Discrimination and Harassment Policy

The Discrimination and Harassment Policy committee was created by the Board at the July 21, 2022 meeting to:

• Write a code of conduct with more detail than the current “be excellent to each other”
• Create appropriate reporting mechanisms and policy for handling complaints on the code of conduct and anti discrimination policies
• Determine appropriate outside resources to support the organization in handling complaints
• Report the recommendations to the Board

Committee Chair: Sherry Ibrahim

Vice Chair: Jessica Wiley

Members:

• Kim Nguyen
• Michael Atherton
• Ethan Doak
• Aaron Rivers
• James Lancaster
• Serena Oden-Powers

Next Meeting: Tuesday, December 20 at 7PM in Classroom 1

Tuesday, November. 29 at 7PM in Classroom 3

Tuesday, November 15 at 7PM in Classroom 3

Tuesday, November 1 at 7PM in Classroom 3

Tuesday, October 18 at 7PM in Classroom 1

Modification recommendation to be presented at Dec 15, 2022 Board Meeting (changes in italics):

“We will respect confidentiality requests for the purpose of protecting victims of abuse. Investigations will be kept as confidential as possible. At our discretion, the results of substantiated investigations may be made public if we believe that doing so will increase the safety of MakeICT members or the general public. We will not name harassment victims without their affirmative consent. Nothing in this section precludes contacting the police or other legal authorities when indicated."

Code of Conduct Proposed Policy, as approved at the Nov 17, 2022 Board Meeting (the document was approved after eliminating a single word):

Code of Conduct

Shorter version

MakeICT is dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, age, race, religion, or genetic information. We do not tolerate harassment of participants in any form.

This code of conduct applies to all MakeICT spaces, including the physical makerspace, websites, forum, event locations, and any other spaces, both online and off. Anyone who violates this code of conduct may be sanctioned or expelled from these spaces at the discretion of the Board of Directors.

Some MakeICT spaces have additional rules in place, which will be made clearly available to participants. Participants are responsible for knowing and abiding by these rules.

Longer version

MakeICT is dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone. We do not tolerate harassment of participants in any form.

This code of conduct applies to all MakeICT spaces, including the physical makerspace, website, forum, event locations, and any other spaces, both online and off. Anyone who violates this code of conduct may be sanctioned or expelled from these spaces at the discretion of the Board of Directors.

Some MakeICT spaces have additional rules in place, which will be made clearly available to participants. Participants are responsible for knowing and abiding by these rules.

Harassment includes, but is not limited to:

• Offensive comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neuro(a)typicality, physical appearance, body size, age, race, religion, or genetic information.
• Unwelcome comments regarding a person’s lifestyle choices and practices, including those related to food, health, parenting, drugs, and employment.
• Deliberate misgendering or use of ‘dead’ or rejected names.
• Gratuitous or off-topic sexual images or behavior in spaces where they’re not appropriate.
• Physical contact and simulated physical contact (eg, textual descriptions like “*hug*” or “*backrub*”) without consent or after a request to stop.
• Threats of violence.
• Incitement of violence towards any individual, including encouraging a person to commit suicide or to engage in self-harm.
• Deliberate intimidation.
• Stalking or following.
• Harassing photography or recording, including logging online activity for harassment purposes.
• Sustained disruption of discussion.
• Unwelcome sexual attention.
• Pattern of inappropriate social contact, such as requesting/assuming inappropriate levels of intimacy with others
• Continued one-on-one communication after requests to cease.
• Deliberate “outing” of any aspect of a person’s identity without their consent except as necessary to protect vulnerable people from intentional abuse.
• Publication of non-harassing private communication.

MakeICT prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over people’s comfort. The Board of Directors reserves the right not to act on complaints regarding:

• ‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’
• Reasonable communication of boundaries, such as “leave me alone,” “go away,” or “I’m not discussing this with you.”
• Communicating in a ‘tone’ you don’t find congenial
• Criticizing racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behavior or assumptions

Reporting

If you are being harassed by a member of or participant at MakeICT, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please contact the Board of Directors at either  [[1]] or https://makeict.org/report/  . If the person who is harassing you is on the team, they will recuse themselves from handling your incident. We will respond as promptly as we can.

This code of conduct applies to MakeICT spaces, but if you are being harassed by a member of MakeICT outside our spaces, we still want to know about it. We will take all good-faith reports of harassment by MakeICT members, or participants, seriously. This includes harassment outside our spaces and harassment that took place at any point in time. The abuse team reserves the right to exclude people from MakeICT based on their past behavior, including behavior outside MakeICT spaces and behavior towards people who are not in MakeICT spaces.

We reserve the right to reject any report we believe to have been made in bad faith. Reports intended to silence legitimate criticism may be filed without response.

We will respect confidentiality requests for the purpose of protecting victims of abuse. At our discretion, we may publicly name a person about whom we’ve received harassment complaints, or privately warn third parties about them, if we believe that doing so will increase the safety of MakeICT members or the general public. We will not name harassment victims without their affirmative consent.

Consequences

Participants asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately.

If a participant engages in harassing behavior, The Board of Directors may take any action they deem appropriate, up to and including expulsion from all MakeICT spaces and identification of the participant as a harasser to other MakeICT members or the general public.

License and attribution

This anti-harassment policy is based on the example policy from the Geek Feminism wiki, created by the Geek Feminism community. (http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Community_anti-harassment) It is public domain, no credit and no open licensing of your version is required.