SCP Digital Community Guidelines

On this page, you will find the following information. You can click on a specific topic to jump to that section on the page.  

SCP Digital Community Policy
Listserv Logistics (how to join or leave a listserv)
Rules and Regulations
Research Posting Policies
Job Advertisement Policies
SCP Campaigning Policies

 

SCP Digital Community Policy

A Value for Our Diverse Community

Our digital policy is grounded in our values, especially our value for our community. We refer to our listservs, social media, electronic communications, and other digital interactions collectively as our digital community to emphasize that core value and guiding focus of our policy. Several principles further ground and direct this policy:

  • SCP seeks to cultivate a professional home for all counseling psychology professionals that is consistent with our values, mission, and the APA code of ethics.

  • We recognize that counseling psychology professionals are culturally diverse, hold a wide range of identities and personal values, occupy different career stages (e.g., trainee, student, early/mid/late career), and engage in a myriad of counseling psychology practices (e.g., therapy, training, advocacy, research, teaching).

  • SCP Listservs, social media, electronic communications, and other digital interactions (hereinafter collectively referred to as our digital community) represent an extension of our SCP home and community and therefore should reflect our espoused values including critical consciousness, strength-based, advocacy, flexibility, and adaptability, accountability and repairing harm, liberation, and healing.

  • We acknowledge that communication is traversed by cultural norms, and as such, we remind ourselves to assume the best intentions and to remain humble about the cultural nuances involved in cross-cultural and transnational communications.

A Value for Liberative Communication

There are times when interactions within our digital community may be inconsistent with our values. Again, guided by our values, we acknowledge that:

  • Certain actions, behaviors, interactions, or messages in the digital community might cause unintentional harm or otherwise infringe upon the rights, reputation, or respect of others

  • Some members of our digital community may engage in harassment, statements or comments rooted in prejudice and discrimination, disrespectful language, microaggressions, promotion of false information, use of the digital community for commercial purposes, and dishonesty. 

  • Some thoughts, feelings, or perspectives that are shared by members of our digital community may be inconsistent with our focus on liberation and may instead promote oppression, disenfranchisement, and isolation.

A Value for Repair and Growth

When ruptures and fractures occur in our community, we encourage good faith efforts to correct errors and missteps through dialogue and community-focused repair efforts. Toward that end, we ask that our community members: 

  • Return to our shared values to ground their behaviors and inform the next steps.

  • Call our community back to our values and focus on strengths, healing, and liberation.

  • Identify racist, colonial, and discriminatory implications of missteps in communication. 

  • Accept appropriate responsibility for their behavior. 

A Value for Boundaries and Responsibility

When instances cannot be corrected and/or represent an ongoing pattern of harm to members of our digital community, the C&T Board will be called to take appropriate action. These corrective steps will foreground a love ethic. Corrective steps can include actions such as, but not limited to:

  • multiple written warnings

  • moderation of postings 

  • potential removal from the digital community.

Our intent here is to ensure that our digital community, and by extension our SCP home, strives for the betterment of all members and continually provides exemplary support for members from groups that have been historically marginalized.

LISTSERV LOGISTICS

 Division 17 maintains four primary listservs for members:

  • DIV17INFO for general division information and updates

  • DIV17ANNOUNCE for announcements from division leaders

  • DIV17DISCUSS for discussions among members relevant to counseling psychology

  • DIV17SAS for student members of Division 17

Sections, Special Interest Groups (SIG’s), and Special Task Groups (STG’s) maintain their own listservs. For information about additional listservs, please visit the webpage maintained by that group and/or contact group leadership for more information.

NOTE: The volume of listserv emails you may receive will be especially high around APA convention time in August and at other times during the year. You can subscribe to the digest feature by submitting a request to the Listserv Coordinator. The digest option summarizes emails every 7 days and sends the summary to you in a single email. This reduces the number of individual emails you receive.

Who can subscribe to the LISTSERVs?

Subscriptions are restricted to Division 17 members and Student Affiliates. Visit APA membership or Division 17 membership for information on how to become a member. Subscription to Section, SIG, and STG listservs also requires membership in that group.

How to Sign Up for the Listserv

To subscribe to INFO, ANNOUNCE, DISCUSS, and/or SAS, contact the Listserv Coordinator with a request to be added, using the email address you want listserv emails sent to/from. For all other listservs, please contact the communications officer of that group to request member additions or see if your group has a listserv.

How to Update/Change My Listserv Email

To change the email address at which you receive updates from INFO, ANNOUNCE, DISCUSS, and/or SAS, contact the Listserv Coordinator (from the address you want emails sent to/from) and provide both the email address you want to be deleted from the listserve as well as the address you want it to be replaced with. For all other listservs, please contact the communications officer of that group to request this change.

How to Leave the Listserv

To unsubscribe from INFO, ANNOUNCE, DISCUSS, and/or SAS, contact the Listserv Coordinator with a request to be removed, using the email address you want to be unsubscribed. For all other listservs, please contact the communications officer of that group to request removal.

How to Sign Up for a Section, Special Interest Group or Special Task Group Listserv

Please contact the communications officer and follow the guidelines above to have your email address added, updated, or removed from a Section, SIG, or STG listserv.

How to Post to a Listserv

Please review detailed policies and procedures about general postings and postings of research requests.

If you already are a member of a LISTSERV to which you want to send information, all you need to do is address your e-mail to that LISTSERV address.

Alternatively, if you wish only to request the posting of information on the group’s LISTSERV, you can email the contact person and request permission to distribute your information. Once permission is granted, the contact person will post your information.

Who to Contact for Troubleshooting

Any questions or support requests should be sent to the Listserv Coordinator.

