Code of Conduct
1. Purpose
We want to make it clear that The Caving Crew is a friendly and inclusive community built around a friendly and inclusive club.
We want everyone to be happy, feel safe, feel welcome, and the entire world to be perfect.
If we are honest, we are struggling at “the world being perfect” bit, but with your help, we should be able to manage the rest of it.
2. Our Community
Below is our code of conduct:
We will have people involved in our community with a variety of gender identities and sexual orientations.
We will have people involved of all ages and maturities.
We will have people involved who have visible disabilities and invisible disabilities.
We will have people involved of many shapes and sizes.
We will have people involved whose skin colour is the same as yours and whose is different to yours.
Some community members will look and sound like you and some will look and sound very different to you.
There will be many beliefs in the community, be they religious beliefs, political beliefs, or other beliefs and they will at times differ vastly from your beliefs.
We will have horizontal cavers and vertical cavers, mud-lovers and those who prefer to stay clean, those who think Bagshawe is home and those who’ve had quite enough of Bagshawe for now.
Some will have voted to leave the EU and some to stay.
If you have a problem with being in the same community with any of these people then this group is probably not the community for you and you should not get involved.
If you cannot treat everyone as an equal then the group is probably not the community for you and you should not get involved.
If you can agree to disagree, be tolerant and respectful, and try not to upset others then you are a tremendous person, and we really want you to be a part of our community.
If your views and beliefs are different to other people’s then that is okay. Just do not allow them to upset or offend others. They will also be trying not to upset or offend you.
If you accidentally upset another person in the Crew or make them feel uneasy, even if you did not intend to, and even if you do not understand how this could happen, then you will want to work with the Crew to make things right and avoid any more upset.
We all make mistakes.
If you purposely upset, hurt or otherwise abuse another person in the Crew, then sadly you are not welcome and will be asked to leave.
The Crew committee is not judge and jury and is not responsible for enforcing morality on the world, but they are fixated on creating a friendly and welcoming community where everyone feels safe. Please please please help us with that.
3. Caving Crew Citizenship
A supplementary goal of this Code of Conduct is to increase citizenship within the caving community by encouraging participants to recognise and strengthen the relationships between our actions and their effects on our community.
Communities mirror the societies in which they exist and positive action is essential to counteract the many forms of inequality and abuses of power that exist in society.
If you see someone who is making an extra effort to ensure our community is welcoming, friendly, and encourages all participants to contribute to the fullest extent, we want to know.
4. Expected Behaviour
The following behaviours are expected and requested of all community members:
- Participate in an authentic and active way. In doing so, you contribute to the health and longevity of this community.
- Please be kind and courteous. There’s no need to be mean or rude.
- Remember and respect that people will have different opinions and ways to understand caving.
- Assume that everyone acts with good intentions.
- Attempt collaboration before conflict.
- Refrain from demeaning, discriminatory, or harassing behaviour and speech.
- Be mindful of your surroundings and of your fellow community members. Alert community leaders if you notice a dangerous situation, someone in distress, or violations of this Code of Conduct, even if they seem inconsequential.
- Remember that caving venues may be shared with members of the public and other caving groups; please be respectful to all users of these locations.
- We expect that cavers will be receptive to constructive feedback about safety aspects of their caving.
- The Crew events, Facebook groups and communications should only be used to organise caving, promote caving between members and should not be used to promote other groups, clubs, companies, specific instruction providers or things that the Crew members are involved in that are not linked to caving. Members are encouraged to make use of The Social Clan for these things.
- Please keep unstructured critique to a minimum, and follow feedback procedures and best practice when sharing critical feedback:
- Complaints about a person are best made directly to a member of the committee.
- If trying to improve someone’s skills, it can be helpful to ask if they know if there is a better way of doing it.
- If wanting to give feedback about a Crew procedure, the first point of contact should be a member of the Crew committee.
5. Unacceptable Behaviour and Gross Misconduct
The following behaviours are considered harassment and are unacceptable within our community. Engaging in these behaviours may result in disciplinary action under the Disciplinary Policy.
