Hi All, I am glad to see there's a discussion about CoC's in general. I have been involved personally in running a weekly dance event in the Bay Area, CA. We have had a code of conduct from the beginning (over 6 years now) and it does change slightly over time but generally has served the purpose of keeping our community safe.
Keep in mind that we have a lot of folks who live in the immediate area and see each other at our events as well as other events and socially outside events. Since it's a dance event we have the absolute need to keep in mind comfort levels of all involved and keeping everyone both physically save but also save from harassment/abuse. I can go into more details for anyone who's interested but we have never had an issue with anyone trying to abuse our CoC or questioning the reason to have one. We have had to ban folks from our events. The general community here also includes keeping a group of leaders from other events involved in anything that results in actions taken beyond the first warning. The offenses can be so many things, some of which are broad and some are more specific. Simple things like hygiene, lifts/dips, floor craft are listed but then we have to deal with suggestive behaviors, unwanted touching, serial behaviors, etc. Because we live amongst each other there have also been occassions where we need to take into consideration things that have happened outside the event. Don't get me wrong, it's not easy to have to warn folks, have uncomfortable discussions with folks, and ban folks from events. One thing that has been clear, the whole community now expects that events have these CoC's in place and that the leaders will take reports seriously and deal with them. It's always clear who can be approached to report the issues and that the safety of the community is the only reason it exists. Robin
