Code of conduct

Frontier Cascadia is a room full of high school students building things in front of strangers. That only works if everyone in it is safe and treated seriously. This is what we expect, what we won't allow, and what happens if something goes wrong.

Who this covers

Everyone. Participants, mentors, judges, volunteers, organizers, sponsor representatives, and guests. It applies at the venue, in every online space we run, at sponsor tables, and in any conversation that starts because of the event.

Registering for Frontier Cascadia means agreeing to this document.

The short version

Be someone the person next to you is glad to be sitting next to. Everything below is detail.

What we expect

• Treat other people's projects, questions, and skill levels with respect. Plenty of people here are at their first hackathon.
• Ask before touching someone else's laptop, hardware, or belongings.
• Give people room. Not everyone wants to be photographed, added to a group chat, or talked to while they're heads-down.
• Take feedback from judges and mentors seriously, including when it stings. Honest critique is the point of the event.
• Follow instructions from organizers and from University of Washington staff. We're guests in their building.
• Clean up after yourself.

What isn't allowed

None of the following is acceptable, in person or online:

• Harassment of any kind, including comments about race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, disability, body size, or appearance.
• Sexual language, imagery, or advances. This is an event for minors and there is no version of this that is okay here.
• Intimidation, stalking, following, or unwanted physical contact.
• Photographing or recording someone who has asked you not to.
• Sustained disruption of talks, demos, judging, or someone else's work.
• Slurs, threats, or violent language, including as a joke.
• Sharing or threatening to share someone's private information.
• Damaging the venue or anyone's property.

Deciding a rule doesn't apply because you were joking, because you're friends, or because nobody complained is not how this works.

Because everyone here is a student

• No alcohol, cannabis, vapes, or other drugs. This is not negotiable and applies to the whole event.
• Every participant needs a waiver signed by a parent or guardian before the event.
• If there is an incident involving you, we will contact your parent or guardian, and the authorities if the situation calls for it.

About what you build

Your project's logic gets written at the event. Before hacking starts, anyone may pick a problem, sketch it, plan the architecture, read documentation, form a team, and set up an empty repository with boilerplate and dependencies installed. What you cannot do is turn up with the thing already working.

That scaffolding allowance applies to everyone, not just people arriving late. September 12 is an SAT date, so some of you will lose the morning to a test, and the rule is the same either way.

Open-source libraries, frameworks, APIs, and AI coding tools are all fair game as long as the work you're presenting is genuinely yours and you can explain it.

Don't build things designed to harm people. Scrapers aimed at private data, harassment tools, malware, and anything targeting a real person or group will be disqualified and removed.

If your project uses someone else's work, say so when you present it. Judges respect a clear answer about what you built and what you borrowed far more than a vague one.

Reporting a problem

If something happens to you, or you see it happen to someone else, tell us. You do not need to be sure it was serious enough. That's our job to sort out, not yours.

• At the event: find any organizer. We'll be wearing staff badges and there will be a staffed table all day.
• Any time: use the contact form and say it's a conduct report. It goes straight to the organizing team.
• If someone is in immediate danger, call 911 first, then find an organizer.

Reports go to the organizing team and stay with the people who need to act on them. We will not share your name with the person you're reporting without asking you first. You can also ask us to just make something stop without opening a full report, and we'll respect that where we safely can.

What happens next

We'll listen, take it seriously, and act. Depending on what happened, that can mean a conversation, a warning, moving people apart, disqualification from judging and prizes, removal from the venue, or a ban from future Frontier Cascadia events.

Two things are not optional. Where an incident involves you directly, your parent or guardian will be told. And where the situation calls for it, we will involve UW staff, campus security, or the police.

Organizers make the final call, and we'd rather act early than explain later why we didn't.

Photography

We take photos and video for recaps and sponsor reports. If you'd rather not be in them, tell an organizer at check-in and we'll keep you out of it. Participants filming each other should ask first, every time.

Questions

If any of this is unclear, or you want to raise something before the event, use the contact form. Parents and guardians are welcome to get in touch too.

Adapted from practices common to student hackathons, including the MLH Code of Conduct.

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