Chapter 9: Behavior Guidelines
A sense of responsibility to the community and to individuals and a willingness to make compromises to maintain peace in the community are essential to conference unity.As a committee, decide what rules and policies will be necessary to hold your conference successfully, peacefully, and with unity. Whatever you decide, the rules must be wholeheartedly supported by the planning committee.
Part of the planning committee's role is to have a good relationship with participants, let them know what's going on, listen to their concerns, and be involved in the community as regular conferees as much as possible.
The key to gaining support for behavior guidelines is for the community to have a sense of ownership of them. If conferees feel responsible for their own rules and policies, they will be more likely to uphold them rather than if they feel they must live under oppressive rules handed down from a faceless source. The process of creating behavior codes is one of the most crucial aspects of allowing conferees to feel a part of the community.
Once you, as conference leaders, feel ownership of the rules, present those rules to the community in a way that allows them to own and obey them. The best way to make sure that everyone is aware of the rules and their consequences is to write them clearly on your registration form and have participants sign their agreement. The statement should include the extreme consequences of rule infraction (such as being sent home at one's own expense). It should be understood before the problems begin, within the planning committee and the conference, exactly who will be responsible for making judgment calls if there are alleged rule infractions.
The conference orientation is the best time to remind people of the rules they agreed to and the rationale for those rules. Have a youth member of the planning committee explain the rules, although adults may tend to think their own words will carry more authority. A youth is "one of us" to most conferees, a non-threatening, understandable presence. Adults, in spite of their good intentions, often sound patronizing and are therefore less likely to instill a sense of ownership in the conferees. However, adults can be especially helpful in assisting the youth rehearse her/his presentation.
Unfortunately, rules do get broken. Then if the conference leaders have not decided on the consequences already, a judiciary committee operating at the conference can handle this difficult task. The planning committee, with volunteer conference participants and advisors, or a group of conferees and advisors elected by the conference community may make up the judiciary committee. The committee should not be too large, but should represent a range of opinions. The judiciary committee's job is to assess the situation, and determine whether a rule has been broken. If so, they identify the rule, and assess an appropriate punishment. The goal is to safeguard the sacred conference community, considering the needs of everyone. When a rule hasn't been broken, but someone is having trouble living up to the community's expectations, the judiciary committee should offer extra care and compassion, doing what they can to help the person.
One Model That Works
Principles for the Establishment of Community
For more information contact youth @ uua.org.
Last updated on Friday, April 18, 2008.
