Originally drafted on 30 May 2019 for The Carpentries Code of Conduct (CoC), in this document, I explore the role of a “CoC contact person” at online or in-person community events (in open science projects/organisations). Thanks to my long term allies in Code of Conduct, Karin Lagesen and Karen Cranston for moral support and thoughtful inputs.

Adoption and implementation of CoC in community spaces are required to ensure safety for all participants. A part of that includes the designation of a CoC committee who are responsible for handling CoC-related matters, including any report received regarding the breach of CoC. A CoC contact person at online as well as in-person events can further help ensure that trusted members of the community are available immediately to take reports if the situations arise. These CoC contact persons are henceforth referred to as ‘CoC facilitators’ in this document.

Designation of CoC facilitators can help go beyond the fact that an organisation’s CoC exists or applies to the event, but build an actionable way to ensure their enforcement.

Everyone is susceptible to bullying and harassment and several people have experienced or continue to experience it differently. Unfortunately, not all incidents get reported due to one or multiple of the following reasons: unfamiliarity with the policies and complaint mechanisms, dealing with the situation themselves, fear of negative repercussions, the social stigma attached to victims or not perceiving offence serious enough to make formal complaints. A survey project on ‘Support for Women in STEM’ [1] showed that over 50% of the cases don’t get reported because people are not aware of the members who are designated to take reports. According to another large-scale survey conducted independently by the Australian Human Right Commission [2] and YouGov in the UK [3] state that only 20-25% of encountered incidents are reported by the affected participants.

To ensure that no CoC violation or misconduct in our community spaces is left unreported, I strongly recommend CoC facilitator’s roles be assumed by trusted members of the community. They can act as the contact person to address queries and help report incidents related to CoC in our community spaces.

Every new member of a community is asked to learn about the CoC, its importance in their events, and how to assist others in reporting the incident to the CoC. The recommendation of designating the CoC facilitator is a step further in establishing a more welcoming space for our community members and empowering them by creating an accessible reporting mechanism for community events. Designation of trusted volunteers or leads of the events as CoC Facilitators will particularly create a secure space for members who face social disadvantages, or those who have experienced traumatic incidents in the past.

The idea of the CoC facilitators is not new for Open Source Communities. In the existing Code of Conduct documents (such as in The Carpentries Code of Conduct that I have massively contributed to, and where I participate as an Incident Response Chair) we already recommend our community members to move from being a bystander to being a CoC facilitator (listed in CoC incident response guidelines). The act of designating CoC facilitators will improve the effectiveness of the CoC by fulfilling the following duties at an event:

• The CoC facilitators will be a visible point of contact for the CoC.
• Their contact information will be communicated with the participants on the event website, in pre-event emails and at the beginning of the event.
• The CoC facilitators will share the CoC or community/event participation guidelines with the participants. They will be particularly crucial for helping our participants record any CoC violation reports and relay them to the CoC committee.
• They will make it absolutely clear who will be responsible to take any CoC-related queries and reports at the event (i.e. them or the event host/organizers) and relay them to the CoC committee of our community or a designated committee of the host organization.
• CoC facilitators will address clear-cut issues immediately as recommended in the current CoC - such as when someone is in physical danger or is being harassed, ensuring the safety of all our participants and informing the CoC as soon as possible.

I opened this conversation at a training event organized in UKZN Durban, South Africa in March 2019. I asked our workshop participants about what possible incidents of a CoC violation they might face in their workshops/events, and how CoC facilitators can help address them (see a summary of their notes). Main concerns raised are the possible occurrences of the misconduct or offensive behaviours from a participant or trainer towards other participants or trainers, sexual harassment, and unawareness of the mechanisms to report and address misconduct. These situations can be addressed by creating an accessible mechanism for incident reporting, supplemented by the designation of the CoC facilitators. It was particularly pointed out that the participants will feel more comfortable attending community events knowing that they have enough support in place through a trusted CoC facilitator.

We further opened this discussion to the wider community in a meeting on 18 April 2019 and received several questions that I have tried to answer briefly below:

Who is eligible to become a CoC facilitator?

• This is a volunteer role which can be taken by any trusted member of the organizing team (i.e. co-chairs, host, instructor or helpers). The CoC facilitators, like every community participant, must familiarize themselves with the CoC, the incident response, and incidence reporting guidelines. The CoC committee will provide all information to the CoC facilitators to facilitate their work.

