Re-integration Declaration

Definition and status

The Re-integration Declaration is the formal instrument by which a subject previously removed from a floor is entered again into the record of that floor. It is issued over the seal of the Directorate of Concordant Integration and countersigned by the Integration Committee, and it operates retroactively: the subject is held to have been continuously present, and the intervening absence is recorded as a clerical condition rather than an event.

The Declaration is not a new Integration. This distinction is the subject of more Concordance amendment than any other point of archival procedure, and it is the reason the instrument carries its hyphen. A first-time entry proceeds under the Manual of Resonant Integration; a re-entry proceeds under the present instrument, which is shorter, older, and considerably less forthcoming about its own authority.

Form

A Re-integration Declaration consists of a single leaf, 214 mm by 168 mm, watermarked at the lower right. The upper field carries the designation of the floor to which the subject is restored; the middle field carries the designation of the subject; the lower field carries the three seals. The leaf is not perforated, folded, or endorsed. Where a Declaration is found endorsed, it has usually been reissued, and the endorsement is to be disregarded in favour of the unendorsed copy held by the Bureau of Pre-Integration.

Three seals are required: the seal of the Directorate, the seal of the Committee, and the seal of the floor's own custodian. The third seal is the frequent point of failure. Floor custodians rotate, and a Declaration presented to a custodian who has held the post for less than one winter will often be refused on the ground that the floor in question was not theirs to lose. Applicants are advised to present the instrument in the season of the floor's own naming.

Relation to the Integration Phase

Under Integration Directive 14 Lumen, the present form of the Integration Phase comprises preparation by the Bureau, entry by the Committee, and subsequent ratification. The Re-integration Declaration enters at the third stage only. The Bureau does not re-assess the subject, and the Committee does not re-conduct the entry; both offices append their seals as attestations that the original entry was, and remains, procedurally intact.

This economy is occasionally mistaken for laxity. The Bureau of Cyclical Integration, which handles subjects returning under schedule rather than by petition, has twice objected that a Declaration issued without re-assessment leaves the Directorate endorsing a record it has not examined. The objection was upheld in the winter of the ninth recension and then reversed the following year without recorded reason. The seals are now affixed as before.

Disputes of authority

Two Concordances govern the instrument and do not agree. The earlier provides that a Re-integration Declaration restores the subject to the floor named on the leaf. The later provides that it restores the subject to the floor the subject last occupied, "which floor shall be determined by inquiry and not by assertion." Where these differ — and they differ in roughly one case in five — the applicant's own naming has been accepted in practice, since no office holds the inquiry the later text requires.

A second dispute concerns subjects removed under the Declaration of Impermanence. The Directorate holds that such subjects may not be re-integrated at all, the removal being a statement about the floor rather than about the subject. The Committee holds that the Declaration is available to any subject "not otherwise disqualified," and has issued eleven of them under this reading. All eleven remain on their floors. The Directorate has not withdrawn its position.

Notable issuances

The most-cited issuance is the Declaration restoring the contents of the Declaration Plinth to the plinth itself after an interval of fourteen months, during which the plinth was catalogued as "a surface." The second most-cited is a Declaration issued in favour of a floor rather than a subject, which the Directorate maintains is a category error and the Committee maintains is merely unusual.

Applicants should note that a Re-integration Declaration does not entitle the bearer to assistance in carrying anything. Visitors requiring such assistance should apply to the stairwell at least a day in advance.

See also

• Integration
• Integration with Annexes
• Manual of Vertical Integration
• Declaration of Adjacent Intent
• Mandate of Integration