Associations invest considerable effort and expense to help assure a safe, welcoming and positive experience for all attendees. Just one disruptive, ill-mannered, offensive individual can significantly damage the experience for all the others and place association staff in uncomfortable positions. There is even a risk that attendance at future similar events may decline as a result.
Examples of questionable event behavior include:
- A member of an association governance committee who is loud and domineering at a meeting, precluding others from participating in the committee’s deliberations.
- A registrant at an association convention who attends an official social event while obviously inebriated.
- An exhibitor representative at an association trade show in an open carry state who wears a holstered gun where it can easily be seen.
- A preregistered attendee at an association seminar who must wait a considerable time to pick up a badge and shouts dissatisfaction for all to hear.
- A member posting on an association online forum who uses insulting and indecent language to describe those with opposing views.
For whatever reason, these kinds of incidents occur more and more frequently at association events; the incidents are troubling to both the associations that operate the events and to those who attend.
Many associations have codes of ethics that are intended to guide members’ business or professional conduct, but few of those codes address appropriate behavior at the associations’ events. Moreover, a code of ethics for members would not typically govern the conduct of nonmember attendees at events.
Increasingly, associations are adopting and promulgating behavior codes for all attendees at the associations’ events, whether small governance and educational meetings, large conventions and trade shows, or online communities. These codes can apply to all in-person or virtual attendees, media, speakers, volunteers, organizers, vendors, sponsors and exhibitors.
The codes can address typical good manners, common-sense respectfulness and broad-minded inclusiveness. They can require, for example, that attendees:
- be considerate, respectful and collaborative;
- be mindful of the surroundings and of fellow attendees;
- cease conduct that makes others uncomfortable when asked to do so; and
- alert staff of any dangerous or harassing situation or an attendee in distress.
Prohibitions might include:
- intimidating, harassing, abusive, discriminatory, derogatory, indecent, or demeaning speech or actions;
- discussion of opposing viewpoints with a disrespectful tone or with personal attacks;
- deliberate intimidation, stalking, or unwelcome sexual attention or following;
- hounding or threatening speakers, or indirect abuse, such as in the chat section or on social media;
- substance abuse that affects relationships with other attendees; and
- possession of any weapons notwithstanding local laws that may permit them.
Unlike most codes of ethics, which include procedures providing for due process and can result in sanctions affecting membership status, event codes of good behavior support a different remedy: the right of the association to immediately remove the offending attendee in order to allow the event to continue without further disturbance.
If longer-term consequences are sought, including potentially barring the offender from attendance at future events, a measure of due process should be provided.
The code of good behavior can be promulgated as part of the registration or invitation process for any meeting or event operated by the association. Ideally an online click-through procedure would require each registrant or invitee to commit to having read and understood the code and agreed to adhere to it.
Then, if the bad behavior of an attendee is brought to the attention of the association, there will be a legitimate basis for acting summarily, perhaps starting with a stern clear warning and leading up to, if necessary, exclusion from the meeting or event.
A version of this client alert originally appeared in the ASAE Associations Now Daily News on January 17, 2025.
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