Taking Someone Aside (2018)
jefftk.com
jefftk.com
I wonder if there's a better way to do this. It seems to me that you should avoid bringing up -- even anonymously -- the existence of wronged parties who have complained.
When someone reports an issue, one thing you should find out from them is how public they're ok with you being. They may be ok with you sharing full details, they may (for their own safety, privacy, or other reasons) not be ok with you sharing anything, or they may be somewhere in between.
By mentioning "people who have complained," you're putting those people on the spot. The offender now probably knows who complained.
I bring this up because I read a NYT article [0] yesterday. A highschooler was uncomfortable with the behavior of her classmates. She complained to her parents, who went to the principal. The principal dealt with it but, in the course of doing so, it became clear who had complained. This led to an even worse situation and she had to leave the school.
Maybe it's unavoidable to mention that "people have complained" but I wouldn't lead with that. I think it's better for the authority figure to say "I noticed you were doing X" and take that on themselves, at least to start with.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/nyregion/new-jersey-antis...
In the case of the Higheschooler you mentioned, this is less possible due to the parents obviously being told by the daughter and obviously not being party to the grievances. In this situation your options are more limited.
The principle had more than enough visibility on the harrassment and hostile environment, to apply discipline without identifying any particular target of hostility, and anyway it should have been treated as unacceptable behaviour regardless of whether there was anyone in particular targeted.
There was certainly no need to identify the daughter, who was essentially a whistleblower. Now the school is being sued for failing to protect her identity, rightly in my view.
but my main point is that, unless the behavior happened in a very public place, the offender is likely to assume the victim reported it themselves, whether or not they actually did! the risk of retaliation probably needs to be weighed when deciding whether to confront the wrongdoer at all, unless the offense was so severe that they can be removed from the environment immediately.
I kind of hate that I remember that. I haven't watched the Simpsons for who knows how long but that shit's just burned into my brain from how many times I watched it as child.
As an example of the opposite, with GitHub if your account is flagged (banned), it happens without warning or explanation. Its up to you to contact them to request reinstatement and/or an explanation.
Then I have found they often dont reply even after repeated request via both the website and different support emails. If you try to post something about it on the GitHub forums, they will lock the thread as well.
I agree that sometimes organizers get reports about behavior that is actually fine. https://www.bidadance.org/safety/approach which I helped write gives a more comprehensive view on how organizers should handle reports.
A process of "we assume the first person to come to us is completely correct and honest" would be severely vulnerable to abuse.
If you're willing to treat injustice as a numbers game where, say, only 10% of accused are innocent and punished anyway, I would really want to know what is the severity of the punishment.
But it's a bit worse than that: There's a dynamic response if it becomes known that you systematically act on the words of the first accuser. There are people who will start using that knowledge to cause misery for others.
In fact, socially I believe it is extremely common for people to cause misery for others in this way, except rather than using an explicit complaint and punishment process, it is done by insinuation and social influence.
I think of the others in that scenario as a sort of "halo" effect, around the central drivers. They tend to calm down or go away when the central drivers stop.
In that scenario, it doesn't take much for even one or two mean-spirited people and their halo people to make life relentlessly miserable and difficult for anyone that is targetted, deliberately or accidentally. The size of the halo can be enormous, hundreds or even millions of people in severe cases (social media storm), but even say 5-10 people is enough to induce great misery, because of social effects.
I do blame the halo people for not being more self-aware of the consequences of their actions towards others or caring about it; when I've seen it, most of them seem to not care. "Don't blame me, all I did was...".
(The ones who do care when they realise are wonderful though.)
I think being scared they have to get in first to avoid trouble is rational but low on an ethical scale.
I don't think there's much point in action against the halo people because they each don't tend to have done much except contribute a little to the wave, and "punishments" backfire if there is no clear bad action that is widely recognised.
Serious psychological trauma, PTSD etc, which can take years to recover from (if ever), are quite likely for the targets if it persists, especially if it has knock-on effects on the rest of their life. It is not a small thing, but people often don't realise that, or will minimise it unless it's happened to them.
Because of the severity of harm that can happen, and especially when it is happening, sometimes I think it is important to recognise and "pick off" the core driving people - or if possible just the problem behaviour - decisively, and the halo will tend to dissipate afterwards.
Of course there are countless problems in the details with this, and it may be somewhat unjust, but what else can we do? It isn't justice to let it continue.
So if it looks necessary, I start to see a "picking off" intervention as ethically-necessary harm management, rather than platonic justice for all. That makes me sad, but seeing waves of relief in someone kind of makes up for it, and I have a lot of empathy.
At the bar/club I work at, we're using exactly this process and have had just one occasion where we weren't sure about the intentions of the person reporting an incident. But we've had good experiences overall. We believe in letting the person who had a bad experience be in control of what happens, because (likely) they've just felt unable to control what was happening (to them).
This also avoids the whole he said/she said, that's bound to happen in situations like this. Though if they want someone to leave, it can be tricky throwing them out because that person will claim that they're being wronged. Telling them about the background to our policy helps, if not, they will usually (verbally or physically) lash out and justify throwing them out on their own.
But I guess the idea is you don't avoid it, instead you rely on the tendancy that it works out in the right direction enough times, and the injustice of an innocent being thrown out isn't the end of the world?
In my life experience, admittedly not in a bar, but some of it in another social organisation, I've seen hundreds of complaints where one person says someone else's behaviour is seriously unacceptable and bad, where it turns out the person saying it is engaged in unacceptable behaviour themselves. Sometimes the same type of behaviour.
There, the sanctions are more severe: People may be thrown out for weeks or months or permanently, and it is more public, so the harm to the person socially is much greater than being thrown out of a club one night.
It is one of the difficulties I have with some styles of codes of conduct: I've directly witnessed advocates and code-writers engaging in precisely the behaviours they say should result in sanctions, seemingly oblivious to the fact they themselves are serious offenders, and when it's brought to their attention, rather than deal with it, they play it down applied to themselves and their friends, seemingly oblivious to the effects visible hypocrisy from a "core group" has on a community where the less in-group people get contradictory messages about what to do to fit in.
If you get a complaint about somebody somebody in your organization, the first thing it is time to do is listen to both sides with your best critical thinking hat on. Going into a conversation with the accused party with the intention of getting them to do anything, before hearing their side, is an injustice.
There are cases where a warning would be a bad first step: perhaps you've only heard a report from one person, or it's not clear what happened, or you think there may be a misunderstanding. Then an opening more like "I saw some of what happened back there, can you help me figure out what was going on?" could be good, with more of a "let's find out" than a "let's change behavior" approach.
The cases that prompted me to write this post, however, were ones where a dancer had been doing a minorly harmful thing for a long time. It was very clear that they were doing the thing, and we had dozens of people who had seen them do it, including several organizers.
He also writes, specifically, that you listen to the “accused” party when taking them aside, explaining why this is important. Did you actually read this?
You shouldn't assume things in life, yes.
But you have to treat problems and complaints from "accusers" seriously.
Which means raising them with the accused, listening to their side, evaluating both points of view, and acting accordingly.
Which is EXACTLY what this article is saying, just through the lens that MOST (vastly) accusations are valid and have some basis in reality.
Any other whataboutism is a distraction.