Apartment CaféThe General Gist
- Let’s all try to get along
- Keep the space safe and respect people’s stuff (this includes their bodies, their physical property, their reputation, and general dignity)
- Keeping the space safe for all trumps people’s individual rights
- When in doubt, ask instead of assuming something
- Hosts and organizers first priority is keeping the space safe and inviting
- We’re trying to be an accessible and anti-oppressive space - and we’re all learning how best to do that. If there’s a way that we can make the space safer for you, we want to hear!
- If there are concerns about serious conflict, people may be asked to leave
- We’re all human, and we all make mistakes: people are expected to take responsibility for their actions if they cross a line
The Long-Form Version
This code of conduct applies to all Apartment Café spaces, both online and in-person. Some Apartment Café spaces may have additional rules in place, which will be made clearly available to participants. Participants are responsible for knowing and abiding by these rules.
Apartment Café spaces are an inclusive environment, based on treating all individuals respectfully, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, age, medical conditions, race, nationality, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof), or socioeconomic status.
Expected Behaviour
Respectful behavior includes:
- Be considerate, kind, constructive, and helpful.
- Attempt collaboration before conflict.
- Avoid demeaning, discriminatory, harassing, hateful, or threatening behavior, speech, and imagery.
- Treat Hosts’ homes with care and courtesy.
- If you're not sure, ask someone instead of assuming.
The following behaviors are unacceptable within Apartment Café spaces:
- Violence, threats of violence or violent language.
- Discriminatory language, jokes, and insults.
- Posting or displaying sexually explicit or violent material.
- Posting or threatening to post other people’s personally identifying information.
- Touching or moving an individual’s personal items without their consent.
- Non-consensual photography or recording.
- Non-consensual physical contact.
- Unwelcome attention, comments or jokes directed at an individual.
- Deliberate intimidation, stalking or following (online or in person).
- Advocating for, or encouraging, any of the above behavior.
Apartment Café prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort. Hosts and Organizers will not act on complaints regarding:
- ‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’
- Reasonable communication of boundaries, such as “leave me alone,” “go away,” or “I’m not discussing this with you.”
- Communicating in a ‘tone’ you don’t find congenial
- Criticizing racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behavior or assumptions
Own Your Actions
Should you catch yourself behaving disrespectfully, or be confronted as such, own up to your words and actions, apologize accordingly, and respect other participants’ boundaries. No one is perfect, and even well-intentioned people make mistakes. What matters is how you handle them, and avoiding repeating them in the future.Reporting and Consequences
If you experience or witness disrespectful behavior, and feel unable to resolve it respectfully (for any reason), please bring it to the attention of a Host or Organizer. Hosts and Organizers will seek to resolve conflicts peacefully and in a manner that is positive for the community. If a participant engages in unacceptable behavior, Hosts and Organizers may take any action they deem appropriate, up to and including expulsion from all Apartment Café spaces and identification of the participant as a harasser to other Apartment Café members or the general public. Hosts and Organizers will respect confidentiality requests for the purpose of protecting victims of harassment. Harassment victims will not be named to any third party without their affirmative consent. If the person who is harassing you is a Host or Organizer, they will recuse themselves from handling your incident. Hosts and Organizers may publicly name a person about whom harassment complaints have been made, or privately warn third parties about them, if we believe that doing so will increase the safety of Apartment Café members or the general public.License
This Code of Conduct is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license and derived from the Citizen Code of Conduct, IndieWebCamp Code of Conduct, Django Code of Conduct, and Geek Feminism Anti-Harassment Policy.