The seed for SYNHAK was planted on April 5th, 2011 at Noisebridge during Camp KDE. At the time, I was a KDE developer who was starting to get involved by contributing to Phonon-GStreamer. This was my first FOSS event and first big adventure by myself. Moreso, I was traveling across the country to a city that hadn’t even crossed my mind as all that important to me. Hey, I was young, yeah?

The last day of Camp KDE was a brief after-party at the Noisebridge Hacker Space in San Francisco. I had heard about hackerspaces before, but only vaguely. I knew that strange things came out of them and interesting projects happened there. I was too absorbed in schooling and KDE to pay attention outside my bubble.

After just a few minutes, I was sold on the idea. The tools, the art, the community, the vibe. This was something I wanted in Akron, but I wasn’t sure if it was possible.

Months later, I had been discussing the subject with my friend Ryan. At some point he said:

<rrix> Go for it.

And that I did.

Around that time, I had been ejected from the Computer Science department at the University of Akron, the details of which can be another story entirely. Looking for socialization, I wandered into the shack on top of Zook Hall where W8UPD — The University of Akron HAM Radio Club — lived. There I met Chris Egeland. He later became one of our first Champions at SYNHAK, alongside myself and Omar Rassi.

It is now Tuesday, July 1st, 2014.

I have been banned from my own hackerspace for just over two months now. Last week I was harassed by the board of SYNHAK who insists that I am capble of single-handedly ruining their image, asking me to stop the “unjustified and unwarranted” attacks I’m apparently making on twitter. In the two months since being banned, the only thing I’ve done is share a handful of e-mails from the publically available discuss@synhak.org mailing list. Here’s an excerpt:

From: Andrew Buczko <a4s8b7@dsprototyping.com>

To: SH Members <members@synhak.org>

Mar 11

I'd like to resolve this issue by having Torie (Trevor Fisher) put on suspension from SynHak (this will include SynHak's mailing lists and any other service) for a giving amount of time.

I feel that she needs time to cool off for 3 months, 6 months a year? I'll leave the time period up to the champions. Or at least until her sex change is done (since it has been brought up to me that this "behavior" of her's is due to her taking hormones. ) <-- not mentioned before since it's none of my business.

Hormones or not, the other members and the community should not have to suffer because of her antics.

I am a proud transgender woman. Been that way for as long as I can remember. This Andy Buczko is on the board of SYNHAK, the former Akron hackerspace. Since early January 2014, he has harassed me, picked fights with me, and generally bummed all the other synhakkers out.

I really wish I could include more examples of his incredibly abusive behavior, but that wouldn’t even scratch the surface. Nor is he alone.

Many former synhakkers attempted to resolve our differences by working to create a Community Working Group within the space, modeled after KDE’s own. No less than five members stepped up to get folks involved in fixing these issues. At every turn, they were rebuffed by the board of SYNHAK under the guise of it being a “trap” to remove the board.

They were mostly right. The purpose of the Community Working Group was to make sure toxic members of the community were kept out and the culture of SYNHAK was preserved.

Anna-Janine Herman, Justin Herman, Steve Radonich, Devin Wolfe, and Becca Salchak fought admirably to take the idea of SYNHAK and twist it into the next bullet point on their resume. For three years, we ran under the triumvirate of Consensus, Excellence, and Do-Ocracy. In three years, SYNHAK went from a small group of four hackers in a North Hill garage into a huge community in northeast ohio with 25 members, a $15,000 grant, and 4,030sqft of space in Downtown Akron.