NALMS Code of Conduct
Revised 28 September 2020
The North American Lake Management Society (NALMS) commits to promote a welcoming environment while fulfilling our mission of forging partnerships among citizens, scientists, and professionals to foster the management and protection of lakes, reservoirs and their watersheds. We intend to do this during all operations, which includes the annual NALMS symposium, by fostering environments that are safe, collaborative, supportive, and productive for all members and attendees, including sponsors, exhibitors, guests of members, invited speakers, and members of the media. We intend to conduct our business in a fair, honest, and ethical manner that values the diversity of views, expertise, opinions, backgrounds, and experiences reflected among our membership and all conference and event attendees.
All attendees, speakers, sponsors and volunteers at our conference are required to abide by the following code of conduct. Organizers will be available for those that need to report an incident or concern. We expect cooperation from all participants to help ensure a safe, welcoming and inclusive environment for everyone.
Expected Behavior
- Treat everyone with respect.
- Communicate openly and thoughtfully and be considerate of varying views, opinions, levels of experience, and backgrounds.
- Be respectful in your critique of ideas and avoid personal attacks directed toward other attendees, participants, NALMS staff, sponsors, and vendors.
- Respect the rules and policies of the symposium venue, hotels, NALMS contracted facilities, or any other venue.
- Be mindful of your surroundings and fellow participants. Alert a NALMS staff member or designated contact person if you notice unacceptable behavior, a dangerous situation or someone in distress.
Unacceptable Behavior
- Harassment and intimidation, including any verbal, written, or physical conduct designed to threaten, intimidate, or coerce another attendee, speaker, volunteer, exhibitor, NALMS staff member, service provider or other meeting guest;
- Discrimination based on gender or gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, religion, national origin, or culture; or
- Physical or verbal abuse of any attendee, speaker, volunteer, exhibitor, NALMS staff member, service provider or other meeting guest.
- Examples of unacceptable behavior also include, but are not limited to: inappropriate use of nudity and/or sexual images in public spaces or in presentations; threatening or stalking any NALMS symposium participant; or sexually harassing any NALMS symposium participant.
- Disruption of talks at oral or poster sessions, in the exhibit hall or at other events organized by NALMS at the meeting venue, hotels, other NALMS contracted facilities, or online is not allowed.
Consequences
- Anyone requested to stop unacceptable behavior is expected to comply immediately.
- Corrective action may take any of the following forms: verbal warning; expulsion from an Event; expulsion from an Event with no refund of conference fees; barred from future NALMS Events; and/or notification of appropriate authorities.
- To protect all parties involved, NALMS will generally not make any detailed public statements about Code incidents. The decisions of NALMS are final.
Reporting Unacceptable Behavior
- If you are the subject of unacceptable behavior or have witnessed any such behavior, please immediately notify a NALMS staff member or a designated contact person.
- Notification should be done by contacting a NALMS staff person or the designated contact persons on-site, by emailing your concern to the NALMS Ethics Committee co-chairs, Julie Chambers and Sarah Burnet (ethics@nalms.org), or by completing the complaint form.
- Anyone experiencing or witnessing behavior that constitutes an immediate or serious threat to public safety at the Event location or other NALMS event is advised to either tell venue security or locate a house phone and ask for security.
- Reporting should never be done via social media.
Administration
- Any reports of unacceptable behavior will be handled on a case-by-case basis by one or more of the designated contact persons.
- The Code of Conduct, including contact information for the designated contact persons, will be made available to all members and Event attendees as follows: inserted into the Event program, posted to the NALMS website, and included in the NALMS Operations Manual and Strategic Plan.
- NALMS staff and designated contact persons will be introduced at the beginning of the Event and will make every effort to be visible and available during the Event.
- The list of designated contact persons will be updated annually prior to publication in the Event program.
Code of conduct adapted from International Marine Conservation Congress (IMCC), Ecological Society of America (ESA) and Coastal & Estuarine Research Federation
http://conbio.org/mini-sites/imcc-2016/registration-participation/code-of-conduct/