Any forms of bullying, harassment, discrimination, sexual harassment, and sexual assault are wrong and should not be experienced by students at City, either on campus or off campus.
If you have experienced any form of harassment, bullying or sexual violence either on campus, online or off campus the SU advice service is here to offer you support. You can speak to us even if what you have experienced happened off-campus, away from teaching hours, with person who is not a student or happened some time ago.
How can I feel comfortable to speak to you?
We know that sharing these types of experiences can be incredibly difficult. We have trained advisers and harassment advisors who are able to offer you a safe space to talk about your experiences and provide you with information and impartial, non-judgemental advice, guidance, and support. If you would feel most comfortable speaking to a specific gender or person of colour, we can try and accommodate this within our team of three advisers.
We will keep everything you say confidential unless you would like us to disclose it. There are some circumstances in which we must breach confidentiality, you can find full details on our confidentiality policy in our Service Policy Handbook.
What will happen during an appointment with an adviser?
Your health and wellbeing are paramount to us. We will listen to your concerns without judgement and help you collect your thoughts. We will then talk through your options with you and look at next steps, including advice on the most appropriate sources of specialist support.
Here are some of the ways we can help:
- Advise you on City’s policies surrounding bullying and harassment and sexual misconduct
- Help you to understand what City can do to help you
- Support you to report your experience to City
- Direct you to support services at City, both within your school and more widely
- Signpost you towards specialist support services
- Make a detailed record of what you have said which you can retain
We are here to offer you advice, guidance and support depending on what steps you may want to take. We are an empowering service and it is important to us that the choices you make are the right choices for you.
How do I access the SU advice service?
We are able to offer support via appointments and over email. Currently we are offering virtual appointments but we can discuss other options with you if you feel that you need an alternative form of conversation. You can access our service by filling in a case form. If you have any specific requests such as to use a different form of communication or would like to speak to an adviser of a specific gender for example, please note this on your case form.
If you experience an urgent experience on campus, you can visit the Student’s Union offices located in the Tait Building. Although we cannot guarantee that you will be able to speak to an adviser immediately or you may find there is less opportunity for you to have a say over the adviser you see, such as the gender of the adviser for example.
How soon will I be able to speak to an adviser?
We try to respond to cases where a student has experienced any form of bullying, harassment or sexual assault as soon as possible. We do have an urgent cases policy that ensures students that need our help quickly can be offered an appointment either immediately or within the next 24 hours.
Please note that whether the urgent cases policy is relevant is assessed on a case-by-case basis and the use of this policy is at the discretion of the adviser and the SU advice manager. You can see more about this part of our policy in our Service Policy Handbook.
For further information about our service, please contact unionadvice@city.ac.uk