias to the point of being untrustworthy. You could also say 'therefore, the unreasonable one always gets his way, AND SO HE SHOULD'.
The implication isn't that everyone will be reasonable all of the time - it's that at any point in time, someone will be reasonable. When one party becomes unreasonable, the other party may still stay reasonable. If they both can't, it's likely there's a currently-reasonable third party nearby. Etc.
How do we know? How do we know if it's reasonable for someone to complain, or reasonable to reject the complaints?
There is no single agreed definition of "reasonable" so it can't be detected or separated from "unreasonable".
In all, "just be reasonable" is equivalent to "our judgement and rank supersedes yours, therefore your complaints will be ignored." This doesn't necessarily mean the weaker side has a valid argument, there is just no unbiased objective way to know.
> The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly paradoxical idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance.
How is that even a paradox? It's simply speaking an optimization problem in two dependent variables, and it looks confusing because of an impossible premisses and the conflation of terms.
Arriving at the paradox that an infinitely tolerant society can be also infinitely intolerant at the same time. Which is pretty much a given if intolerance and tolerance are axiomatically on the same scale (as the nameing of the terms would suggest).
This is pretty much equivalent to this thread's topic, that a arbitrarily reasonable person may tell somebody they were not reasonable, not just slightly less reasonable or actually, reasonably bad, but just approachung zero reasonable, or infinite un-reasonable. But no, there's no logic in this.
Its a paradox because a perfectly tolerant society would cease to function due to attacks from intolerant people subverting social mechanisms, that very tolerance of view point is what would enable it. Thus a completely tolerant society would need to violate its core principle in order to protect that principle.
I actually struggle with this a bit. I tend to assume positive intent, which means I suffer fools, and sometimes assholes. It's probably as simple as setting boundaries and standing up for myself, but anyone have more helpful suggestions?
Assume positive intent until someone proves your assumption wrong. One of the good things about assuming positive intent is that you should treat people well. If you do, and the other person does not reciprocate, you should no longer assume positive intent. Maybe they're just having a bad day? You can, and should, still leave room to change your mind again, but I would recommend basketing people who show signs of foolishness, selfishness, and general unkindness apart from people who reward your optimism.
It's not your job to find the good person beneath the layers of trash. Generally speaking, our faults don't dwindle upon closer inspection, and even if they did, life is short, and you probably have other things to do.
You don't always have to have boundaries, but it's okay to sometimes decide that you have some. If you try to define your boundaries perfectly so they can never be argued with, that's a trap to be exploited by those who like arguing.
Take notes and compare them with people you trust.
I have the same problem. What I've found to be helpful is that I have several friends who don't gleefully suffer fools and are always willing to help serve as a second point-of-view on whether someone is just generally an asshole.
It's a lot easier to tell if someone is trying to sell you a snow-job if you can get the perspective on how they are outside of your field-of-view.
Assuming positive intent is generally good, but it is not very specific. So it can be wise to follow it with a step of clarifying intent.
If I assume you intend to make me a delicious soup, that is still quite dangerous to me if your intent is to make me a delicious shrimp gumbo -- You do not generally intend me harm, but to achieve that intent we need to communicate about my specific allergy to shrimp.
In the long term, the CMU computer science culture starts interpreting unreasonableness as damage and stops inviting it to parties and collaborations and recommending it forward to peers outside the institution.
You'll graduate, and your degree will take you where it will take you. No more and no less.
The concept of "reasonable" cannot be considered separately from the understanding of the status quo. This includes the whole context of the interactions and the set of "allowed" requests and outcomes.
I understand that the piece was outlined in order to somewhat rule the flood of requests and expectations on both sides in hope of reducing the intensity of conflicts.
Reason requires an arbiter, otherwise it's just a conviction by whatever means. Rules and regulations are an arbiter proxies.
So the appealing to be "reasonable" probably points to some deficiencies in the current rules, which no longer match the status quo.
Say, CS support requests to a team of just 3 may not be possible anymore to fullfill in, say, a week's time as when that team was 5 (the glorious do more with less). Same rules - different status quo.
What I'd find "reasonable" is a clear outline of the present deficiencies and mismatches to the current rules. Externalising the status quo and appealing to that. But this would be surely considered "unreasonable" by the overseers of CS Dept. That is politics dictate the reason.
"Under the reasonable person principle, the first thing to do is work it out privately. [...] Indeed, many people would find it unreasonable to bring in third parties before trying personal discussion."
Imagine if everyone getting angry at some group, strangers or neighbors followed that advice. It's also the recommendation from my government for disputes about tenancy, trade, employment, etc.
It works well with reasonable people, but it has some flaws:
- unreasonable people will not doubt themself, but reasonable people will. So this discussion has a tendency to turn in favor of the unreasonable.
- unreasonable persons will make you pay for not being on their side. Coming to them gives them a heads up for doing that.
- you usually have less problems with reasonable people, so if you do have a problem, there is more chance the opposite party is not reasonable, and hence risking point 1 or 2.
So I'd say, "test if the opposite side is reasonable with a smaller grievance first".
This makes it key to have a culture of reasonableness. Like an extended prisoners dilemma, if there are worse penalties for building a reputation for being unreasonable, people will be less likely to take that path.
You are essentially saying the opposite of the article without any real information about what you're basing your decision on (except for apparently a hate of reasonable people and all that you believe they stand for). You're not going to change anyone's mind that way, was that what you were going for?
They're an existence proof of why the reasonable person principle doesn't work in practice.
