Active Bystander Scenarios

September 2021

SET #1

  • What impact will this scenario have on your colleague/team/community? 

  • What potential impact would not disrupting the behaviour have?

  • How do you feel in the moment? What emotions does the scenario trigger? 

  • How might you be an active bystander in that moment?

  1. Scenario 1: (Rooms 1 - 2) Your colleague is hiring at UBCP/ACTRA. They have received resumes for a new position and are supposed to call the top three candidates to set up interview times. They say they’re not going to call the first name on the list. “I’ll pretend I couldn’t get her and I’ll call someone else.” When you ask why, they state, “I can tell from her name she’s not going to be a good fit there.”

  2. Scenario 2: (Rooms 3 - 4) You approach a supervisor for help with a problem you are having with a female co-worker. Your supervisor responds, “Don’t worry about it. She probably just gets upset when it’s her time of month.”


  3. Scenario 3: (Rooms 5 - 7) You’re helping another member when you overhear a member saying that he will pull his membership from UBCP/ACTRA because he feels that your colleague had racially profiled him.

 

SET #2

  • How do you feel in the moment? What emotions does the scenario trigger? 

  • How might you be an active bystander in that moment?

  1. Scenario 4: (Rooms 1 - 2) Your director wants to address diversity in the workplace. In meetings, when the topic emerges, they look at your colleague, the only individual who identifies as an Indigenous person on your team. You notice that your colleague shifts uncomfortably and averts their gaze when the topic emerges.

  2. Scenario 5: (Rooms 3 - 4) During an informal online meeting between you and colleagues, there is discussion around UBCP/ACTRA’s media posts relating to the recovery of the remains of Indigenous children at residential schools. One of your colleagues seems exasperated and says, “I still really feel like this is favoritism – one moment it’s BLM, then there is #StopAsianHate, now it’s support for Indigenous communities. What’s next? Maybe this is unpopular right now, but I’m of the school that all lives matter.”


    For more information on why it’s problematic to say “All Lives Matter,” please read this: History of Slavery Professor Explains The Mistake In Saying ‘All Lives Matter’

  3. Scenario 6: (Rooms 5 - 7) A colleague of yours who is a woman of colour is speaking in a meeting where a manager constantly cuts them off. They don’t seem to realize they’re doing it and nobody is saying anything. When your colleague raises her voice so she can be heard, your director stops her and asks for her to wait until everyone else has finished speaking.