The ‘Won’t Walk Past’ (WWP) initiative aims to provide suggestions for how to respond to the “little things” that if addressed by the community can improve culture, from a grassroots level and beyond. Bringing attention to these occurrences is a way of increasing awareness and can prevent the events from being repeated or can alert the transgressor that type of behaviour is unacceptable.

The ARC Centre of Excellence for Plant Success in Nature and Agriculture (the Centre) seeks to provide a safe environment for events and activities under the Centre that is conducive to supporting our core values of integrity, inclusivity, and international excellence. Through the WWP initiative and as norms and expectations change, we want to put a stop to any behaviour that wouldn’t be covered by existing institutional processes but is inappropriate such as to:

• Exclude - to block someone's access to resources or opportunities, make someone feel unwelcome, based on their identity or affiliation with a particular group.
• Belittle - to treat someone in a condescending manner or with the assumption of incompetence.
• Discriminate - to make an unwanted distinction in the treatment of someone based on their identity or affiliation with a particular group or stereotype.
• Intimidate - to threaten, frighten, humiliate, or intimidate someone with abusive words or actions.
• Disrespectful - to use words or actions that are unwanted, unwelcome, demeaning, degrading or offensive.

How should I respond to the “little things”?

The goal is always to acknowledge the incident respectfully and de-escalate. Some suggestions for doing this are:

• To interrupt an inappropriate conversation, or ending a presentation or question period that becomes confrontational, unsafe, or otherwise inappropriate.
• Mention the Centre’s Code of Conduct and/or WWP aloud, and note that all participants agreed to follow these:
• “I would like to remind everyone of WWP and the need to address inappropriate behaviour such as [relevant words to describe the incident at hand], and attending this meeting served as an agreement to follow the Centre’s code of conduct.”
• Calmly but firmly demand that person(s) being inappropriate stop immediately.

If an event attendee continues to transgress with inappropriate behaviour, please bring it to the attention of event organisers.

Examples of specific scenarios

Some role-playing examples in isolation that might not attract such gravity of language as above but which still require action include:

• ECR speaker presents a fabulous first talk and a member of the audience asks a question starts with: “That is a beautiful outfit you are wearing and it ties in with the pink on your slide. Can you explain what you meant by 'echolocation'?" The session chair responds by saying, “Hey everyone, we can't walk past that – it was a gendered comment, please ignore and go straight to the question.”
• A bunch of folks agree to go out after the conference dinner to a boozy bar. A member of the team says “I would rather choose a less alcohol focussed venue”. One of the folks says, “That’s OK, you can come next time”. Another team member says, “We can’t walk past that comment, we are on travel for work and we should be inclusive.”
• A member is very frustrated over something that has just happened and starts swearing to show the gravity of their emotion. Someone else steps in and says, “We can’t walk past that kind of expletive in the workplace, even if it's really frustrating.”

More information can be found on the Plant Success website >