hello welcome to code of conduct first responder training my name is Valerie Aurora my pronouns are she her and hers and I work for Frame Shift Consulting so what are code of conduct First Responders I define that as someone who is the first person with a duty to help enforce the code of conduct who becomes aware of a possible code of conduct violation and is not personally impacted by the violation so if you are the target of the code of conduct violation don't feel like you need to be the first responder so what do first responders do a few different things they prepare in advance to respond they pay attention when they're in community spaces or at events they listen carefully when people tell them about problems they take any immediate action necessary and they file or help file a report for longer term action so this training will be a quick overview of how to be a first responder a little bit about me I co-wrote the free ebook how to respond to code of conduct reports I was the lead author of a code of conduct in use by thousands of conferences and I spent over 10 years doing code of conduct work enforcing code of conduct codes of conduct convincing people to adopt them things like that I also teach ally skills do executive DEI coaching things like that this is just covering first responder training obviously that's a lot more involved in adopting and enforcing a code of conduct if there's anything you'd like to know about it you can download the free ebook totally free that I co-wrote with Mary Gardner and you can read transparency reports a few of which are included in this book but which are published by conferences to to outline what actions they took to enforce their code of conduct you can hire a code of conduct Consultants I do that off and on and you can take training classes another thing I teach training classes for responding to reports among other things here's the URL for all of those resources all right so I'm going to have a bunch of disclaimers first of all nothing in this presentation is legal advice and you need to use your best judgment putting it into practice there may be organizational rules local laws any other sort of regulations that will override this training I'm not responsible for anything you do and just so you know this training does contain brief mentions of things like physical assault sexual assault racism violence and other forms of oppressive language and behavior we won't go into detail though so here's a full terms of use if you could hit pause and read this I'll get out of the way terminology so I'm not going to define all of these things I'm just letting you know in advance that I'll be using these words interchangeably so code of conduct policy events spaces community perpetrator harasser target victim incident violation or harassment so the terminology around these things changes a lot and different people have different preferences this is just what I'm going to use in this presentation okay so here's what we're going to do I'll first I'll describe how you can prepare to be a first responder what to do in the moment how to intervene if necessary and then we'll go through a bunch of more complex problems around the topics of getting consent to report if people are drinking if powerful people are involved in this situation things like that so the first thing I want to say here is that we're going to go through a lot of different things to do and it's best if you have a written reference because when something is happening that's stressful and unpleasant it will be hard to remember all the things you've just learned in this training so having a written guide is really helpful there's one in the code of conduct book called the report taking form and there are links to other examples as well all right preparing in advance so first thing to do is read the code of conduct so you know what's not allowed you should tell new people to the community about the code of conduct so including links to it in the materials for joining an event or a community space reminding people of it reading transparency reports so these are publications of how other conferences handled code of conduct violations being supportive of the code of conduct in public communications will let other people know that you're a safe person to come to with reports and practice your canned responses we're going to talk about several of those later on just have this be part of your preparation during the event or when you're in the space pay attention to what's happening around you starting to be vigilant and paying attention to things that aren't necessarily going to happen to you but might be happening to people who are more marginalized than you is a great thing to do listen to people who tell you that they've seen problems get enough information to decide whether immediate action is necessary and if appropriate make a report or help make a report to the committee handling those sorts of things it's really important not to try to mediate or resolve or fix anything that's non-urgent in particular people sometimes violations of codes of conduct as conflicts between two people that need to be mediated that's not the case it's actually a problem with that person's behavior being in violation of community standards right if you do notice something going on keep in mind that people have a tendency to freeze in bad situations and it's okay if this happens to you I've certainly been in this situation before where it took me several minutes to figure to realize that something bad was happening and I needed to do something if you're not sure if something bad is going on you can get more information and we'll talk about how to do that in a minute take any immediate action necessary so this is talking about keeping people safe right now that might be stopping a talk it might be separating people it might be making a statement out loud about what's okay they might be saying we don't say that here and then you can make a written report and then follow up make sure that that written report got to where it needed to be and people are handling it