One more post on convention codes of conduct. The information here is based on an entry in File 770 (scroll down to item 7). The writers’ organization Codex has permanently revoked Savil Lavingia’s membership. Codex’s notice, according to the entry, consisted of the following:
The Codex Board has reviewed your case and permanently revoked your membership due to concerns raised by members about your activities at DOGE that violate our Code of Conduct and make our members feel unsafe. We strive to maintain a space where diversity is celebrated and all members feel safe and included around each other.
The entry contains a link to Lavingia’s article “DOGE Days”. That piece links to a Wired article that discusses what he did there.
Codex doesn’t have its code of conduct on its website, though it has the usual provision for volunteer organizations that it can kick anyone out for any reason.
When I started writing this post, it sounded like another case of Code of Conduct overreach to write about. It’s messy, though, and Codex may have had legitimate concerns, bad as it looks.
Let’s get that part out of the way first. Expelling members is a strange way to celebrate “diversity” or make members “feel safe and included.” It’s generally the language of a conformist group policing its members’ thoughts.
However, neither Lavingia’s own piece nor the Wired article makes him look very good. His very status with DOGE is confusing. He writes, “While filling out forms, I left the ’employee/contractor/volunteer’ field blank because I didn’t know the answer.” How can you not know that when you’re working for someone? A little later he says, “There, I learned my title, Senior Advisor to the Chief of Staff Christopher Syrek, and my salary, $0.”
Normally it’s clear in advance whether you’re going to get paid and how much. Working without pay for a charitable organization is one thing. Working without pay for a government agency, especially with a fancy title like “Senior Adviser to the Chief of Staff,” sounds suspicious. What’s he getting out of it, if not pay?
His presence, going by the Wired piece, was one more case of DOGE inserting itself into a government agency in disregard of established security and confidentiality standards.
Lavingia’s presence in the VA’s GitHub instance—a publicly viewable platform that houses projects and code for VA.gov—set off immediate alarm bells. It bore all the hallmarks of DOGE’s incursion into the federal government: Lavingia, a startup CEO and engineer with no government experience, all of a sudden had power—and was in their systems. …
One person with knowledge says that Lavingia had been given what’s known as a “zero account,” which would allow him to be granted privileged access to VA systems.
21 days into his position, Lavingia “returned home to New York to work remotely out of the basement of the Manhattan VA Medical Center.” It isn’t clear whether he handled sensitive data from there. There have been other reports of DOGE people handling sensitive data offsite, where its safety couldn’t be guaranteed, but there’s no specific indication here.
After reading the available information, I can’t reach a conclusion about whether Codex was justified in booting Lavingia. I don’t know what rule he’s supposed to have violated, or even what the rules are. Codex’s statement makes it look bad. The language looks like standard left-wing sarcasm; expulsions for mysterious reasons make members “feel safe” and increase “diversity.” Lavingia’s role in DOGE doesn’t include anything that’s obviously relevant to his membership in Codex, at least so long as he doesn’t have a position of responsibility. On the other hand, what he’s said about his DOGE participation doesn’t make sense. The whole situation is weird, and there isn’t enough information for me to tell exactly what’s going on. A code of conduct shouldn’t be a set of secret rules. All I can say is that Codex didn’t make itself look good, but neither does Lavingia.