The member should be reinstated and just simply be told of the effects her mass emailing has made to the organization, not to mention the children. If you BCC the list here on out, no one will have access to the list of members, for future reference. I think it is still early enough to send an email mentioning the incident and going over a good samaritan rule for everyone across the board. Everyone will know who you were talking about and she will be on "notice" by everyone from this point. In the end, it will be diplomatic as well as beneficial to others. Any contact she makes with anyone hereafter will hopefully be viewed individually and dealt with by those they email.
Although this member's "campaign" email was irritating to the other members, it doesn't sound like her action was in violated of the by-laws at the time she did it. Nor does it appear that she signed an agreement promising not to email other members at the time she became a member or any time thereafter. Even if "everyone knows" that members aren't to send spam, it's not real unless it's in writing. Because of this, it appears that removing her from the membership for the reasons you did wasn't within your (organization's) authority.
At this point, your choices are:
Your organization could continue to deny her membership despite not having any by-laws regarding this transgression in place at the time she committed the faux pas. If she felt strong enough about the issue of her membership, she could take legal action and your organization would lose.
OR
You bite the bullet and re-instate her membership while advising her of the by-law changes that have been put into effect regarding contact with the membership. There's nothing to prevent you from chastizing her for violating the trust the other members had placed in her. You can mention she knew what she was doing was wrong because she made it a point of not including you and the administrator in that email. You can also feel free to speculate that her actions have made it highly unlikely she'll be elected to the BOE if your members have any impact on the election.
Naturally, it would be wise for you to continue to email the membership with bcc just in case.
I recently had a big problem with a paid member taking the members email list and deleting mine and administrations email addresses out of the message and then she attached her bio and resume and stated that she was running for a BOE position and to vote for her and then sent the email out to all our members after I spent months getting their emails and promising them that this kind of thing would not happen.
I had 15 members ask to be removed from the list.
I have since removed that member and sent an email advising that she had not asked permission and that I had not sent it out to the members.
I now send everything out the following way: I email myself in the to space and bcc every member.
I am now being harassed by this individual about me removing her from the list and that she is a paid member. She even went as far as calling Administration to get her added back to the list. Since that we have updated our By-Laws to say that they will be immediately removed and no refund.
Has anyone ever had this happen to them and is there any issues we may face by removing this individual as I am not really wanting to add her back to our list, due to her spamming everyone and doing this behind our backs?
