May
Our Response to Racist Incident
We have been made aware of an incident of targeted racism that occurred during the collaborative workshop with Wessex Scene and Ashamed, held on Zoom last week.
We are appalled to hear this has happened so blatantly. We understand that, although this was extreme, our students of colour continue to experience racism in many forms generally. SUSU absolutely condemns this and all forms of discrimination, outlined in our Expect Respect Policy, and we hold all members of our community to this standard. We do not know if the person who entered this call was a fellow student, but if they were and you have knowledge of this, please report it straight to the University discipline team, or you can use SUSU’s Report and Support tool. If you are aware of who they are and they are not a student, please inform the police and let us know.
We would like to take this opportunity to encourage you to use our official virtual platform Microsoft Teams, where there is more control over who is able to enter a call. We appreciate the in some circumstances Zoom or other platforms may be more fit for purpose and we completely agree that even online, people deserve respect, safety and decency and this incident was unacceptable. We will be supporting the students and societies involved in this to raise this incident with Zoom.
For future Club and Society events please do consider using Teams and making use of the safety features wherever possible.
If you have experienced or witnessed any discriminatory behaviour such as this, we encourage you to use our report and support tool or contact our advisors for support.
Despite this incident, we would like to highlight the successful work done by Wessex Scene and Ashamed this term particularly this collaborative workshop. If you would like to see more information about their work and get involved, you can find info here – https://www.wessexscene.co.uk/ , https://ashamedmagazine.com/ (Instagram)
Fiona Sunderland (VP Activities) and Laura Barr (VP Welfare and Communities) on behalf of SUSU
Tags: SUSU