Complaints Procedure

The Society for the Psychology of Men and Masculinity (SPMM) is fully committed to conducting all activities in strict conformance with the American Psychological Association’s Ethical Principles of Psychologists. SPMM will comply with all legal and ethical responsibilities to be non-discriminatory in promotional activities, program content and in the treatment of program participants. The monitoring and assessment of compliance with these standards will be the responsibility of the Continuing Education (CE) Chair in consultation with the members of the continuing education committee and the chairperson of the committee coordinating the event.

While SPMM goes to great lengths to assure fair treatment for all participants and attempts to anticipate problems, there will be occasional issues which come to the attention of the event staff which require intervention and/or action on the part of event staff or an officer of SPMM . This procedural description serves as a guideline for handling such grievances.

1. When a participant, either orally or in written format, files a grievance and expects action on the complaint, the following actions will be taken.
If the grievance concerns a speaker, the content presented by the speaker, or the style of presentation, the individual filing the grievance will be asked to put their comments in written format. The CE Chair will then pass on the comments to the speaker, assuring the confidentiality of the grieved individual.

2. If the grievance concerns a workshop offering, its content, level of presentation, or the facilities in which the workshop was offered, the event chair will mediate and will be the final arbitrator. If the participant requests action, the event chair will:

a) attempt to move the participant to another workshop or
b) provide a credit for a subsequent year’s workshop or
c) provide a partial or full refund of the workshop fee.

Actions 2b and 2c will require a written note, documenting the grievance, for record keeping purposes. The note need not be signed by the grieved individual.

3. If the grievance concerns SPMM CE program, in a specific regard, the CE Chair will attempt to arbitrate. The CE Chair is Andrew P. Smiler and may be contacted through the SPMM webpage or his personal webpage