Code of conduct

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The organizers are committed to making this symposium productive and enjoyable for everyone, regardless of age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, nationality, political affiliation, religion, ability status, physical appearance or educational background. We will not tolerate discrimination or harassment of participants in any form (definitions provided below). Harassment and sexist, racist, or exclusionary comments or jokes are inappropriate. Sexual language and imagery, along with offensive comments related to gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, race or religion are also inappropriate.

Attendance at the symposium implies consent to abide by this code of conduct. Explicitly, please follow these guidelines:

• Behave professionally.
• All communication should be appropriate for a professional audience including people of many different backgrounds. Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate.
• Be kind to others. Do not insult or put down other attendees.

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

Any participant who wishes to report a violation of this policy is asked to speak, in confidence, to this meetings designated contact(s) who will be identified by the local organizing committee (LOC).

Please refer to “Protocols for dealing with violations of this policy” below for further formal processes around reporting an incident.

Discrimination is the act of treating either a person or a group of people differently from the way in which you treat other people on the basis of protected characteristics. These include (but are not limited to) ethnicity, race, religion, gender, national extraction, age, relationship status, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy, carer responsibilities, socio-economic status, mental and physical health or disability, or nationality.

Harassment is any behaviour where a reasonable person would have anticipated the possibility that the person harassed would feel offended, humiliated or intimidated. This conduct may include, but is not limited to: offensive or disrespectful verbal or written comments; bullying; slurs or negative stereotyping; threatening, intimidating or hostile acts; coercion of a sexual nature; sustained disruption of talks, or other events; telling denigrating jokes or insulting jokes about a given racial group; displaying or circulating sexually denigrating images or screensavers.

Consequences may range from verbal warning, to ejection from the meeting without refund at the sole discretion of the organizers, to notifying appropriate authorities. Retaliation for complaints of inappropriate conduct will not be tolerated. If a participant observes inappropriate comments or actions and personal intervention seems appropriate and safe, they should be considerate of all parties before intervening.

To avoid any confusion or bias in dealing with reports of violations of the code of conduct, the following protocol will be followed:

1. The designated contact will request a written record of the complaint including time/date plus particulars;
2. The designated contact will bring the incident to the attention of the Organising Comittee;
3. The designated contact will inform the individual(s) indicated to have violated the code of conduct, of the allegation and ascertain and record their version of events.

Based on the nature of the violation and the response, the Organising Comittee will decide upon appropriate actions. Where a violation of the policy is deemed to have occurred, a record will be kept.

This code of conduct is based on the “London Code of Conduct”, as originally designed for the conference “Accurate Astrophysics. Correct Cosmology”, held in London in July 2015. The London Code was adapted with permission by Andrew Pontzen and Hiranya Peiris from a document by Software Carpentry, which itself derives from original Creative Commons documents by PyCon and Geek Feminism. It is released under a CC-Zero license for reuse.

A version of the London Code of Conduct was sourced from CASCA Manitoba 2016 and was accessed at: http://astro.physics.umanitoba.ca/casca2016/index.php/code-of-conduct/ (5 June 2021).

Additional definitions and review of text has been sourced from:

ARC Exciton Science Code of Conduct.