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Proposed Code of Conduct #22

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71 changes: 71 additions & 0 deletions organizational/conduct.rst
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Code of Conduct
===============

Hacker Society [#hacsoc]_ is, as Tim wrote in :doc:`hacsoc`, about an open
society:
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I would change this to restate the mission of Hacker Society.

The Mission of Hacker Society

A time and place for people to learn about technology from each other, in order to build a community, to empower the individual, promote equality, and build an open society.

Open Society: An open society promotes freedom of thought and expression, personal responsibility, individualism, cooperation, and equality of all citizens.

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++


An open society promotes freedom of thought and expression, personal
responsibility, individualism, cooperation, and equality of all citizens.

As such, we expect that our members behave in a way that allows us to achieve
this. Participants in HacSoc events are expected to treat each other with
dignity and respect for each other's perspectives, experiences, and knowledge.
In particular, participants should recognize that people of all skill levels are
welcome, and should always be willing to help others learn.

We want Hacker Society to be a place where people can be comfortable regardless
of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability,
physical appearance, body size, race, age, or religion. As such, we do not
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To support Hacker Society's mission of: learning technology from each other,
building community, and promoting equality, Hacker Society must be a place
where people can be comfortable regardless of gender, gender identity and
expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size,
race, age, or religion. Therefore, we do not tolerate:

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Yeah, this is a bit more grounded. I like it.

tolerate harassment. This includes, but is not limited to:

- Rude or unwelcome comments
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This should be clarified. I might find it unwelcome for someone to disparage my favorite editor, vim, I might even find it rude! However, it should be allowed. This is a silly example but one of the goals of an open society is to have freedom of thought and expression. This is necessarily in tension with freedom from rude or unwelcome comments. However, in the case of hacker society this is easily solved: comments attacking an individual on the grounds of: gender, gender identity, gender expression, attire, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, body type, race, age, or religion are considered rude and unwelcome.

We should strive for politeness and civil discourse but we should also strive to make all welcome. Even those with unpopular ideas or thoughts. So when does an unpopular idea cross the line? To me this happens when it is an attack on an intrinsic characteristics of a person. Here is an example of an idea which attacks a non-intrinsic characteristic: I hate how "Joe" is so bad at using email he always replies before quote text instead of after. The way "Joe" uses email is not intrinsic to Joe an may be violating other established community norms. However, saying: I hate how Joe always wears yellow shirts so ugly! That is saying something about an intrinsic to Joe their preference for yellow shirts. The former is allowed the latter would be viewed as unwelcome. In the same way saying: I love how Joe always uses vim, is fine but saying: I love how Joe always wears green it is so hot, is not fine.

This is a really tricky balance. In my views the goals are:

  1. A welcoming environment
  2. A non-sexualized environment
  3. A free environment where people can explore ideas

Freedom is necessarily subservient to the other two. If not than the loudest and crassest have free reign. A community has goals and norms and an open society can have both and still be open. Open for who? All who want to engage with ideas not engage with attacking personal characteristics of other community members.

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@timtadh: I agree. The original policy I was basing this on was a bit more specific - it actually spelled out the intrinsic characteristics you talk about. Here is the original line (note it's something of a template):

Verbal comments that reinforce social structures of domination [related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, religion, [your specific concern here].

I made the line more general mostly because I was hoping it could apply to more undesirable conduct; in retrospect, I don't know what else it really would cover. I was also unsure about the "social structures of domination" portion, since in my opinion, any attack on someone based on their intrinsic characteristics is problematic, not just those that reinforce the "social structures of domination". I might propose a simpler, but more specific wording:

Verbal attacks or unwelcome comments about gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, or religion

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@brenns10 That looks better. I also don't know exactly what they meant by "structures of domination." That seems to be pulling in a philosophical theory that I am unfamiliar with. I would go with:

Rude or unwelcome comments about gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, attire, race, age or religious expression.

or maybe better:

Rude or unwelcome comments about a person's gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, attire, race, age or religious expression.

It might be valuable to have some examples and have some discussion of the tension in the document itself.

