Berea Makerspace is dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone. We do not tolerate harassment of participants in any form.
This code of conduct applies to all Berea Makerspace spaces both online and off. Anyone who violates this code of conduct may be sanctioned or expelled from these spaces at the discretion of the RESPONSE TEAM.
If you are being harassed by a member of Berea Makerspace, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please contact the RESPONSE TEAM at responseteam@bereamakerspace.org.
Harassment includes:
- Offensive comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neuro(a)typicality, physical appearance, body size, age, race, or religion.
- Unwelcome comments regarding a person’s lifestyle choices and practices, including those related to food, health, parenting, drugs, and employment.
- Deliberate misgendering or use of ‘dead’ or rejected names.
- Gratuitous or off-topic sexual images or behaviour in spaces where they’re not appropriate.
- Physical contact and simulated physical contact (eg, textual descriptions like “backrub”) without consent or after a request to stop.
- Threats of violence.
- Incitement of violence towards any individual, including encouraging a person to commit suicide or to engage in self-harm.
- Deliberate intimidation.
- Stalking or following.
- Harassing photography or recording, including logging online activity for harassment purposes.
- Sustained disruption of discussion.
- Unwelcome sexual attention.
- Pattern of inappropriate social contact, such as requesting/assuming inappropriate levels of intimacy with others
- Continued one-on-one communication after requests to cease.
- Deliberate “outing” of any aspect of a person’s identity without their consent except as necessary to protect vulnerable people from intentional abuse.
- Publication of non-harassing private communication.
Version 1.0
Community Guidelines
Berea Makerspace presents the following guidelines to prevent harassment.
- Ask before touching another person or entering their personal space. Interpret the absence of a clear “Yes” as a “No” and abide by it.
- When community members and guests express a limit to the amount and type of socializing they wish to engage in, abide by that limit.
- You are encouraged to express any socializing limits you may have.
- When you question whether a joke, question, statement, or other communication would be considered inappropriate, do not proceed to communicate.
- When you are asked to stop any harassing behavior, comply immediately.
- Always strive to be excellent to each other.
Reporting
If you are being harassed by a member of Berea Makerspace, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please contact the RESPONSE TEAM at responseteam@bereamakerspace.org.
If the person who is harassing you is on the team, they will recuse themselves from handling your incident. We will respond as promptly as we can. This code of conduct applies to Berea Makerspace spaces, but if you are being harassed by a member of Berea Makerspace outside our spaces, we still want to know about it. We will take all good-faith reports of harassment by Berea Makerspace members, especially board members, seriously. This includes harassment outside our spaces and harassment that took place at any point in time.
The abuse team reserves the right to exclude people from Berea Makerspace based on their past behavior, including behavior outside Berea Makerspace spaces and behavior towards people who are not in Berea Makerspace.
In order to protect volunteers from abuse and burnout, we reserve the right to reject any report we believe to have been made in bad faith. Reports intended to silence legitimate criticism may be deleted without response. We will respect confidentiality requests for the purpose of protecting victims of abuse. At our discretion, we may publicly name a person about whom we’ve received harassment complaints, or privately warn third parties about them, if we believe that doing so will increase the safety of Berea Makerspace members or the general public.
We will not name harassment victims without their affirmative consent.
Consequences
Participants asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately†. If a participant engages in harassing behavior, RESPONSE TEAM may take any action they deem appropriate, up to and including expulsion from all Berea Makerspace spaces and identification of the participant as a harasser to other Berea Makerspace members or the general public.
When a violation of this policy is reported to a member of the Board of Directors, the board will open an investigation. The board will seek all necessary information from all persons involved, evaluate the information, and develop a plan of recourse within the Board’s powers. The Board of Directors is empowered to take the following actions against persons in violation of this policy:
- A warning
- A temporary ban from the premises for a to-be-determined duration of time approved by a majority vote of the Board of Directors.
- A permanent ban from the premises approved by a unanimous vote by the Board of Directors.
The Board may skip to more serious consequences at its discretion. A warning will only be given once.
The Secretary will keep a record of all allegations, information gathered, and penalties assessed. This record will only be accessible by the Board of Directors.