Instructions for group admins
On the technical side, the group administrator has permissions to remove other people’s messages, remove members from the group, change the group’s settings, disable or delete the group entirely, etc.
In practice, most responsibilities of the group admin do not require these permissions – but they do require some attention and discretion.
Admins are always welcome to contact a PAC Exec member for advice or support.
Admin responsibilities
- Student safety: This is the most important part. If any content in the group could harm the school experience for a particular student / group of students, the school Principal must be alerted to the matter ASAP. (The PAC Exec should be notified too, but this is a school matter, not just a PAC matter).
Examples of such content include: complaints or threats regarding a particular student; sharing of a student’s private information without consent; any form of bullying or harassment. If in doubt, contact the Principal. - Content moderation: Discussions should be safe, civil, and relevant. The class group is not a place for political debates, self-promotion, rants etc. The admin can remind members to play nice. If someone is unable to follow the rules, the admin can remove them from the group.
- Spam and unwanted guests: we set these groups up so that people can join them using a public link. This means anyone who finds the link can add themselves to the group. If anyone joins the group who shouldn’t be there, the admin can remove their messages, remove the user, and change the group settings to disable the public link (new people can still join the group if they are invited by someone already in the group).
- Forwarding PAC announcements: class group admins should be members of the Henry Hudson PAC Volunteers WhatsApp group. When the PAC shares an announcement, poster, etc. in the volunteers group, the admin should forward the message to their class group (unless someone else had already beaten them to it).
This part of the role can be passed from the admin to another person who’s a member of both groups, if both sides agree.