SIGPLAN CARES
Purpose of SIGPLAN CARES
SIGPLAN CARES is a subcommittee of SIGPLAN. All SIG events and communications abide by ACM’s policy against discrimination and harassment. All SIG publications abide by ACM’s policies on plagiarism, misrepresentation, and falsification; on coercion and abuse in the ACM publications process; and on roles and responsibilities in ACM publishing. If a violation of any of these policies occur, ACM urges reporting the incident to the event chair or to ACM leadership, as indicated on those webpages. We recognize that reporting to a conference chair or an upper level ACM administrator can be intimidating, especially in the face of an already unpleasant experience. We have therefore established CARES: Committee to Aid REporting on discrimination, harassment, and related ethical policy violations.
The role of CARES is to serve as a resource comprising of well-known and respected people in the programming languages community who are approachable and willing to listen to and help people who experience or witness discrimination, harassment, or other ethical policy violations either at our events or related to ACM publications; the committee members can be a sounding board for these people and can provide advice on the steps necessary to have the matter further investigated by ACM. It is important to understand that for the matter to be reported, the person experiencing the incident must still themselves send the complaint to ACM where it will be handled according to ACM’s policies. The CARES committee cannot serve as an intermediary in that official process and it cannot be involved in any aspect of the handling of the complaint by ACM.
The motivation in providing a standing CARES committee is: (1) people are more likely to report harassment, discrimination, or other ethical policy violations if familiar and respected members of the community are available for support, (2) unlike conference chairs, the members of the CARES committee will be chosen largely for their commitment and record on the targeted issues, (3) longer membership terms and an (eventually) established committee enable building experience and a record that inspires more trust for those considering coming forward about an incident, (4) committee members are expected to be physically present at our main events and work with event leaders to publicize their role, and (5) the presence of such a committee with respected and trusted members from the community assigned to watch for these issues should serve as a deterrent for behavior that violates the ACM code of conduct, as well as encourage us all to be aware of and speak up if we observe such behavior.
A blog post provides background about the formation of the first CARES committee in the architecture community and this blog post talks about harassment some members of our community have experienced. The SIGARCH/SIGMICRO CARES committee led to foundation of the SIGPLAN committee.
The SIGPLAN CARES Bylaws can be found here.
A collection of CARES resources can be found here.
SIGPLAN CARES Operations
CARES members are always available by email to correspond and to set up a call with anyone who would like to speak with us about harassment, discrimination, or other concerns related to building and sustaining an inclusive research community.
In addition, one or more CARES members will “cover” conferences by announcing their presence at the beginning of the meeting and at the business meeting, and being available for in-person conversations throughout the meeting at sessions and breaks, etc. A CARES member will be available for email and phone calls for on-line PC meetings and in person at physical PC meetings. We will announce the CARES members attending below. At conferences, we will typically set up a table for at least an hour a day and announce the time and location. Initially, the following conferences will have guaranteed coverage.
- ICFP
- PLDI
- POPL
- SPLASH
CARES committee members may also attend other workshops and conferences sponsored or co-sponsored by SIGPLAN, when they normally would attend. As the sponsoring organizations and/or committee expands in membership, it may add conferences to the guaranteed list.
| Conference/Meeting | CARES member attendees |
|---|---|
| POPL 2021 | Shriram Krishnamurthi, Alexandra Silva, David Walker, Stephanie Weirich, Hongseok Yang |
| ICFP 2020 | David Walker, Shriram Krishnamurthi, Stephanie Weirich, and Simon Peyton-Jones |
| PLDI 2020 | Alexandra Silva, Vikram Adve, Michelle Stout, Kathryn McKinley, David Walker |
| OOPSLA 2020 | Alexandra Silva, Shriram Krishnamurthi, Vikram Adve, Peng Wu, and Kathryn McKinley |
| HPCA/PPOPP/CGO 2020 | Peng Wu (SIGPLAN CARES), Lieven Eeckhout and Timothy Pinkston (SIGARCH/SIGMICRO CARES) |
| ICFP 2020 PC Meeting | Shriram Krishnamurthi |
| PLDI 2020 PC Meeting | Michelle Strout |
| POPL 2020 | David Walker, Alexandra Silva, and Hongseok Yang |
SIGPLAN CARES Reports
2020:
In SIGPLAN CARES first full year of operation, 2020, members of the CARES committee attended five conferences, including POPL 2020, PLDI 2020, ICFP 2020, OOPSLA 2020 and HPCA/PPOPP/CGO 2020 (in collaboaration with SIGARCH/SIGMICRO CARES). At POPL 2020, we had conversations in-person in the lobby with interested community members to spread the word about our mission and service to the community. The other conferences were virtual due to COVID-19. At each virtual conference, we hosted a pair of 30-minute CARES zoom sessions to advertise our presence and answer community questions. Attendance at such sessions varied, but was typically between 5-20 attendees, with the median closer to 5. We also advertised our presence at the PLDI and ICFP program committee meetings.
Outside of ACM conferences and events, individual CARES committee members were contacted by community members fewer than 10 times throughout the year.
SIGPLAN CARES Committee Members
 Kathryn McKinley |
Co-Chair, mckinley@cs.utexas.edu, Google, 2019-2021 |
 David Walker |
Co-Chair, dpw@cs.princeton.edu, Princeton University, 2019-2022 |
 Vikram Adve |
Member, vadve@illinois.edu, University of Illinois |
 Xinyu Feng |
Member, xyfeng@nju.edu.cn, Nanjing University |
 Shriram Krishnamurthi |
Member, sk@cs.brown.edu, Brown University |
 Simon Peyton Jones |
Member, simonpj@microsoft.com, Microsoft Research Cambridge |
 Alexandra Silva |
Member, alexandra.silva@ucl.ac.uk, University College London |
 Michelle Strout |
Member, mstrout@cs.arizona.edu, HPE and University of Arizona |
 Stephanie Weirich |
Member, sweirich@cis.upenn.edu, University of Pennsylvania |
 Peng Wu |
Member, pengwu@fb.com, Facebook |
 Hongseok Yang |
Member, hongseok00@gmail.com, KAIST |