---
# System prepended metadata

title: FAC should be a space where everyone's voice is heard

---

# FAC should be a space where everyone's voice is heard


## The problem

FAC19 have had continual problems with some of the men on the cohort dismissing women's ideas, monopolising group discussion time and generally creating a less than ideal learning environment.

## What

Founders and Coders as an organisation should take an active role in determining acceptable and optimal behaviour for the course. We should not rely on each cohort to independently self-organise. This inevitably leads to under-represented people doing labour on behalf of others (i.e women trying to get men to listen to them). 

## How

### Social rules

Create a set of social rules with specific behavioural guidelines. This should go beyond the Code of Conduct (which is bare-minimum "this stuff will get you kicked out").

We should set aside time for each cohort to read and discuss the social rules/code of conduct. However it should not be up to them which rules are included/followed.

### Inclusivity material/workshops

We should also provide further specific materials aimed at educating students who are over-represented in tech on how to be good allies (i.e. why they should care, problems they may not have thought about, unconscious biases they have). This probably has to be scheduled time to ensure people actually do it.

### Staff guidelines

Staff/mentors should have guidelines on how to intervene when they see behaviour violating the social rules.

## Risks

1. We shoulder the responsibility for educating the cohort on difficult social issues. We are not experts and are likely to not get everything right.
    - Mitigation: pay an expert for resource-creation and/or staff training
1. ~~Will probably require fundamental change to FAC's goals/philosophy (not necessarily for the worse however). I.e. we can't allow cohorts to self-organise things this important.~~
Will require articulating our goals and philosophies much more clearly both on our website and throughout the course

## Discussion points

1. We should prioritise what's important to us (as staff)


## Clarifying questions 

G - No clarifying questions 
Dan - Risk 2, fundamental change to FAC's philosophy, what is Oli/Yvonne's understanding of fundmental change 
Y - half self-organizing + half membership is a thing of the past, but maybe that is changing as FAC (as staff) should make these changes 
Oli - As an organization being much more specific/loud about our values, i.e. homepage should be more explicit about what we are about, we will always end up with some people on the cohort that are surprised etc. 
Y - everyone has different interpretation of FAC so it results in different interpretation of FAC's goals 
Oli - "I want someone who think our mission is stupid to not apply"
G - What is our idea about finidng these materials on inclusivity 
Oli - Might start with a circle with current student, resources to start with, and then adding consultant etc if needed 


## Critical concerns 

G - concerned about our expertise in dealing with these kinds of situation 
Dan - fundamental change --> much clearer articulation of FAC's goals and beliefs (Oli updating in real time)
Dan - vagueness with some of the language 
Oli - this is used as a starting point for us to get started 
Dan - what behavior have we seen that could've been addressed (what kind of guidelines coud've addressed what we've seen)
Oli - The main thing would be making people aware from their beginning from their unconscious behavior, prime them in the beginning and also encourage/remind along the way 

## Action 

Oli will write up a document that will corral his rambling thoughts :older_adult: 























<!-- 

ignore this brainstorming stuff for now

Change needs to happen throughout the FAC student pipeline. Website/pre-reqs/application/pre-course/course/alumni.

Code of Conduct is a "legal document" that covers the really bad stuff and the process for complaints/punishment. We also need "social rules" that lay out things you should not do/say that aren't so bad. Implicit/unconscious biases etc.

This should be reinforced with reading/workshops at the start of (and probably throughout) the course. We don't have expertise in-house to create such important resources however.

It's not enough to write down a bunch of social rules/guidelines. They need to be taught and reinforced throughout the cycle of someone's involvement with FAC.

https://www.unl.edu/gtahandbook/creating-safe-learning-environment
https://www.selfdefined.app/

## Course participant flow

### First contact: website

We need the front page of the website to more clearly emphasise the values we want to see from prospective applicants.

Ideally people who are unsuited will self-select out and not apply for the course.

### Applicant community

- Better more specific communication guidelines for Slack
  - E.g. [inclusive language guidance](https://github.com/foundersandcoders/slack-etiquette/pull/6)
  - Try to encourage more discussion about code/applications
- Better more specific behaviour guidelines for meetups
  - Zoom and IRL
  - CoC is the bare minimum—they should be striving to do better

- Staff engagement with applicants
    - Transparent public communication on Slack—no DMs with staff/mentors.
    - Private discussion should be via email.

- Mentor engagement with applicants 
    - Add to meetup guidelines on how to engage with applicants post-meetup (this pertains to remote meetups for now)

- Prereqs/application

- Interviews

### Student

- Precourse

- Course
  - Remote work makes it harder to monitor student interactions. In-person we can see when a partner is dominating/not listening etc.
  - Staff/mentors not equipped to teach these things. Do we need to budget for external advice/workshops?

- Membership 


### Alumni participation -->