CODE OF CONDUCT STATEMENT

Dear Community,

We want to address an incident of harassment that occurred recently between members of RFC. First of all, we want to thank all those who stepped forward with their honest statements. It is so hard to come forward in situations of discomfort, and we are grateful for your trust. 

Run for Chinatown was founded as a safe space for our runners. By coming, you are acknowledging that we are a community that hopes to create a safe space for all, and that harassment of any form is not tolerated whether this occurs during our runs or outside of officially organized events. 

We acknowledge that, unlike other run clubs, we uphold an expanded expectation of behavior outside of official RFC events. We hope in doing so, we are able to express our seriousness in creating a society that is committed to inclusivity and respect - this is precisely because we center and value our community. Harassment, by definition, is any unwanted behavior, (verbal, physical, sexual, digital, or even suggested), that makes a person feel uncomfortable, humiliated, or mentally distressed. 

While we hope these incidents do not occur between our runners, we rely on you as a community to hold each other accountable and to report incidents as you see them. We are all ambassadors for Run for Chinatown, and as such, we all should conduct ourselves in a manner that reflects our values on Monday night runs which extends to everywhere else.

We recently found that one of our runners was in violation of our Code of Conduct. We have a zero tolerance policy for harassment, and this individual has since been asked not to attend official RFC events and runs. 

To respect the privacy and safety of the individuals involved, we will not be disclosing names or personal details, and we request that we all also show the same respect to those involved by not perpetuating gossip.

We also recognize that reactive justice is suboptimal in bettering our community. We want to make sure that we can do our part in proactively preventing incidents like this. 

We hosted an introduction to upstander training on August 3rd, which we hope to host more of, and that you will continue to attend. In addition, we encourage you all to, in the spirit of growing together, take the nyc.gov sexual harassment training that all of us leaders took.

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/cchr/law/sexual-harassment-training.page

Going forward, we will be taking more actions to ensure that this is the safest possible space for our members, and ensuring that our communication platforms are member only, hosting regular workshops, and continuing to refine our Code of Conduct and resolution process. We are always open to your feedback, so please feel free to let us know what we can do better through our feedback form on our website, which can be delivered anonymously.

Sincerely,

Team RFC