Ms. Watson,

I am writing to you once, about one thing, and I do not require a response.

You expelled me from every Oregon State Parks volunteer program in a letter that named my public comments as the reason. Before you wrote it, you constructed a psychological account of me; a motive I had explicitly denied, a state of mind I had never described;
and you recorded my testimony as perspective. You did that knowing the origin of the matter was trivial and that it had not come from me. You had the record. You had my words, and theirs, on tape. You wrote something else. You participated in something else.

I have lived with the result for over a year. Not with hurt -- I want to be exact, because you were not, and because every person in your institution I have sought accountability from has chosen the weaponization of language over plain recognition. I have lived
with a fabrication about me, published under state letterhead, that I did not author and cannot unwrite. You used the authority of your office to replace what was true about me with something false, and there is no correction available to me. That is what
you did. It is not undone by anything in this letter, and it will not be undone by anything that comes later. No reversal, no finding, and no judgment undoes the damage of your choice. It is for that reason I have never sought those outcomes.

I served you with notice of a claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 in your individual capacity. I have thought long and hard about that choice, both before and after, and I have reached a decision. I am writing to tell you that I will not pursue that claim against
you personally. Not now, not later, not if this matter proceeds against the state, and not if it goes to trial. The claim is available to me. I decline to bring it.

This is not forgiveness and it is not a settlement. It releases nothing on behalf of the state. It does not diminish what you owe to me, or to the volunteers who came after me, or the ones before me, or to the ones you speak with now at the beginning of their
service. Your responsibility is yours and it is unchanged.

I am declining the claim for one reason. I know what it is to have someone with authority impose a personal cost on a person's life. You imposed that on mine. I have decided I will not impose it on yours. That decision is not about you. It is about what I am
willing to do.

You do not owe me an answer and I am not asking for one.

Robert Samuel White