if someone else notices something go find a quiet safe place to talk to them if it seems appropriate ask if you can find someone to support them somebody they already trust who can be supportive and help them get through this time ask if you can take notes it'll be important to get things correct later on tell them before they start telling you about something that you might have be required to report tell them that you are required to report there are many people who are mandatory reporters as part of their organization if you are that hopefully you've received some training and you know what to do here express empathy and care while they're talking to you about the code of conduct violation so this may not be necessary depending on the situation someone might just walk up to you and say hey this thing is happening and they're completely cool and don't need any support but these are a few things to keep in mind Report filing a report with the code of conduct team is very helpful for taking longer term action I suggest reporting even small things small things add up if somebody is doing a bunch of terrible little things they're probably going to do a terrible big thing there may be a pattern of behavior across one person or across the whole community all of that you can prevent something worse happening later on we'll talk more about when people don't want to report later on if you need to intervene in an ongoing situation start with evaluating the power relationships involved between you and other people between the other people being targeted and the person doing the harassment or violations in particular think about safety physical mental emotional in terms of career things like that and the potential for retaliation often it's the target who is most likely to face retaliation depending on your actions so very important to think through these things as much as possible so three of the options you have in this situation are distracting people getting help and confronting people so we'll go through those in a little more detail distract so less chance there's less chance of retaliation when you distract the people involved and it's good for getting more information so if you see someone who looks like they're in a unpleasant perhaps non-consensual situation just starting some conversation so here are a couple of the example and responses that I was talking about practicing earlier so you can say something like can I ask you where you got your laptop bag or you can give someone an immediate out by saying something like your friends are looking for you if you have a minute I can take you to where they are and this one's great because they can say oh no I'm busy right now I don't want to go and then you know it's okay you can do something like ask them to show you how to get to the bathroom another any sort of excuse for getting them physically away to a safer place where they can tell you more information and what they need you can also make conversation with the person that you suspect of violating the code of conduct this of course might be extremely unpleasant and result in them being angry with you so keep that in mind but if you're able to do that it's fantastic get help so you don't have to do these things by yourself you can think of who is nearby who's more powerful than you who is it easy for you to reach who do you already have a trust relationship with so often venue staff has a lot of experience dealing with people who are being jerks other event organizers can help you out you hopefully know them and have their contact information any other people you trust that you know would be helpful to you in this situation and then work together as a group it doesn't have to be one of you doing this at a time all right so just a little more detail on getting help remember this is not legal advice and you need to use your best judgment all disclaimers apply in general it's a good guideline to only call security medical assistance or law enforcement if someone is in immediate danger or if you if they request it or if you're legally required to do so again tell people if you are a mandated reporter or something similar sometimes bringing in these organizations or people from these groups causes more harm than good for example somebody who has frequent seizures does not want you to call an ambulance if they had to deal with an ambulance every day of their life it would not make their life better they should have a little card saying please don't call an ambulance in that case all right confront so this is something to think very firmly about safety first think about who is at risk of retaliation it might be you you might be physically at risk it might be somebody else it might be something more subtle at risk such as getting kicked out of their graduate program or losing their job or being forced out of their friend group but if you figure out that confronting is the right thing to do here are some more canned phrases you can practice what are you doing we don't do that here or you can tell people how you feel about it when people do behavior I don't like it take some time think up with something that you're likely to be able to remember and say and practice it now we're going to talk about more complex issues so what if the direct target says the violation is okay what if someone is drinking what if reporting the violation might harm innocent people and what about legal concerns I'll talk about each of these what if the direct target says the violation is okay so again people often think of violations of the code of conduct as a conflict between two people that needs to be settled and if the target says it's okay I forgive them then it's over it's not codes of conduct are about community standards and meeting them it's a conflict between the person committing the violation and the whole community so an example of this happening might be a straight person who uses a homophobic slur and then a queer friend of theirs says oh that's fine that's just how we talk to each other but the people around them are going to hear it or see it or read