If you believe you’ve experienced or witnessed behavior that is out of alignment with the CSCCE core values or does not reflect the positive behaviors outlined in our Community Participation Guidelines, please let us know using this form. You can choose on the form whether or not to submit your report anonymously. We will review and update this reporting process as needed.
After receiving a concise description of your situation, the Code of Conduct (CoC) committee will review the report and determine next steps to take. In addition to conducting any investigation, they may provide a range of options, including a private consultation. They will involve other colleagues or outside specialists (such as legal counsel) as needed to appropriately address each situation.
The Code of Conduct committee
The CoC committee will be updated on a rotating basis. The current composition of the committee, as of October 2020 is:
- Lou Woodley, CSCCE
- Arne Bakker, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
- Arielle Bennett-Lovell, The Turing Institute
- Emily Lescak, Wikimedia
- Katie Pratt, CSCCE
How to Report
Reports of harassment/discrimination will be promptly and thoroughly investigated by the people responsible for the safety of the space, event, or activity. For individual events, including trainings, there will be clearly identified CoC incident responders. In all other cases, please use the reporting form as outlined above. Appropriate measures will be taken to address the situation.
Anyone asked to stop unacceptable behavior is expected to do so immediately. Contravening CSCCE’s Community Participation Guidelines can result in you being asked to leave an event or online space, either temporarily or for the duration of the event, and may result in you being banned from participation in spaces, or future events and activities.
Course and workshop participants will receive a logistics sheet with information about the training, including the tools we use and expected behaviors. Typically, your first point of contact to report concerns about conduct is one or both of the instructors or a designated independent third party if that is not appropriate.
All reports will be kept confidential. In some cases we may determine that a public statement will need to be made. In such cases, the identities of all involved will remain confidential unless those individuals instruct us otherwise.
If you believe anyone is in physical danger, please notify appropriate responders first. If you are unsure what types of responders are appropriate, please include this in your report and we will attempt to notify them.
In your report please include:
- Your contact information (so we can get in touch with you if we need to follow up)
- Names (real, nicknames, or pseudonyms) of any individuals involved. If there were other witnesses besides you, please try to include them as well
- When and where the incident occurred: Please be as specific as possible
- Your account of what occurred. If there is a publicly available record (e.g. a conversation on Slack) please include a link
- Any extra context you believe existed for the incident
- If you believe this incident is ongoing
- Any other information you believe we should have
What happens after you file a report?
Unless you complete the reporting form anonymously, you will receive an email acknowledging receipt. We promise to acknowledge receipt within 24 hours, or on the next working day (e.g., if the report is made on a weekend or national holiday).
The CoC committee will immediately review the incident and work to determine:
- What happened
- Whether this event constitutes a violation of the Community Participation Guidelines
- Who may have violated the Community Participation Guidelines
- Whether this is an ongoing situation, or if there is a threat to anyone’s physical safety
If this is determined to be an ongoing incident or a threat to physical safety, the immediate priority will be to protect everyone involved. This means we may delay an “official” response until we believe that the situation has ended and that everyone is physically safe.
Once the CoC committee has a complete account of the events they will make a decision as to how to respond. Responses may include:
- Taking no further action (if the report involved general rather than specific feedback).
- A private conversation between the committee (or a representative member of the committee) and the individual(s) involved.
- A participation hiatus (e.g., asking someone to “take a week off” from the CSCCE Slack workspace). A committee member will communicate this hiatus to the individual(s), asking them to take the break voluntarily, but if they don’t agree then it may be enforced.
- A permanent or temporary hiatus from some or all CSCCE spaces (courses, meetings, etc.). The committee will maintain records so that they may be reviewed in the future.
- Suggestions of resources or other actions that may support resolution, where appropriate.
We’ll aim to respond as quickly as possible and within one week to the person who filed the report with either a resolution or an explanation of why the situation is not yet resolved.
Once we’ve determined our final action, we’ll contact the original reporter to let them know what action (if any) we’ll be taking.
Finally, the CoC committee may make a report on the situation to the CSCCE advisory board. The board may choose to make a public statement about the incident.
CSCCE staff are held accountable, in addition to these guidelines, to our fiscal sponsor, Community Initatives’ staff policies. For contractors or vendors, violation of these guidelines may affect continuation or renewal of contract.
What if your report concerns a possible violation by a CoC committee member?
If your report concerns a current member of the CoC committee, please indicate this on the form. The form is received by CSCCE staff first.
Staff members will follow the usual enforcement process with the other members of the CoC committee, but will exclude the member(s) that the report concerns from any discussion or decision making.
Conflicts of Interest
In the event of any conflict of interest a committee member must immediately notify the other members, and recuse themselves if necessary. If a report concerns a possible incident related to a current committee member, this member will be excluded from the response process.
License and attribution
These reporting guidelines are distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. Please attribute any modified use of this material as “Adapted from an original by the Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement (CSCCE) under a CC BY 4.0 license.”