CoCc Onboarding procedures for new members

Any voting member of the Carpentries community, as defined in The Carpentries bylaws, is eligible to express their interest to volunteer to sit on the Code of Conduct Committee (CoCc) (CoCc). The Committee will invite new members every year through open calls and from available volunteers. When a current member needs to step down quickly/urgently, the Onboarding team will open an extraordinary call for volunteers.

The template document) provides a set of questions used in the previous calls for application. These questions can be updated or changed by the Code of Conduct committee for subsequent calls as needed.

Application review is carried out by the onboarding team members, and applicants are selected based on their previous experience and motivation to support the work of CoCc in the future. The onboarding team brings their decision to be discussed by the rest of the CoCc. The rest of the CoCc flags issues or concerns and confirms the selection when they agree with the initial decision. New members are invited to sit in the CoCc as full members upon their onboarding as described below.

General onboarding procedure:

Members invited or elected as Staff/Core Team and EC liaison, as well as selected through open calls for volunteers, will become full members through the following onboarding process:

• Read The Carpentries CoC document

  • Review CoC process flow diagram

• Read first chapter of How to respond to Code of Conduct Reports, a book by Valerie Aurora, based on a short guide written by Mary Gardiner.

• Read the four CoC policy documents

  • Incident Response Guidelines

  • Incident Reporting Guidelines

  • Incident Response Procedure

  • Termed Suspension Guidelines

• Review the membership agreement (includes confidentiality agreement)

• Review the CoCc Governance Document

• Participate in an onboarding meeting: Bring questions, challenge our processes and finish onboarding.

• Send an acknowledgment of the membership agreement by email to the committee .

Access to CoCc resources

The Onboarding committee will file a GitHub Issue to update the composition of the CoCc (onboarded/offboarded members). The Staff/Core Team Liaison will add the new members to and remove previous members from the:

• Mailing list (coc@carpentries.org)

• Google drive folder (non-restricted for all members)

• Google drive folder (restricted for chairs and staff liaison)

• Update CoCc web page with bio: https://carpentries.org/coc-ctte/

• Slack Channels: Private for CoCc for discussion and updates

Information management

• New members need to not have access to previous incidents

• Staff liaison should be responsible for maintaining previous records

• Only the Staff Liaison and the CoCc chair have access to the restricted Google Drive where reports are received and stored - and names and information of the reporters and reportees are maintained. They are responsible for communicating that with the rest of the committee.

• All notes are maintained in another Google drive that are accessible for all CoCc members. Report handling meeting notes are taken with pseudonymised the reporter and reportee names.

• All transparency reports are released periodically on GitHub repository for Executive Council, maintained under The Carpentries GitHub organisation: https://github.com/carpentries/executive-council-info/tree/main/code-of-conduct-transparency-reports.

• All CoCc policies are released on The Carpentries Handbook: https://docs.carpentries.org/topic_folders/policies/index_coc.html.

Next steps

• The Carpentries Staff Team and Executive Council (EC) will be notified by the onboarding team members about any new members

• All CoCc members will be eligible to join general discussion and business meetings upon their onboarding

• New Staff/Core Team Liaison will be included in committee discussions only after they have fulfilled the onboarding requirements specified by the CoCc and had a handover meeting with the previous Team Liaison stepping down from this role

• New EC Liaison will be included in committee discussions only after they have fulfilled the onboarding requirements specified by the CoCc and had a handover meeting with the previous EC Liaison stepping down from this role

• All members will follow the membership agreement (includes confidentiality agreement) and the governance procedure closely

Follow-up Procedures

Mock incident-based training as ongoing process

Upon onboarding of new members, the designated CoCc members (specific area leads) will hold discussion on the following content as part of the CoCc business meeting:

• Discussion based on selected theories from (How to respond to Code of Conduct Reports) - Aurora and Gardner.

• Specific CoC policy and enforcement documents

• Mock-scenario or external incident-based discussions for exercise

Currently, the CoCc training team is responsible for holding training and discussion sessions as part of the continuing CoC committee development.