Code of Conduct at events

Bernhard R. Link brlink at debian.org
Wed Nov 10 13:11:47 UTC 2010


* Adrian Bunk <bunk at stusta.de> [101110 13:50]:
> > Also note that criminal punishment is enormously more severe than
> > censure or even exclusion by a conference organiser.  It is therefore
> > right that criminal punishment should have a higher standard of
> > proof.
[...many lines deleted...]
> > The other part is to make sure that everyone knows that at least in
> > our spaces, nonconsensual touching, not taking no for an answer, etc.,
> > are completely unacceptable.
>
> You don't need a code of conduct for going to the police and report a
> crime.

There still is an organizer and that one has a responsibility. Of course
an important part of every such code should be to make sure that the
issue is also escalated to the law enforcements and that the organizer
makes sure to offer help in that (making sure the police will be able to
reach all possible witnesses and making sure no information is lost by
simply not recording something, and so on).

But as Ian wrote, criminal punishment is one thing. The police and
the court system will take a long time to come to decisions. Until
they decide to remove someone, the organizers have to decide who is
allowed to stay and how to proceed. They can and have also to decide
how to handle those things that might not be pusnishable under local
law.

	Bernhard R. Link


More information about the Spi-general mailing list