What information would they need to take this role?

• Membership information with the recommendations, resources and the scope of this role has been prepared by the members of the CoC committee for the CoC facilitators (current draft). This document is to be made available online as a part of CoC documentation for all our community members upon approval. Thanks to Tracy Teal for suggesting to rename ‘CoC First Responders’ (my initial proposal on the name) to ‘CoC Facilitators’ in our discussion at an in-person event, CarpentryConnect Manchester 2019, where we piloted these recommendations with the event’s CoC committee.
  • Update: As of 2021, the document has been published as CoC Facilitators Module.

What are the main responsibilities of the CoC facilitators?

• The main responsibility of the CoC facilitators is to understand the CoC and related information such as reporting guidelines and CoCc contact form, be available to the participants to take notes of CoC incidents, help address emergencies, and effectively relay relevant information between the community and the CoC committee.

Who gets affected by the designation of a CoC facilitator?

• Leadership Team: This role should be first approved by the leadership team (core project team) as they introduce their contributors to the CoC at the beginning of their interactions. They will also introduce our new contributors to the role of CoC facilitators and recommend them for future events. Approve the revision of the existing resources to include the CoC facilitators wherever needed.
• Event organizers and program coordinators: The event organizers will be responsible to designate CoC facilitators for their event. The program coordinators will be introducing this recommendation in their workflow. They will provide all the information and resources necessary for the CoC facilitators to carry out their tasks.
• Community members: The designation of CoC facilitators will positively affect our community members by creating a more welcoming space for them. They will be aware of the people to who they can reach out for the necessary support if any emergency or non-emergency incident occurs.

The next important question is how we can incorporate their designation in our existing protocols for organising events.

Here are a few suggestions for how we can approach the issue of designating CoC facilitators:

• Community-organised events: When someone requests to host or organise an event under the scope of the community, they should be directly asked in their request form who will be designated as the CoC facilitators. The main organiser can be encouraged to look for a workshop helper who can take this role at their event.
• Onboarding staff/members: This information should be introduced in the community material so that the new contributors are informed about this role and make sure that they help organizers in designating a CoC facilitator for their workshops.
• Bigger events: Conference organisers can be directly contacted by the CoC committee to make sure that CoC facilitators for their events have been designated. If someone from the CoC committee is planning to attend their event, they can assume this role.
• Online meetings: The hosts of an online event should either request someone from their attendees before the event to take note of any CoC violation during the event or act as a CoC facilitator themselves. In both cases, they should inform their participants at the beginning of the event what the recommended and unacceptable behaviours for their meeting are.

CoC facilitators will not only make our participants feel secure in community events but will facilitate the work of the CoC committee in addressing CoC-related incidents. To implement this effectively, I invite you to open a discussion with your community leads.

References:

• [1] Sharan, M. (2019). Does Every Biased Action Have An Effective Reaction? Zenodo. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.7027580. (read summary in my blog under the same name: Does Every Biased Action Have An Effective Reaction?)
• [2] Working without fear: Results of the 2012 sexual harassment national telephone survey, Australian Human Rights Commission 2012. Report.
• [3] Sexual harassment: how the genders and generations see the issue differently in the UK. Lifestyle, 2017. Report.

The proposal for the CoC facilitator roles is culmination of several conversations with my colleagues in different spaces. This idea was further strengthened by my research work conducted in writing the cited article Does Every Biased Action Have An Effective Reaction? (originally posted on Club SciWri), where we assessed responses and actions against bias and other forms of harassment (sexual, mental, emotional etc.), indicated as ‘bias incidents’, experienced or witnessed by researchers at their workplaces. We also assessed the outcome of reporting such incidents, challenges associated with them and further recommendations to address them. This article summarises one of five-part series of articles reporting on the survey “Support Received by Women in Research (CSG-WiS)” (details: https://wiscsg.github.io/wis-csg-2018). Data for this report is available under a CC-BY license which can be cited as “WiS-CSG Team, & Malvika Sharan. (2019, August 12). wiscsg/wis-csg-2018: WiS-CSG Survey 2018 data and overview (Version v0.2). Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3366259”. All the identifiable information have been removed to maintain anonymity of the respondents.

Cover image by @kellysikkema on Unsplash