RULES AND REGULATIONS

Rules and regulations are policies that are set by the American Psychological Association, the federal government, and the Division 17 cabinet. They are written as imperatives because they must be strictly followed for the listservs to remain in compliance with laws that govern Div 17 and its members.

  1. Do not use the forum for illegal purposes, including but not limited to defamation, violation of intellectual property laws, violation of antitrust or unfair competition laws or violation of criminal laws.

  1. Do not intentionally interfere with or disrupt other forum members, network services, or network equipment. This includes the distribution of unsolicited advertisements or chain letters, propagation of computer worms and viruses, and use of the network to make unauthorized entry to any other machine accessible via the Forum.

  1. Do not use the Forum for commercial purposes. "Commercial" as used for purposes of evaluating listserv messages means communications whose primary purpose is to advance the business or financial interests of any person or entity, or otherwise to promote a financial transaction for the benefit of the author directly or indirectly. Examples of prohibited communications include advertisements for products or services, notices regarding the rental of office space, or direct solicitations of listserv members to purchase products or services. Examples of messages that may be of financial benefit to listserv members but are not prohibited because they do not inure to the financial benefit of the author include news of job listings or position openings or discussion of professionally-related products or services where the listserv member conveying the information is not in the business of selling the products or services. Announcements that provide useful professional information to List members but may also have some incidental commercial benefit to the sender (e.g. an author who is a list member merely advising the List of publication of a professional book) typically would not be “commercial” for purposes of this restriction.

  1. Do not use this forum for any communication that could be construed in any way as support for or opposition to any candidate for a federal, state, or local public office. The Federal law providing for the American Psychological Association's tax-exempt status forbids the use of APA resources or facilities, including this forum, in any way that would even appear to support or oppose such a political candidate.

  2. SCP listservs may be utilized to announce conferences and continuing education opportunities. Conferences and continuing education opportunities should be relevant to a majority of SCP members and/or the values, mission, and objectives of counseling psychology. Announcements of conferences and CEs that are commercial or deemed to be intended for financial gain are not allowed.

RESEARCH POSTING POLICIES

Please adhere to the following procedure if you choose to use a SCP listserv to recruit participants for your research project. 

  1. Include key information about the project in your email to the listserv, including expectations of participants and a detailed description of what participation entails, an accurate reflection of the amount of time expected of participants, the voluntary nature of participation, and the ability for participants to terminate participation at any point during their involvement.

  2. Include relevant IRB information, specifically the university IRB that approved the research, the protocol number of the research project, and the contact information of the investigators so potential participants have the opportunity to ask questions.

If approved, the posting should only be distributed twice: one initial post and one follow-up. The follow-up posting must be sent after at least 3 weeks have passed since the initial posting. You must manually distribute the follow-up post as it will not be distributed automatically.

We know that many researchers use APA division listservs to collect data for their research, so we want to maintain this recruitment avenue as an option. To do so, we ask for everyone’s cooperation with these policies. If you have any questions or would like to discuss these policies further, please feel free to email the current Listserv Coordinator.

JOB ADVERTISEMENT POLICIES

Individuals may request that an employment posting be sent out to a SCP listserv. We recommend including the following elements in job posts.

  1. These job postings include but are not limited to faculty positions, psychologist positions, and post-doctoral fellowships.
  2. Job postings must have the contact information of the point person regarding the position as well as include a detailed description of job responsibilities.
  3. After the initial job posting has been sent out, it be posted to the listserv one additional time (please wait approximately 3 to 4 weeks before resending the posting).

CAMPAIGNING POLICIES

  1. Commensurate with the policies of the American Psychological Association, Division 17 prohibits the use of any Division electronic or digital resource for campaigning, lobbying, or politicking for any APA, Division-wide, Section, or Special Interest Group office or position. This includes but is not limited to any social media platforms and listservs associated with any aspect of Division 17.

  1. The use of any Division 17 listserv, social media platform, or other electronic or digital resource to disseminate candidate profiles, candidate statements, and election information for any Division-wide office or position is reserved solely for the Division Presidential Trio (i.e. SCP past-president, current SCP president, and SCP president-elect). The Division Presidential Trio may utilize a representative under their direction to post or share information; these representatives include but are not limited to such individuals as the VP of Communications, Social Media Coordinator, etc.

  1. The use of any electronic or digital resource associated with a specific Section or Special Interest Group to disseminate candidate profiles, candidate statements, and election information for an office or position within that specific Section or SIG is allowed by the Section/SIG chair and/or Section/SIG past-chair. This includes such resources as a Section listserv or SIG social media platform. Section/SIG chair and/or Section/SIG past-chair may utilize a representative under their direction to post or share information; these representatives include but are not limited to such individuals as Social Media Coordinator, etc.

  1. The use of any Division 17 listserv, social media, or other electronic or digital resource to endorse or highlight a candidate for APA office whose values, platform, goals, and/or objectives are commensurate with those of Division 17 is reserved solely for the current division president. The Division President may utilize a representative under their direction to post or share information; these representatives include but are not limited to such individuals as the VP of Communications, Social Media Coordinator, etc.

  1. Individuals are expressly forbidden from gathering, collecting, and/or mining contact information of Division members from electronic resources including listservs and social media for campaigning.

  1. Violations of these procedures might result in the removal of any individual from any listserv, social media platform, or other Division electronic or digital resource. Additional and/or more severe consequences are determined by the Division Presidential Trio and/or Division Executive Board members if warranted.

  1. Any issue, area, concern, or problem not expressly covered by these policies will fall to review by the Division Presidential Trio and VP of Communications.