Sample Campus Mediator Guidelines

Syracuse University Campus Mediator Guidelines (circa 1991)

These guidelines represent the obligations the mediator has toward the campus community and toward the Parties. The items listed are to be considered as morally binding obligations, not merely a list of "rules of the game."

Ethical Concerns: The Mediator and Mediation Center/Community

1. To keep an open mind, an intellectual impartiality. To clearly formulate issues NOT conclusions.

2. To give a full, best effort to each case: good faith.

3. To make a principled decision to decline or withdraw from a case if you know the parties and/or if you feel you cannot mediate it in good faith. There is further responsibility to look for any reasonable probability of bias or other interference occurring due to the nature of the case.

4. To represent the Campus Mediation Center and the process competently and professionally.

• a. become & remain proficient in the skills of mediation
• b. accept & follow through efficiently on all assigned cases.
• c. maintain loyalty to the process.
• d. maintain the spirit as well as the appearance of confidentiality and honesty.

5. To provide the mediation service as a volunteer, not amenable to payoffs, outside entrepreneurship etc.

6. To represent the Center in a professional manner when talking to individuals or the press, and to direct members of the press to the program coordinator if they intend to print a story about the program.

Ethical Concerns: The Mediator and the Parties

1. To encourage but NOT manipulate or coerce settlement. Agreement is up to the parties.

2. To give each party a fair hearing.

• a. Facilitating, supporting communication
• b. Maintaining & defending the rights of each party to be heard
• c. Listening: there is frequently real virtue in NOT speaking.

3. To keep confidences unless a party gives permission to share the information or the law demands a nonconfidential response.

• a. being candid, sincere in responses
• b. not exposing unnecessarily weaknesses or factors extraneous to the negotiation

4. To respect parties' rights to disagree and to work out their own result or their right NOT to work out a result.

5. To refuse to mediate a case if it becomes apparent that there has been a pattern of repeated domestic violence or intimidation in an interpersonal relationship, and to suspend mediation if it becomes apparent in the course of the mediation session itself.

(from Ready-Set-Go Program Development Packet by Bill Warters)