The Illinois Lakes Management Association (ILMA) is committed to fostering relationships between lake homeowners, citizens, lake associations, and environmental professionals to promote understanding and comprehensive management of lake and watershed ecosystems. This mission will be fulfilled by forging partnerships among citizens, scientists and professionals by fostering environments that are safe, collaborative, supportive, and productive for all members and attendees, including sponsors, exhibitors, guests of members, invited speakers, and members of the media. This Code of Conduct (Code) applies to all ILMA meetings, conferences, related events, whether live or virtual and including, but not limited to those sponsored by organizations other than ILMA but held in conjunction with ILMA events, in public or private facilities, or online.

All ILMA business is conducted in a fair, honest, and ethical manner that values the diversity of views, expertise, opinions, backgrounds, and experiences reflected among our membership and all conference and event attendees. The ILMA Executive Committee encourages anyone to contact members of the board regarding ways in which ILMA can improve inclusion and diversity and encourage both a stimulating and supportive atmosphere.

Expected Behavior

Treat everyone with respect
Communicate openly and thoughtfully and be considerate of varying views, opinions, levels of experience, and backgrounds.
Be respectful in your critique of ideas and avoid personal attacks directed toward other attendees, participants, ILMA staff, sponsors, and vendors.
Respect the rules and policies of the conference venue, hotel, ILMA contracted facilities, or any other venue.
Be mindful of your surroundings and fellow participants. Alert an ILMA staff member or board member if you notice unacceptable behavior, a dangerous situation or someone in distress.

Unacceptable Behavior

Harassment and intimidation, including any verbal, written, or physical conduct designed to threaten, intimidate, or coerce another attendee, speaker, volunteer, exhibitor, ILMA staff member, service provider or other conference guest.
Discrimination based on gender or gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, religion, national origin, or culture
Physical or verbal abuse of any attendee, speaker, volunteer, exhibitor, ILMA staff member, service provider or other meeting guest.
Examples of unacceptable behavior also include but are not limited to inappropriate use of nudity and/or sexual images in public spaces or in presentations; threatening or stalking any ILMA conference participant; or sexually harassing any ILMA conference participant.
Disruption of talks at oral or poster sessions, in the exhibit hall or at other events organized by ILMA at the meeting venue, hotels, other ILMA contracted facilities, or online is not allowed.

Consequences

Anyone requested to stop unacceptable behavior is expected to comply immediately.
Corrective actions may take any of the following forms:

Verbal warning
Expulsion from an event or Conference with no refund of fees, of any kind
Banned from future ILMA events
Notification of appropriate authorities

To protect all parties involved, ILMA will generally not make any detailed public statements about Code incidents. The decisions of ILMA are final.

Reporting Unacceptable Behavior

If you are the subject of unacceptable behavior or have witnessed any such behavior, please immediately notify an ILMA board or staff member.

Notification should be done by contacting an ILMA staff person or board member on-site verbally, or by emailing your concern to ILMA at ilma@ilma-lakes.org.
Verbal reports to ILMA staff or board members will be documented and reported by email as soon as possible to ilma@ilma-lakes.org.
Anyone experiencing or witnessing behavior that constitutes an immediate or serious threat to public safety at the conference or other ILMA event is advised to either tell the venue security or appropriate authorities.
Reporting should never be done via social media.

Implementation of the Code

Any reports of unacceptable behavior will be handled on a case-by-case basis by the ILMA board.
The Code of Conduct, including contact information for Board of directors, will be made available to all members and conference attendees in the conference program.
ILMA staff and Board members will be introduced at the beginning of any events or conferences and will make every effort to be visible and available during all events.
The list of Board members will be updated annually on the ILMA website and prior to publication of the conference program.

Adapted from North American Lake Management Society, American Fishery Society, and Society for Freshwater Sciences

https://www.nalms.org/code-of-conduct/

https://freshwater-science.org/about/society-governance/code-of-conduct/

https://afsannualmeeting.fisheries.org/

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