Sarah Purdy  1:00  
Good morning, everyone. It's 11 o'clock. So I'm going to start by welcoming you this morning to this session, thank you very much for joining us. I'm delighted to welcome both students and staff who are interested in this really important issue. We're going to be talking this morning about responding to racism and discrimination. In particular thinking about our City and our University and our community. And I'm delighted to be joined this morning by Alex Raikes, from SARI, and I'll ask Alex to introduce herself to you in a moment when she will talk through some material and then also by Mark Runacres, from Avon and Somerset Constabulary who will also be talking to us this morning. So I'm very grateful to both Alex and Mark for giving up their time to come and talk about this important issue with us. So I'm Sarah Purdy, I'm the Pro-Vice Chancellor for Student Experience here at the university. And under my portfolio, I have student wellbeing and inclusion and engagement with students as three of the areas that I work with. So hence the fact that I'm very interested and passionate about this particular issue. So, today we're going to cover what a hate crime or hate incident is and how you are protected by UK law, how to respond if you encounter discrimination or harassment, what will happen if you decide to report it, and what support is available to you at the University and outside University.

So as I said, there are three of us who are going to be speaking this morning, myself, Alex and Mark, and I'll get them to introduce themselves and their roles when we move on sessions. So first of all, we're going to go to Alex, who's going to talk to us about some of the key issues we are interested in addressing this morning. And Alex is from SARI, over to you, Alex. 

Alex Raikes  3:19  
Thank you, morning, everybody. And I'm really, really glad to be here today and to be doing the session. It's really important for us to reach out as much as we can, in the current times to make sure that nobody is suffering from hate crime. And we know that with coronavirus. There has been some incidents linked to that. And what we see with different things that go on in our world in our society, sometimes incidents do lead to a spike in hate crime, which do i'm glad to say they come down after a while, but we really need to make sure everyone's reporting it. So SARI is Stand Against Racism & Inequality, and we are your regional hate crime charity. We cover the area of Bristol, Bath and North East Somerset, North Somerset, Somerset and South Gloucestershire. And we've been running for nearly 30 years, starting off initially as a charity that dealt with racism, and religious based hate crime. And then, in about 2012 to 13. We widened to cover all forms of hate crime, which you'll learn more about in a minute. We also lead something called Bristol Hate Crime and Discrimination Services, which is a collaboration of six different charities because together we all provide different specialisms around hate crime. I'm the Director of SARI and I've been working in SARI and running, working in SARI since I left Bristol University in 1991. So you can try and work out how old I am. And I am passionate. I joined the charity because I've been through a lot of racism myself when I was younger, and that's the state of the charity for 30 years and ended up eventually running it. We have 20 staff, we're quite big for a charity of our kind. We're the biggest in the UK or albeit, we're only 20 staff, so not that big. So what is hate crime for all of you? Really important to know what it is basically, it's where you have a crime targeted at you that's motivated by hatred towards one of what's called your protected characteristics. What that means is, you have characteristics about you that are protected in law and you should not be attacked or targeted because of them. That includes race or your ethnicity, your religion or belief, your sexual orientation, your disability, your gender, or your transgender identity, these are all protected in law. And if you or anyone else you know is attacked, targeted, bullied because of these reasons, then you, you need to take action about it and you need to report it or we encourage you. You don't have to, but we really think it's important. Also, sometimes things happen to you that aren't actually a crime. But they're still what's called a hate incident. And, to be honest, an awful lot of incidents where you're targeted are crimes, but sometimes, I don't know one does what's called banter and it doesn't quite meet the threshold but still really upsets you, or somebody throws rubbish at you or into your garden. Some of these things aren't actually crimes. They're what's called hate incidents. So moving on to the next slide, so it just takes a second to transition.

Hopefully, it's going to shift in a minute.