- Sexual images in public spaces
- Deliberate intimidation, stalking, or following
- Harassing photography or recording
- Sustained disruption of talks or other events
- Inappropriate physical contact
- Unwelcome sexual attention
- Advocating for, or encouraging, any of the above behavior

Enforcement
-----------

This policy applies at all Hacker Society events, such as weekly talks, open
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s/events/events and spaces, both on- and off-line/

hacks, Link-State, HackCWRU, the mailing lists, our GitHub organization, and on
our Slack team. It applies to attendees as well as any speakers, sponsors, or
other participants in these activities and communication streams. Although we
don't have any direct authority over behavior in our typical "hangouts" such as
the Glennan Student Lounge, we expect that HacSoc participants will adhere to
these guidelines, and we also note that `Case's policies
<https://students.case.edu/handbook/policy/>`_ are always in force.

We expect participants asked to stop any harassing behavior to comply
immediately. If participants do not comply, the Maintainer and HacSoc officers
retain the right to take any actions to keep HacSoc a welcoming environment for
all participants. This includes warning the offender, or removing them from the
event or communication streams they are abusing. This also includes further
action, such as pursuing University action, should it become necessary.
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action...action
Sounds awkward


Reporting
---------

If someone is making you feel unsafe or unwelcome at HacSoc, please report it as
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Yo... so what if the person making you feel unsafe or unwelcome is an officer?

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this is a really good question. who can they report to in this case? another officer? somewhere anonymous?

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I suggest the department specifically Kim Yurchick as an alternate.

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This is a very good question. Policies I've looked at before have mentioned anonymous reporting options. We don't currently have one set up, but it was something I thought about bringing up. Of course, the problem still remains that even with anonymous reporting, if the anonymous reports go to the officer list, the person you're reporting about still sees the message, and probably is more likely to connect the dots about who is reporting about them. So I guess that leaves another officer.

If anyone has suggested strategies for this, I'd like to hear it.

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Another thing to think about is "What if I am an officer and someone is harassing me", especially if the other person is also an officer.
Probably straight to the department?

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The university has anonymous reporting options. We should refer people to those. For conferences/hackCWRU it is a different matter (but they have their own CoC).

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I think, with Kim's permission, we should list her as an alternative.

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Suggested change:

If you don't feel comfortable reporting a problem to an officer (perhaps because an officer is the problem) consider reporting the problem directly to any of the faculty or staff of the EECS department.

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Can we take that parenthetical and replace it with "for any reason"

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Took the change, removed parenthetical.

soon as possible. At events such as Link-State and HackCWRU, staff can be
identified by their shirts. At other events, you can talk to the officers or
maintainer. And you may always report harassing behavior to officers via email
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maintainer is capitalized somewhere else

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updated

([email protected]) or via private message on Slack.

Other Policies
--------------

As mentioned above, the policies of the `CWRU Handbook
<https://students.case.edu/handbook/policy/>`_ are always applicable at HacSoc
events and in HacSoc gathering spaces. Other policies that we believe apply
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do they apply here or do we believe they apply here?

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they apply

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:)

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I was the one who wrote "we believe they apply". One reason because my writing style was dancing around a bit, which is my bad :/. But the other reason I had to be hesitant was that these ACM and IEEE links aren't codes of conduct per se. They are statements of ethics that are a ton broader than "how do we expect people to behave in HacSoc gatherings." While most of the items in these documents are good things that I agree with, I think the purpose of our document is to lay out expectations for behavior at HacSoc events, not lay out a moral or ethical framework for our members. Also, I haven't taken the time to fully read and digest these policies, and I'm not going to say "these certainly apply" without doing so.

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So let's strike believe

Other policies which apply are:

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done

here are `ACM's
<http://www.acm.org/about-acm/acm-code-of-ethics-and-professional-conduct>`_ and
`IEEE's <http://www.ieee.org/about/ieee_code_of_conduct.pdf>`_, since HacSoc
represents chapters of both organizations.

.. [#hacsoc] In this code of conduct, we're using Hacker Society to refer to
"everything" - the ACM and IEEE chapters as well as the talk series
and mailing lists that are the backbone of our HacSoc community.
1 change: 1 addition & 0 deletions organizational/index.rst
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Expand Up @@ -12,6 +12,7 @@ Contents:

hacsoc
position_roles
conduct
slack
linkstate
ordering_food
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