Ohio

If you know of a convention that needs to be added to the list or have updated your own convention's policy, you can fill out the form here. If you find any broken links or have any questions about this page, please contact Fractali at admin@cosplayer-ssn.org. This is a perpetual work in progress!

A guide to some of Ohio's laws can be found here.

A means they meet the criterion.
A means they have partially met the criterion.
A means they fail the criterion.

Additional notes for clarification can be found below the table.

Note: conventions with ^* have either not updated for several years, have a malfunctioning website, or may be defunct.

Note: Animate! Columbus's mention of harassment can be found under Info > Safety & Props. It could be made much clearer that the Safety page includes the code of conduct.

Note: Con on the Cob's single mention of harassment appears alongside the phrase, "cosplay is not consent, as the saying goes." That is not a policy. The definition of harassment is not specifically linked enough to the word "harassment" to qualify.

Note: Fan Expo Cleveland has an incident report system for multiple conventions, but Philadelphia is currently not available to select.

Note: GalaxyCon Columbus's mention of harassment can be found only by navigating to Live Event FAQs, clicking "what are your safety policies," then following through to click the "here" link. It is not sufficient enough to call it a policy.

Note: HorrorHound Weekend's website was marked as "unsafe" during evaluation, so we have broken the link on purpose. Also, their website's FAQ lists a general question, "Is HorrorHound Weekend a 'safe' environment for all?" which discusses suspicious threats/persons, racism, and hate speech, but not harassment. We wonder why harassment was not considered worth mentioning specifically, let alone why there isn't a policy around it, considering the emphasis on a "family friendly" environment.

Note: We are concerned by, "Matsuricon will not involve itself in harassment claims unless they are reported at the time at which they occur, staff members are available in the convention operations office at all times." We would like to remind Matsuricon that not all targets of harassment realize what's happening at the time nor are all targets available to physically locate or get to the conventions operations office after an incident like that. To think otherwise is willfully ignorant and sends a message that discourages targets from coming forward, which is especially dangerous considering staff/guests/etc. are not listed as being held accountable if they are the harasser.

Note: Oddmall conventions include but are not limited to: Expedition Elsewhere, Emporium of the World, Riverside Ramble, Uncensored, The Great Grassman Gathering, Hallowondrous, Vendors at Zombiepalooza, and Chrishanukwanzmadan. Oddmall's single mention of harassment appears alongside the phrase, "cosplay is not consent, as the saying goes." That is not a policy. The definition of harassment is not specifically linked enough to the word "harassment" to qualify. We would also encourage Oddmall to reconsider the elements of "come to us in person," "both sides of the story," "informed by the provable or observable facts"; these all discourage targets from reporting and are the opposite of trauma-informed. It is clear that Oddmall organizers value the "community [they've] spent years creating," which is why we strongly consider Oddmall to be inclusive of targets and survivors of harassment in that community—we guarantee there are more than you think there are.

Note: Origins lists the Columbus Police Department non-emergency phone number before the online reporting contact. We understand that listing an emergency number such as 911 could be valuable in circumstances of physical harm. However, because many folks in the convention community are also from marginalized communities that are routinely discriminated against by law enforcement and would be dissuaded to report with the police phone number so prominently displayed; because police so rarely investigate cases of harassment, stalking, abuse, and sexual assault with dignity toward the reporting party, if they investigate at all; if it is Origin's preference to keep this number on the policy page, we would not recommend including this information in the Anti-Harassment section.

Note: Ratha Con's website is not functional at the time of evaluation.

Note: Steampunk Symposium allegedly links their code of conduct at the very bottom of the page, but the link redirects to the main page. However, it would be given an asterisk (*) if it linked to a policy because the FAQ was not intuitive to find.

Note: TrotCon's policy says the best way to report is to find anyone with the label of Staff on the Discord Server. We would like to remind TrotCon that a Discord Server is not a universally accessible way to report, as not everyone has Discord.

Note: Zipcon's website has a link for a Rules page but at time of evaluation, this link led to an unsafe phishing webpage.