Yeah, so basically the just to give you ideas of the different forms that hate crime or hate instance can take to be on it what SARI's, seen over 30 years is you would not believe almost every kind of incident you can imagine, the most common type of abuse, hate crime, or racism, for example is verbal abuse. And that's name calling, shouting insults, telling someone to go back to their country, threats, or any form of verbal abuse, about your sexual orientation or disability, your religion, basically, even as I said, we hear the term banter to be joking, but it's not funny. If they're saying something that upsets you, that's about your identity. Physical abuse is where you get the more extreme end of hate crime. And that can be everything from a serious assault, which I'm glad to say is rare, but we do get them. Someone's hijabi's being pulled off or being poked or being spat out. These are physical attacks. Criminal damage to your property, and that could be your house. It could also be you know, your student bag, or somebody wrapping something up of yours. So, graffiti or X on your property and things like that. criminal damage can take a lot of different forms. Being intimidated to someone being aggressive or violent towards you. Facing discrimination at work now, hate crime is a form of discrimination. Discrimination is where you're treated differently and negatively because of your identity, and that's another legal area. But when it moves towards active incidents and abuse, that becomes hate crime. And you can get hate crime at work as well as what's called discrimination where you're treated differently. And that's something that we can help with as well. Belittling making fun of someone as I said earlier, a lot of incidents and abuse is now happening online. People are setting up fake Instagram accounts, fake Facebook accounts. So a lot of banter can happen online email, texts, unpleasant letters, but a lot of things coming in through social media these days can be very offensive, and again, it should be reported, even if it's not directed at you, but you see it's something that could cause a lot of negative impact. There's something else we call mate crime, which I won't go into a lot today but that's where people are taken advantage of and exploited, money's taken out of them or people have, you know, with disabilities have been frogmarched frogmarched to cashpoints and made to give money or forcibly had medication taken off them or cigarettes or alcohol. Now with students that can happen sometimes some students are actually vulnerable to being exploited. And that's another form of hate crime, which you should be aware of.

Just moving on to the next slide.

Just a note to say that, remember that victims and perpetrators have a situation where both sides could be doing something that's a bit abusive, but sometimes it really is one person being targeted and someone else doing the targeting who's a perpetrator. And you just need to know that victims and perpetrators could be anyone, you know, your friends can target you. It can be people you work with, it can be people who are teaching you and it can be it can be staff, it can be people on the street and strangers. So there's no you know, and victims come from every walk of life and every background. I have people coming to me from the frontline to the most senior levels of management. And nobody necessarily doesn't get targeted in their life, just because of the background they come from. Privilege doesn't stop you from getting abused because you're different. And also just to to note that there is quite a significant amounts of hate crime as well. I mean, I don't want to say it's something that happens frequently and commonly, because I'm glad to say it usually doesn't. But it is something now that we are seeing significant amounts of and it's been on the rise and the crime survey of England and Wales that I've got in front of you now is the annual stats report that comes out from the government that shows you what's happening with hate crime if you're interested.

Don't know if Alex and co. can hear me but the slides are moving quite slowly, but it might be my internet so sorry about that, guys. So, okay, well, why is it so important that we are all here today and that we should and must respond to and tackle hate crime? Firstly, let's be honest, we are in a very diverse multicultural society. And we absolutely love that. Well, I love it and and hopefully most people do love it. And what's important is that everybody in that diverse society is safe and not targeted because of their protected characteristics or identities. And making sure we deal with that is what makes society a safe place, a place where people can enjoy their lives free from persecution. And I think we're all striving for those human rights. And that's what makes society the best it can be. It's also let's be honest, happening to a lot of people. We've just seen the crime survey for England and Wales. And SARI stats, were dealing with about seven or 800 referrals a year, just for this area. So it's something that isn't, that is actually happening to a fair few people. Every single incident that happens is serious and never underestimate, for those of you who've been through it, you will know it has a huge impact on people. It has impact on the individuals attacked. It has an impact on their families around them if they are part of that unit. Even if they don't tell their family and their behavior changes, it can really affect what's going on with their family. It affects you at work, whether you're being attacked at work or attacked in another part of your life, then it can affect how well you do study or work. It can seriously impact on your social life, especially if it's actual friends who are making the remarks and for the wider community you can have one attack on a community member that can ripple out to a whole community and make a lot of people afraid and change the way they go about their lives. So again, at the extreme end, unchecked hate crime has led to whole countries breaking down. Never underestimate the impact of it. That's why we've got to stop it. If you don't deal with it early it can get very serious. So stop it, deal with it. It keeps you safe, it keeps others safe. It stops it getting worse. It stops it happening to others.