it and think oh homophobia is tolerated here and I don't feel safe the people around you get a say as well that's the community so I do think it's important to talk to targets they often have important information and context about the situation but it's not their job to decide whether or not something was a violation of the code of conduct that's for the community and the the code of conduct committee what if someone is drinking so studies show that the physiological effects of alcohol are very specific and limited they are clumsiness sleepiness lower problem solving ability and if you drink enough alcohol memory loss the rest of the things that people think of as caused by drinking are socially determined people only do them if they think they're socially acceptable so that includes things like violence sexual advances or rude comments it's only in cultures in which those things are considered to be the "natural" effects alcohol that people do those things the short version is that drunk people can follow the code of conduct and you should expect them to there's more information about the actual effects of drinking at this URL if someone "can't" stop themselves from violating the code of conduct while drunk they shouldn't drink at all that is the rule if that person wants to come to you and say oh you know I was just drunk I can't control myself when I'm drunk well now you know that and you should not drink around other people if there's a code of conduct involved events can send messages about what behavior is socially acceptable what is culturally acceptable and therefore what people will do when they are drunk or think it is okay for them to do when they are drunk by the way that they present alcohol so if you do something like have only two tickets for two drinks or only have alcohol that's not hard liquor or present a lot of very fancy non-alcoholic drinks or simply no alcohol at all all of these things will cause people to behave more in line with your code of conduct Finally targets do not deserve harassment because they are drunk or anything else such as wearing certain clothes being out late being alone anything like that everyone has the right to be treated respectfully and according to the code of conduct what if the perpetrator is very powerful codes of conduct should result in a the reduction of the abuse of power but they can't overcome a power structure by themselves they're still operating within that power structure holding a powerful person accountable is one step towards removing their power or reducing their power to hurt people but it often hurts the people doing the holding accountable if there's a situation in which somebody is violating the code of conduct and you look at it and say hmm if I do anything about this it's really going to mess up my life my career my mental health look for people who are powerful enough to take care of this without hurting themselves and see if you can get them involved what about anonymous reports people have a lot of valid reasons to stay anonymous when they report code of conduct violations so don't pressure them to break anonymity often this is concern for retaliation or just a major difficulty dealing with the emotional fallout anonymous anonymous reports are hard to investigate but enough of them will help the organization put together patterns of behavior in an individual person or across the community as a whole so anonymous reports are better than no reports please have a way for people to file them what if someone doesn't want to file a report at all anonymous or otherwise this really comes down to this basic conflict sometimes filing a report will hurt an individual person or people but it will help the community overall by getting rid of somebody who's going to go around and hurt more people so for example this is extremely common reporting someone for sexual assault for example would end one target's career but prevent 10 other people from being assaulted potentially often it takes multiple people taking this action to do it mandatory reporting can sometimes do more harm than good in this situation it's just a thing to keep in mind if you're able to set that policy so I don't have any easy answers here but you can look for clever ways around this situation what about legal concerns in general so I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice please check the disclaimer again you should get legal advice from your legal advisor so one of the things we are seeing as codes of conduct are implemented usually during the initial period in which they are beginning to be enforced perpetrators will sometimes use the legal system to get or maintain access to targets or further harm them if you think about it if there's somebody who really enjoys hurting people and you're taking away their ability to hurt people in your community they're far more likely to use the legal system to harm people more in an effort to keep themselves from experiencing consequences for their actions if your community has people with this level of dedication and the resources to use the legal system to harm you preparing for that makes sense so seek legal advice from your legal representation another thing to keep in mind when seeking legal advice is think about whose interests your legal advisor is serving in the ideal situation they're serving your interests specifically if you have some more questions specifically about how to respond to code of conduct reports which are not about legal advice again you can download this free ebook you can read transparency reports from other communities you can hire a code of conduct consultant I do that you can take training classes I teach those as well for other different parts of enforcing a code of conduct for example general leadership education is really helpful for knowing how to support the situation the code of conduct team and specific training for how to respond to code of conduct reports in terms of making a decision about what consequences to implement all this is available as well in this free ebook thank you so much I appreciate your time