Serious or repeated instances of these behaviours may constitute gross misconduct, which may result in immediate removal from the club without prior warning.
5.1 Violence and Threats
- Violence, threats of violence, or violent language directed against another person
- Physical violence or bullying
5.2 Discrimination and Harassment
- Sexist, racist, ageist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language
- Unlawful discrimination or harassment
- Personal insults, particularly those related to gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, or disability
5.3 Inappropriate Content
- Posting or displaying sexually explicit or violent material
- Posting or threatening to post other people’s personally identifying information (“doxing”)
5.4 Inappropriate Physical Behaviour
- Inappropriate photography or recording
- Inappropriate physical contact – you should have someone’s consent before touching them
- Unwelcome sexual attention, including sexualised comments or jokes, inappropriate touching, groping, and unwelcome sexual advances
5.5 Intimidation and Stalking
- Deliberate intimidation, stalking or following (online or in person)
5.6 Disruption
- Sustained disruption and/or repetitive last-minute cancellations and not turning up at events
- Spamming, trolling, flaming, baiting or other attention-seeking behaviour
5.7 Safety Breaches
- A serious breach of health and safety rules
- Causing loss, damage, or injury through serious negligence
- Serious incapability during club activities brought on by alcohol or illegal drugs
5.8 Organisational Misconduct
- Theft or fraud
- Deliberate and serious damage to property
- Serious misuse of the club’s property or name
- Serious insubordination
- Bringing the club into serious disrepute
- A serious loss of confidence
5.9 Encouragement of Misconduct
- Advocating, encouraging or inciting any of the above behaviours
6. Consequences of Unacceptable Behaviour
Unacceptable behaviour from any community member, including Facebook group members and those with decision-making authority, will not be tolerated.
Anyone asked to stop unacceptable behaviour is expected to comply immediately.
If a community member engages in unacceptable behaviour, the community organisers may take any action they deem appropriate, up to and including a temporary ban or permanent expulsion from the community without warning (and without refund in the case of a paid event).
For Crew members and those who have attended one or more Caving Crew events in person in the last 12 months, this will involve following the club Disciplinary Policy.
For members of the community who are not club members, club volunteers and committee members may take action they see fit to protect the community. This will be subject to appeal.
7. Reporting Concerns
If you are subject to, or witness unacceptable behaviour, or have any other concerns, please notify the organiser of the event you are at, or the club Secretary as soon as possible.
Contact Details
- Secretary: [email protected]
- Committee: [email protected]
- Chair: [email protected]
In cases where allegations are made against the Secretary, another member of the Exec will be named as the contact person.
8. Raising Concerns
If you have been accused of violating this Code of Conduct:
If you feel you have been falsely or unfairly accused, the appeal process set out in the Disciplinary Policy is the appropriate route to challenge this.
If you have other concerns:
If you have a concern about how the club is run, a committee decision, or your experience as a member (that isn’t a Code of Conduct matter), please contact the Secretary. We’ll try to resolve it informally through discussion. If you’re not satisfied, you can request a meeting with the committee, whose decision will be final.
This procedure applies to all the Caving Crew community, including Facebook groups and activity chats.
9. Scope
We expect all community participants (club members, paid or otherwise; Facebook group members; and other guests) to abide by this Code of Conduct in all community venues – online and in-person – as well as in all one-on-one communications pertaining to community business.
This code of conduct and its related procedures also applies to unacceptable behaviour occurring outside the scope of community activities when such behaviour has the potential to adversely affect the safety and well-being of community members.
10. Related Documents
- Disciplinary Policy
- Emergency Policy
- Under 18 Policy
11. Licence and Attribution
This Code of Conduct is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence.
Portions of text derived from The Climbing Clan Code of Conduct, the Django Code of Conduct, the Geek Feminism Anti-Harassment Policy, the Citizen Code of Conduct, the Rust Lang code of conduct, and the Barcamp North East Safe Spaces policy.