MD Collective is dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender identity, socioeconomic status, physical appearance, race, religion, or any other attributes. In keeping with these aims, we do not tolerate harassment of participants in any form. Participants asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately.
This code of conduct applies to all spaces affiliated with MD Collective, including (but not limited to) mailing lists, Slack channels, group meetings, one-on-one meetings, and other events. Anyone who violates this code of conduct may be sanctioned or expelled from these spaces at the discretion of the Organizers.
The current Organizers are: Andrew Zhou, Humza Khan, Luke Tomasovic, Michael Yao, and Varun Shanker.
Harassment, including (but not limited to) the following activities, will not be tolerated:
A central tenet of MD Collective is openness, but many participants in MLC activities are often asking for advice on their extracurriculars or potential revisions to their essays for medical school applications, where confidentiality is necessary. This tension between a desire for openness and a desire for confidentiality is resolved by setting clear expectations for the level of confidentiality expected in different spaces, which allows participants in each space to choose how much they wish to share. Expectations are as follows:
(Confidential channels) When discussing ideas 1:1 or in small group settings, whether via chat, in person, or on a call, do not assume without affirmative consent from someone that you are welcome to share their ideas with others. This means that you should ask if you wish to share, and if they do not agree, or if you have not asked, do not share their ideas or work with anyone.
(Open channels) In any events advertised to and open to the general public, assume there is no confidentiality. If you are presenting or commenting at such an event: share only ideas, thoughts, and work that you are ok with being copied and modified by others. If you attend such an event and end up finding someone's ideas or work valuable, feel free to share, but note that the fact that the channel is open does not recuse you from the responsibility to give them credit for their work!
If you are being harassed by a member/guest/participant of MD Collective, notice that someone else is being harassed, believe confidentiality has been violated, or have any other concerns, please contact the Organizers via email or a message on Slack. If you would like to submit a concern anonymously, you may do so here, including "Code of Conduct Report" in the Name field and "md.collective@outlook.com" in the Email field so that our system can identify it as an anonymous report. We will respond as promptly as we can.
This code of conduct applies to all MD Collective spaces, but if you are being harassed by a member/guest/participant of/at MD Collective outside our spaces, we still want to know about it. We will take all good-faith reports of harassment by MD Collective members seriously. This includes harassment outside our spaces and harassment that took place at any point in time. The Organizers reserve the right to exclude people from MD Collective based on their past behavior, including behavior outside MD Collective spaces and behavior towards people who are not in MD Collective.
We will respect confidentiality requests for the purpose of protecting victims of abuse. At our discretion, we may publicly name a person about whom we've received harassment complaints, or privately warn third parties about them, if we believe that doing so will increase the safety of MD Collective members or the general public. We will not name harassment victims without their affirmative consent.
Participants asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately. If a participant engages in harassing behavior, the Organizers may take any action they deem appropriate, up to and including expulsion from all MD Collective spaces and identification of the participant as a harasser to other MD Collective members or the general public.
This policy is licensed under the Creative Commons Zero license, and was largely inspired by/copied from the MLC Code of Conduct.