If you assume this is performative, it's an exploit to control the environment the RPP is in. If it's authentic, then it's a person who cannot bridge the gap to meet the reasonable people, therefore the reasonable people must comply with the demands of the authentic and aggrieved person.
Probably best to assume that for MOST people, operating by a Reasonable Person Principle is best. You've got to account for outliers, though. You can't operate both a reasonable person principle, and total inclusivity, at the same time.
Correct. And the unwritten rule (inside the unwritten rule, lol) about the CMU computer science culture is it's hyper-exclusive.
It's a lot easier to assume reasonableness if there's a giant gate in front labeled Everyone Who Passes Through Here Has Gone Through The Admissions Process... and a giant slide in the back labeled That's A Nice Academic Career You Have, It'd Be A Shame If You Violated The Institution's Code of Conduct
Similarly, the reasonable person principle tends to work in practice on this forum thanks to moderation, votes, and the extremely occasional ban. The parent of the comment you replied to is getting harder and harder to read as the day goes on.
Yeah, that's also part of the "doubt" dichotomy: if you are reasonable, you will ask yourself "am I unreasonable?" while unreasonable people will be certain they are being reasonable.
I guess they see it as a pressure relief valve. Some people need it - it seems that being reasonable everywhere, all the time, is not something everyone is comfortable with.
I was a grad student at CMU CS in the early 90s. The assholishness on the opinion bb was mostly performative. Imagine a bunch of kids in their 20s field testing opinions that they were not necessarily committed to.
The RPP was great for a graduate computer science department. I only learned years later that not everyone is reasonable...
Essentially rules everyone thinks of himself that he follows anyway, and when he admits he doesn't in a case, there is always a justification why the other party transgressed and warranted it.
Judging by https://web.archive.org/web/20141114222647/http://www.cs.cmu... this is 2014 or earlier. I put 2009 above because of the dates in the link at the bottom. From the way the text is written, I'd guess it's quite a bit older than that. If anyone comes up with a more accurate year, we can change it again!
>It holds that reasonable people strike a suitable balance between their own immediate desires and the good of the community at large.
Well there's you problem. People don't agree on what is good for the community. Someone might wish to stear a community in a particular direction, with the best intentions of improve the community for all its members, but to others that will seem completely unreasonable and hostile.
...same idea in law back until roman times... vir bonus.
But I would argue with the usefulness: this construct allowed flexibility and offered options if rules were not flexible enough to adequately encompass what happened... seen like this it could actually be a boon for devs... or not ;)
I consider "being reasonable" equivalent to "being able to be communicated with"... i.e. the essence of unreasonableness is broken communication; i.e. unwillingness to listen.
Also unwillingness to speak. How many of us have had a strained relationship (personal, professional) that's made worse because we don't know why it's strained? "You know what you did!" is often not true.
I had a colleague who became absurdly cold to me, ignoring me for weeks. I tried to speak with him and find out what had happened but he gave me the silent treatment (we didn't work directly together, adjacent projects, so the lack of communication wasn't an issue for the work itself). Finally, one day he decided to pull me aside and air his feelings. It turned out it was a misunderstanding, but it had turned into nearly two months of awkwardness in the office (I worked with the people who sat near him and was often in his space as a result). And even if it hadn't been a simple misunderstanding, I still never knew what the problem was until he finally spoke. If it had been the result of deliberate malice or carelessness on my part, then we could have tried to resolve it much earlier (or found an inability to resolve it if it had been a fundamental conflict of views or something), but the silence made it impossible to even address.
the first thing to do is work it out privately (perhaps in person, unless there is an unreasonably raging pandemic) since public social media spats are known to amplify feelings
I thorougly enjoyed the article and it definitively got me thinking. I do believe in the reasonable concept. I definitively have met many reasonable persons- but I have also met equally many or more who are not. What does it even mean "to be reasonable?" It is subjective. Because I can be reasonable but you cannot is what proves the statement.
Depending on the nature of the hierarchy, they can engage in dishonest one-sided discussion because if you agree with them, good, if you disagree with them, they can just say something like 'I hear your feedback and will keep it in mind but we are going to go ahead with the original plan' and then pull rank.
This is, however, only as bad as your lack of leverage as a subordinate. If your dissatisfaction can make your superiors' lives harder (by quitting or by working suboptimally), you'll find that they become quite a bit more reasonable.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
It is just using the words "reasonable" and "unreasonable" in a completely different context, where they don't mean the same thing as in a discussion of people who are attempting to get along in good faith or not.
On a side note, human reasoning happened long before there was a precise definition and set of frameworks, and continues in most cases without a direct connection to either. "Reasoning" has a different meaning in different contexts just like "reasonable".
Most words have a cluster of meanings depending on context.
A father and son team built a rocket for the X Prize Lunar Lander challenge. They got some impressive results. Their team was called Unreasonable Rocket.
EDIT: That said, in this example unreasonableness was about personal endeavor, not about interacting with others or expectations toward others.
I actually think that is a really, really bad thing to do in a university. That is because unversities are full of seniority and dependency relationships, and in an unequal relationship informal conflict resolution puts the weaker party at a disadvantage.
Solving things in private is appropriate in a group of peers, say a small company among friends, or a family, but whenever there is an inequality in power, teacher/student, manager/employee, it is important to not handle things in private. It's one of the reasons universities tend to be so scandal ridden, and why you have these stories of say, sexually abusive teachers who somehow are able to brush it under the carpet for decades.
It's also the reason why the military tends to be hyper-formal when it comes to complaints, because it is so hierarchical. Solving things privately when one party exercises authority over the other will inevitably produce some very screwed up results.