Dear Community,

Integrity and transparency is of the utmost importance when serving a community. As such, with heavy and humble hearts your Tucson Pride Board of Directors wishes to inform our community of an error made and the action being taken to correct it.

Recently, as one of the newly implemented processes this year in the ongoing effort to develop sustainable structure, an internal review of the Mr and Miss Tucson Pride Pageant 2018 held on August 26, 2018 was conducted. The results of the internal review indicated a series of errors had been made. An internal review panel of 8 individuals consisting of contestants, board members, community members, and individuals with extensive pageant experience on a national level was convened to conduct a second audit of the pageant scores.

The results of all completed audits revealed mathematical errors had been made when calculating final scores for contestants. While it was previously announced the winner of the Mr Tucson Pride 2018 title was Christina Lancaster, “Justin Deeper” and the First Alternate to be Cain Pierce “Rexx Pilots”, the mathematical errors discovered have demonstrated the true title winner of Mr Tucson Pride 2018 to be Cain Pierce “Rexx Pilots”. In addition, the completed audit revealed Christina Lancaster “Justin Deeper” to actually be the First Alternate in the Mr category.

Acknowledging this error to you is difficult. We are deeply saddened to remove the title from Justin Deeper, who jumped into a representative role head on immediately following the pageant.  We are also deeply saddened at the loss of opportunity to Rexx Pilots in the weeks since the pageant to represent our community and meet his potential.

You may be asking yourself, how did this happen, and rightfully so.  The audit reviewed the processes for scoring and calculation, determining those processes allowed room for human error. Contributing factors included the score sheet layout, process for calculating scores by hand with calculators, and even the process for recording scores with judge’s hand writing them. We are committed to fine tuning these processes for future pageants to prevent an error of this magnitude from ever occurring again. Your board is already reviewing electronic voting systems to eliminate room for human error.

In addition, your Board and Royalty have met, reviewed the audit results, and discussed a plan of action.  The final decision of transferring the title or keeping title in place as is was left to Cain’s discretion, who carefully considered the options and discussed at great length with Christina. Cain will be assuming his rightfully earned title of Mr Tucson Pride 2018, and Christina will assume the role of First Alternate. In addition, the two will work together diligently as your representatives in the community.  We could not be more proud and honored to work with two such incredible people who conducted themselves with the utmost professionalism and sensitivity through this process.

While we cannot go back in time to prevent this regrettable error, we are committed to doing everything we can to make it right and prevent any re occurrence in the future. Thank you to all individuals who participated in the long process of conducting the audit. Thank you to the individuals who were not afraid to approach the board and ask questions, giving us the opportunity to demonstrate we truly embody the values of integrity and transparency, even when it means acknowledging mistakes. Most of all, thank you to you, our community, for your understanding and ongoing support.

Respectfully,

Your Tucson Pride Board of Directors