Just moving on to the next slide with my internet. So let's look through, I've got a few tips. And these are available in a document, which I'm sure the University are going to upload online for you all to just download in your own time. So firstly, number one is it's really important that you recognize it. So hopefully by telling you what hate crime is today, and telling you who gets targeted, then that's a first step, first step towards recognizing it. And the more you sort of read up, the more you can understand the different forms it takes. And please also know that although we've listed a number of identities that are before you now, where you can be attacked, we will support anyone who's attacked, who says it's hate crime, that includes sometimes to do with people's age, or to do with how they dress or because they're associated with someone. Perhaps you're going out with someone from a different race or religion or you've got a gay friend, oryou're looking after someone who's disabled if you're attacked that can have an impact. So for a second point for, for the tips of what to do with hate crime is always take it seriously. So whether it's happening to you or someone else around you, and even if you think it's low level, my advice to you is do something about it, don't ignore it, do something about it. It doesn't have to be extreme action. It can be literally telling somebody, someone that is unacceptable. Sometimes that does the trick. But do something about it. The third thing is, be safe. Because when you do want to take action, you need to check that you're not going to either put yourself or others in danger. And that's hard to sort of give you what all the scenarios, we haven't got time today for how you you know, definitely do keep safe, but the thing is, use your, use your head and, and, and try and make sure that what you do doesn't lead to compromise of your safety. So I don't know, if you're, if it's somebody who's being really, really violent and aggressive, which as I said is a pretty rare occurrence, then make sure you perhaps step away to make the call to the police. And just do everything you can to keep each everyone safe and don't escalate the situation. But take action as soon as you practically can. Just moving on to the next point. The next thing is saying something can make a really big difference. So challenging firmly and politely you can stop people from further offending. And if you're a witness, you can try and talk to the victim or just start chatting to them to deter the offender, again, trying to stay safe. But I was recently involved in an incident where a guy was racially abusing and also being Islamophobic on a bus in front of lots and lots of people. I was at the end of a long day, and that incident occurred and you know what, half the bus stood up and challenge that person. And then ushered them off the bus and then we called the police. It made a massive difference. And just supporting everyone, including the person he was yelling at made a big difference. The fifth tip is to record things that you see again, staying safe. You can record things on your phone. But also you can record things by writing them down straight away and make sure you log the date, the time and the age of the perpetrator their appearance and any other details like number plates if it was from a car and things like that. If it's on a bus, there are bus identification numbers. So just record anything you think that could help make sure we can identify where it happened and who happened to. I'd already said filming it again so long as you can stay safe and I think Mark Runacres, who's going to be joining us shortly who's with us today from Avon and Somerset Constabulary can give you a few more tips around how and when you can film. But as you probably seen with lots of online media about hate crime, when things are recorded it can mean really firm action can be taken. Point seven is report it, so I think I've said that a lot to you already. Whatever you do, as I said, if you could always report hate crime when it happens, I mean, obviously, even if it's, you know, if it's a friend and you're trying to challenge them, then by talking to them and stopping it, that may be enough for you. But wherever you think it's going to be important for others to know about what's happened, so that we get a good idea of where a hate crime is happening, who it's happening to. And make sure we do as much as we can about it, report it, report it to the police, and Mark will talk to you about that in a minute. All our details will be available to you today if you want if you want to come to a specialist and dedicated charity to report it. And the University is going to talk in a minute about what they have on offer to help you whenever hate crime occurs.

Be a witness. Again, I think I've mentioned that anyway, it isn't just about when you're targeted, it's looking out for each other as much as you can to be a witness, be what I call a proactive bystander. Do something about it, if you see it happening to others, one of my board members, she's a Muslim woman and she was spat at and had her hijabi ripped off in Cabot Circus area. And the worst thing for her was that no one came forward to help her when she was attacked, not the actual attack. The actual attack was bad enough. What really upset her was that so many people ignored it. She's now on our board and making a difference for many others, but that had a huge impact on her. Coming forward really helps people feel supported and protected. So what can we do? We're a pretty active charity. We're known for being what I call a critical friend and challenging agencies. A lot of our work is done around ensuring and encouraging and lobbying an advocating to make sure people get the best support they can. We're there to support any victim. Even if you don't want to do anything about it, all you want to do is offload and talk. We are here to listen. And our team are made up of people who've all been through instances themselves and have personal understanding and lived experience. We would work with you to agree what you want to do about what's happened. As I said, that could be everything from having nothing done, to having action taken to going through a court case, we'll be there through that whole journey for you. And we don't have a time, we don't have a deadline on cases. My longest running case is probably 13 years, which was a shopkeeper who was constantly getting targeted in a really tough area. And we're also working on two murder cases, both of which have been open for several years to make sure we get maximum justice for the family. I will add that murder we've had two in 30 years. It's a really rare occurrence thank goodness. But those cases can take a very long time to get to the best outcome for the very traumatized family. And we'll support you through legal proceedings. And also just remember, you know, part of the reason we exist is we were set up by and for victims, and by and for the community. So we are independent of the police. We work very closely with the police, and we couldn't be doing our work without their support. But we're also independent. And sometimes if the police get it wrong, or the university gets it wrong, or anyone gets it wrong, we're there to help you challenge and get things right to put right and to take you through that process too. We've got really good relationships with those agencies and can also escalate things if you're not getting the response on the front line. So we are also part of the community and I should say communities because Bristol is made up of so many different communities - 91 different languages spoken in Bristol, and 45 faiths in Bristol, nevermind all our other communities when you look at disability and sexual orientation, so very diverse City, and we're trusted by the communities and also, as I said, led by them. And we've got links to many other community organizations who we can put you in touch with. So if you've got other issues going on, and you don't know where to turn and it's not always just about hate crime, SARI's got links to after 30 years with almost every kind of organisation you can imagine. So, where do you report? You've heard obviously the police are there for you and Mark will tell you more how to and when to report to the police, and and there you go, Bristol Hate Crime and Discrimination Services, or SARI, more details there for you. And I know you're going to hear in a minute about University of Bristol and what they can offer you as well. 

