In December, the WES Board of Trustees used this blog space to update everyone on our progress towards new policies, specifically those related to ensuring we have a Safe Congregation.

This suite of policies builds on the good work the Community Relations Committee did last year creating the Community Relations Pact. This Pact is designed to nurture a positive, productive, safe and healthy environment at WES, and outlines our community’s intentions about how we interact with each other through positive relationships and communications.

While the Community Relations Pacts sets our positive, aspirational goals for our relationships and communications, we know it’s important to have policies in place for those rare times when things don’t go as planned and we face disruptive behavior. Specifically, the Board has been working to complete policies that can guide the congregation if we need to address disruptive behavior, harassment, or sexual harassment. As a board, we have explored how to define and evaluate these behaviors and the approaches to taking steps to report and stop them.

As we create these policies, we have built in several opportunities to get input and feedback on them from the WES community. We first mentioned them at the Fall Membership meeting and have now shared them with the community. 

We received feedback from several individuals, ranging from “way to go!” to specific suggestions such as the explicit inclusion of addressing electronic harassment, as well as some great feedback on ensuring that we distinguish “disruptive behavior” from general conflict and disagreement. We incorporated this feedback during our January 2020 board meeting. We plan to hold at least one community feedback session about the policies, with a particular focus on what it would take to ensure that such policies become an accepted part of our culture at WES.

We welcome input on these policies from any WES members either via email or in-person. A Board member is available at a table between platforms on the first Sunday of each month, you are welcome to come to a board meeting, or you can just ask to speak with one of us anytime. After input from the WES community this winter and spring, we plan to bring the policies to the general membership at the Spring Membership Meeting before the Board formally adopts the policies.

It will take all of us to ensure that these policies to create a safer community are appropriate, robust, and become part of our culture here at WES.
Please do not hesitate to reach out to the trustees (emailtoboard@ethicalsociety.org) as we appreciate hearing your feedback and questions. 

The WES Board of Trustees

Josh Blinder, Margaret Conway, Trang Duong, Kristin Hunter, Kate Lang, Doug Miller, Lauren Strange

Suite of Policies on Harassment, Sexual Harassment, and Disruptive Behavior