Just ruminating on a few thoughts, so forgive my incoherence. It seems we’re talking about a bunch of different scenarios that will have different responsible parties.
The overarching issue is that skating culture is international and balancing different ideas of normal behavior when it comes to mixed-aged social groups where there may be divergent ideas of socially acceptable behavior. I would like to say there are some universally accepted actions that would be considered unacceptable but even those get clouded with ideas of severity of action and whose “fault” it was.
The thoughts below are probably impossible to implement but many other organizations seem to do a much better job that figure skating has in figuring this out. Of course, we’re fighting against a whole culture here so that’ll make it harder to adopt some of these common sense approaches.
First…I think the ISU, as the overarching institution, needs to put their foot down and implement and enforce a code of conduct expected during any officially-sanctioned event, including competitions, social events, etc. The purpose is to adopt best practices to protect the athletes. They also need to make it clear that they will dole out punishments when officials from federations fail in their duty to protect the athletes in their official capacity. I believe that the ISU can take the lead in how we shape attitudes towards sexual assault or other kinds of inappropriate behavior that puts the athletes of all ages in precarious situations, and difference in culture or no, there will be suspensions and other punishments to the federation if they failed to do right by their athletes by following this code. This means that the ISU can still hold banquets but they have to implement strong rules about how they should run them, like making sure minors have an accompanied adult, not serving alcohol, punishing participants who break rules at official social events, etc.
The thing about parties outside of the official ISU banquets are things that should be dealt with by the federations who are sending the athletes to competitions. I think so long as federations are assigning non-adult competitors to competitions, they have a responsible to ensure they are safe and have chaperones they can trust. They also need to make sure they are not negligent in their duties in ensuring the safety of their athletes, which will apply to all of their athletes.
The above won’t solve all the problems, but it’ll help get people conditioned to accepting new attitudes regarding the type of environment we’re allowing.
The athletes above age will still have options to blow off steam and whatever on their own time and at their own risk/judgment like the rest of us who have to rely on the criminal justice system when something goes wrong… that’s another can of worms I don’t have the energy to get into. They can still have their own age-appropriate private parties but they don’t have to be sanctioned by any official org representing a federation or the ISU. Not to mention that those throwing those private parties they’re not entitled to have young skaters who shouldn’t be there attending.
Now, there’s still the issue that one can be 18 and hanging out with an older coach, etc. This is where the whole code of conduct should really be beaten down as it’ll help teach a culture that has such blurred lines, as
@Willin mentioned, to start clearing things up and building up proper boundaries.
