[LCA2011-Chat] Some Anti-Harassment Policies considered harmful

From: Luke Weston <reindeerflotilla>
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2011 18:13:42 +1100

Let's take a look at our existing LCA terms and conditions and policies -
and look at how we might tweak such things or make things better next time.

"lca2011 is proud to support diverse groups of people in IT, and will not
tolerate in any fashion any intimidation, harassment, and/or any abusive,
discriminatory or derogatory behaviour by any attendees of lca2011 and/or
lca2011-related events."

The above is just verbatim copypasta from the LCA2011 terms and conditions.
I completely agree with the above. One sentence - that's 99% of
the harassment policy we need.

Note that abuse, harassment and intolerance can be quite broad - and we
should remember that it is by no means just sexual harassment that we need
to protect against.

"Any complaints can be made to the lca2011 Organisers by contacting the
Registration Desk during lca2011. All complaints made to lca2011 Organisers
will remain confidential, will be taken seriously and investigations will be
made. Where lca2011 Organisers consider it appropriate, lca2011 may take any
or all of the following measures:"

The above sounds perfectly good by me. The organizers will keep things
confidential, investigations will be made, and actions will be taken at the
discretion of the organizers.

"Secondly it gives the more radical attendees a lot of hammers to hit the
conference organisers over the head with. Get pissed off with someone
and don't want them in the same bar as you? Claim that are harassing
you by following."

I can understand why some people might feel slightly wary of broad
anti-harassment policies. I have personally been the victim of a woman
making a untrue, vexatious claim of sexual harassment against me to women
higher up the organization who she knew would be more likely to believe her
claims over mine. This sort of thing does happen, and it's a pretty
distressing experience.

Sure... unlikely to happen at LCA, right? Yes, the probability is low - but
it's not impossible. The same is true for an actual case of harassment or
assault at LCA - the probability is not zero, but it is low.

However, it seems to me that the terms and conditions, as I reproduced
above, don't allow the accused perpetrator of harassment to be judged
unreasonably, without an examination of evidence by multiple people within
the organizing team.

Therefore, for me personally at least, I feel pretty comfortable, satisfied
that safeguards do exist to prevent the conference's
anti-harassment policies being misused.

More copypasta from the existing T&Cs:

   - "the alleged offender may be told to apologise
   - the alleged offender may be told to stop/modify his/her behaviour
   appropriately
   - the alleged offender may be warned that enforcement action may be taken
   if the behaviour continues
   - the alleged offender may be asked to immediately leave the venue and/or
   will be prohibited from continuing to attend lca2011 (without reimbursement)
   - the incident may be reported to the Australian Police and/or Human
   Rights Commission
   - any other measure the lca2011 Organisers see fit"

Again... this all looks perfectly good to me. This specifically spells out
that the organizers have got real teeth to police incidents of harassment,
there are different grades of action which may be taken, and it's largely
open to the discretion of the organizers. This is all important and
valuable.

The only thing I would add or edit on the T&C page is to add email addresses
or phone numbers of conference organizers who someone can talk to if they
feel they have been the victim of harassment. If harassment does occur, a
person probably wouldn't be comfortable going to the registration area to
talk about it in a public space.

The existing content on the AHP page is really good in this regard - it
includes email addresses, phone numbers, etc.

Now... to be honest, prior to attending LCA2011, I'm pretty sure I never
actually read the Harassment Policy, nor the official Terms and Conditions.
However, I was definitely told, at least once, that as a speaker my slides
and presentation content must be "G-rated", outside of either of those two
documents.

Therefore, I think that Pesce definitely did violate what was asked of him
as a speaker, irrespective of the existence of or the content of either the
Terms and Conditions or the Harassment Policy.

When I read the official conference T&C and the AHP, to be honest it reads
to me like those two documents are 90% redundant.
Personally, I don't think we need layers and layers of redundancy in what we
ask of our attendees and speakers. Perhaps we can merge the two together?

I for one accept the apology - but please don't let it happen again,
anybody.

The existing rule we've got says G-rated - and G-rated doesn't leave a whole
lot of room for interpretation or discretion.

Is there ever any reason why we *need* greater-than-G-rated content in
anyone's presentation at all?

The existing AHP text says "If someone asks you to stop harassing behaviour,
your business with them is done, and you should leave them alone." I'm
thinking perhaps that should be clarified and re-worded. If someone asks you
to stop harassing behavior, you should bloody well stop harassing behavior.
But I'm not clear as to what "your business with them is done" means. If
someone tells you that they consider your behavior harassing and asks you to
stop that particular behavior, does that mean you must no longer speak to or
interact with them at all?

I hope my disorganized thoughts prove helpful :)

Cheers,
  Luke
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