And also a policy could be support for an offendee to speak up that what happened to her/him was wrong.

Sorry to call her out, but Bess DID say that conferences "have also been problematic for me a couple of times" ALREADY, but she didn't know how to talk about it. A policy would hopefully give someone who also didn't know how to talk about such things some courage and some words to use.

And no, when there is even the perception of power imbalance as can happen when someone has a minority status (whether gender or culture or otherwise) it isn't so simple to just speak up and fix the problem. Sometimes you have to bend over backwards just to level the field a bit.

(Just sayin')

Christina Salazar
Systems Librarian
John Spoor Broome Library
California State University, Channel Islands
805/437-3198




-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Michael J. Giarlo
Sent: Monday, November 26, 2012 4:47 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] anti-harassment policy for code4lib?

Hi Kyle,

IMO, this is less an instrument to keep people playing nice and more an instrument to point to in the event that we have to take action against an offender.

-Mike



On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 7:42 PM, Kyle Banerjee <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 4:15 PM, Jon Stroop <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > It's sad that we have to address this formally (as formal as c4l 
> > gets anyway), but that's reality, so yes, bess++ indeed, and 
> > mjgiarlo++,
> > anarchivist++ for the quick assist.
> >
>
> This.
>
>
> > To that end, and as a show of (positive) force--not to mention how 
> > cool our community is--I think it might be neat if we could find a 
> > way to make whatever winds up being drafted something we can sign; 
> > i.e. attach our personal names
> >
>
> Diversity and inclusiveness is a state of mind, and our individual and 
> collective actions exert that force than any policy or pledge ever could.
>
> I'm hoping that things can be handled with the minimum formality 
> necessary and that if something needs to be fixed, people can just 
> talk about it so things can be made right. If we need a policy, I'm 
> all for it. But it's truly a sad day if policy rather than just being 
> motivated to do the right thing is what's keeping people playing nice.
>
> kyle
>