((Ready Room))

“Hello CAPTAIN Tyler. It’s always nice to see one of my former students doing so well for themselves.” Dr. Peter Schwarz, Emeritus Professor of Cetacean Studies at Harvard, formerly a professor of the same at Starfleet Academy, said.

“Do you have a few minutes to talk about that list of greivances that your cetacean officers gave you. My research team had just concluded their analysis.”

“Professor Schwarz? Oh, uh, yeah, yes, for sure sir.”

“Peter is fine. So, it certainly looks like there’s definitely something here. Even when we do minus the 10% of the complaints that are just cetacean officers complaining that members of other species who have spurned their romantic advances. 80% of the rest of the reports can be verified in some way or another.” Schwarz said from his office on campus.

Tyler wiped his eyes, this was a startling confession from someone who knew the cetacean people better most others in the Federation.

“So what are you saying, some of those reports were jarring to read.” Tyler said, shocked to hear it from the man himself. Peter Schwarz was a moderately well known name across many different cetacean species and cultures. He had made it his lifes work to learn and study the various different cetacean peoples. Years ago, when Schwarz was a student at the Academy himself, he had even helped a few struggling cetacean classmates through their first few years. He had helped the cetacean people petition the Federation to allow them to form the first multi genus colony on what would become the Oceania 5 colony. He had even been the Federations Special Envoy to the Cetacean Peoples on more then one occasion.

“I’m saying it looks like we haven’t been treating the cetacean peoples very nicely the past 3/4s of a century. Especially the ones in Starfleet.”

“Wow…I had no idea. I’ll be honest, uh, I half expected you to tell me it was all noise. My second officer and his collegues are right? So, what can we do about it, si…Peter?”

Schwarz chuckled. “I only made it Commander remember. You actually outrank me Fred, even in retirement. I heard that you had made your top cetacean your second officer. Tell me how does he serve in that capacity, I remember the Cali class cetacean ops areas being realitively small and isolated?”

“Uh, ha, um, my chief engineers and few volunteers piped in a 7 wide water duct that leads to the bridge, theres a pool opening in the front right of the Blythes bridge. But a few weeks later she actually provided my 3 cetaceans with experimental with flipper mounted repulsors. They routinely use those now.” Tyler said, he hadn’t thought about much recently, but just those 2 actions themselves and greatly increased the cetaceans involved and interactions with the rest of the crew. And what they lacked in discipline at time, they usually made up for with poinient observations and outright hilarious commentary which always helped morale.

“Marvelous….But as for what we can do, well we start with a polite memo to both Starfleet Command and the Federation Council I would say. My team has drafted a basic memo including all the collated and organized reports. It shows some alarming signs that if we do not begin treating the cetaceans better, and granting some of their more reasonable requests, the job actions and labour disputes that have occurred every other decade or so could increase in size and regularity. Would you be willing to attach your name to it as well? I have a few colleagues here and at the academy that would be willing to endorse the study for publication quite quickly. And then we can send the memo and see if anything happens.”

“Of course I’ll attach my name to it. If this is as much of a problem as you say, certainly, I’m on board.” At that moment, Frederick Tyler’s fate as a Starfleet officer would be sealed. The fallout would take a few months to tickles down. But it was done.

The study would be published by the Journal of Social Sciences within two week, and what would forever be known as the Schwarz-Tyler Memo was sent out to various organizational bodies within a week after that.

The core of the memo itself was the 160,000 reports of misconduct, ill treatment, lack of recognition, refusal of reasonable requests, a lack of higher level promotions, and lack of physical mobility. It had 4 primary reccomendations that would help rectify the situation;

1. Increased mobility options that can be mass produced for cetacean peoples.

2. Larger living spaces inside vessels with cetacean ops departments. For their sizes, cetacean officers of all ranks routinely lived in quarters that were less then half the size of that of crewman in shared quarters had. Their living space was less then 10% of any other humanoid crewmates.

3. A compliment of Aquatic crewed Starships, commanded by cetaceans or other aquatic members of Starfleet.

4. To stop referring to the ‘Labour Stoppages’ and ‘Job Actions” performed by the cetacean officers across Starfleet as ‘Mutinies’.

It was that last one that, and as  the memo was sent out without Tyler even knowing, since he just agreed to attach his name to without reading it, that would land him in hit water. Several of the cases that Professor Schwarz and his team were calling “Job Actions”, were actual fucking mutinies, and Tyler rightly knew they were. Though a formal notice exempting 5 actual mutinies that Tyler informed Schwarz about was issued within days, the damage had already been done.