It's been my experience that "incident handling" is one of the most important parts of this kind of policy. If something does happen, nothing hurts the situation more (and can damage the organization's reputation) than board members doing well-meaning but conflicting things. As we've seen in some famous examples, things get messed up irreparably in the first few hours when the board is slow to react or puts forth a mixed message.
Assuming that all incidents can be prevented is like believing a anti-virus product means you don't need to plan for a security problem. (not that anyone on this list has said that yet) That said... constructing this kind of policy is really really difficult. There are hidden trips and traps all along the way, as well as legal issues people generally wouldn't have though of. Luckily someone's already done the work for us by making a really excellent template:* Announcement: http://geekfeminism.org/2010/11/29/get-your-conference-anti-harassment-policy-here/ Template: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Conference_anti-harassment/Policy Also I recommend that people working on setting up such a policy read the stories about past incidents to understand what it looks like when things go well and when things go badly: (the first 3 are most relevant) http://lwn.net/Articles/417952/ http://blog.nerdchic.net/archives/418/ http://geekfeminism.org/2011/10/13/on-being-harassed-a-little-gf-history-and-some-current-events/ http://geekfeminism.org/2010/11/07/noirins-hell-of-a-time/ http://blog.valerieaurora.org/2010/12/02/an-inside-look-at-being-a-women-in-open-source/ http://blog.valerieaurora.org/2010/11/08/its-not-just-noirin/ Tom * Those "someone's" include Esther Filderman andBeth Lynn Eicher who are both LOPSA people. -- http://EverythingSysadmin.com -- my blog http://www.TomOnTime.com -- my videos _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
