Standards of Behaviour

As the Members’ Handbook states “Our underlying values of care, courtesy, consideration for others and common sense (the four Cs) are usually sufficient to ensure a friendly, quiet, safe and respectful environment for everyone to thrive in. In this regard, the College expects Members to voluntarily respect College property, the rights of others and College norms, customs, expectations, and rules.”

As a College Leader, one of your important responsibilities is to ensure that Members are:

1. Regularly reminded of the four Cs and the College’s norms, customs, expectations and rules, and
2. Spoken to in a kind and understanding yet firm manner when their behaviour is not in keeping with the usual standards.

The latter is not always a comfortable or easy thing to do but it is very important. At the beginning of the year, let your floor Members know that it may be necessary for you to have chats with individuals to remind them about particular issues but you hope you don’t have to do that at all! Remind them about what it means to be living in a community and their responsibilities towards each other.

Most problems can be resolved through a quiet, non-threatening and private chat, maintaining the Member’s integrity. Depending on the seriousness of a particular issue, it may be appropriate for you to seek advice from, or pass the responsibility on, to the Deputy Heads or Head of College to respond to a problematic situation.

Do not ignore an issue as this creates a precedent that will be challenged next time you decide to deal with it. It also undermines the consistency of the College Leader team in general.

Should a particular issue present that you are unsure how to respond to, feel free to seek advice from a fellow College Leader, the Deputy Heads of College or Head of College.

After you have spoken to a Member about an issue no matter how minor, please record brief details (date, name, issue, action taken) about the matter on the appropriate channel in Slack.