Sarah Purdy  22:59  
Thank you very much, Alex. That's really, really helpful and great work that SARI does. Can we hand over to Mark now?

Mark Runacres  23:10  
Yeah good morning everyone, I hope you can hear me okay. My name is Mark Runacres, and I'm a Chief Inspector in the police in Bristol. I've been in the police for 25 years and virtually all of that time has been working in Bristol and mainly central Bristol. So that's given me the opportunity to learn a lot about the city. And then to start off by just echoing what Alex has said around about how diverse Bristol is as a city and what a positive thing that is. I would personally sort of consider that to be the greatest privilege that I've had in 25 years in policing is to learn as much as I have about the community in Bristol, and as Alex mentioned, working with SARI has been been so positive for, for the police and for me personally, really helped me and us to learn when we have got things wrong and how we can do things better. And what's key to the constabulary, to the to the police in Bristol and nationally, is to get better at what we do. We have such a diverse community and that can bring real chalenges in policing. But building people's trust and confidence in what we do is so important to us. You know, police forces around the world vary greatly in how they operate and the levels of trust that exist for them. And in in the UK, we very much like to think that we police by consent, our police force aren't generally armed, we police our communities with with their consent. And that's, that's built up, that's built on a foundation of trust and an understanding of what we're trying to achieve. And I'd like to talk a little bit as I talk about hate crime reporting processes, about what that actually looks like in Bristol and how you can report things to us and what we'll do about those reports when they're received. So what a hate crime is, this has already been covered by Alex but from a policing perspective, just to reinforce those messages, a hate crime is a criminal offense, which has been which has been perceived by the victim as having been motivated by some form of prejudice or hate. So there's legislation that allows for any criminal offense to be, to become racially aggravated if it's motivated by some sort of a person's dislike or prejudice against someone. And in this context, we're talking about by their, by their ethnicity, or by their faith can be another one as Alex has spoken about. And it's treated really seriously by the judiciary in the UK, the police and by the courts as well. And sentences would be would generally be more more severe for people who are convicted of a hate crime because it's accepted that it's so unacceptable for someone to be targeted for those reasons. And as such, we're really keen that any any incidents are reported to us that we can help victims of hate crime and respond.to their needs, because I've dealt with enough hate crimes to know and had enough conversations with with Alex to know the impact that these offenses can have. And it can be devastating to people, it can really undermine their confidence. And it's something that we will take really seriously. So in terms of reporting, there's a number of ways that all crimes can be reported to us in the police of the UK. The traditional way is calling 999, as many people would know about, generally call 999 in an emergency, and that would be if a crime is in progress, or if an offender is still at the scene. So if you've been a victim of any crime, but in this context, a hate crime, and the offender is still nearby, or the offense is still ongoing, then that would justify you calling 999 because that gives the police an opportunity to get there immediately and take action to stop the offending and to identify and deal with or arrest the offender. So if an offense has already taken place, the incident has has passed, but you still want to record to report it that can be done by calling 101. So just a slower time feed into the constabulary, but still enables that call to be logged. So an officer can then pick up that report and come make contact with you later. But we haven't got that urgency or being in progress as we would have for 999 emergency response. You can visit one of our police stations. So we have a number of police stations still around the city, not as many as we used to. But we do have a number still. So the Bridewell police station, that's where I work in central Bristol between the city centre and Broadmead. Trinity Road police station. And there are other there are other stations Westgate House up at Southmead for example. And if you look on our force website, I'll come to that later in what I talk about, then you can identify where your where your local police station is to go make a report there in person. And there's also online reporting, of course, where you can go on to our force website. And again, I'll give that address later. And you can go onto that portal and submit an online report which will still be picked up in the same way, allocated to an officer for investigation. They will make contact with you and get additional details that we need, a statement if necessary, and work work with any victim to talk through what our options are to deal with this offense and deal with the offender in a proportionate and appropriate manner.

So moving on now to what's hap, what happens next sequentially. So once a report is made, it will be it will be investigated what I'm really keen to stress here, and hopefully this this will answer in part the question that Chloe asked on the text earlier, is our our investigations, particularly in relation to hate crime, are going to be victim led. Now, once that initial reports been made, you won't lose control of what happens. That's not the way we do things. We're very aware of how how sensitive these issues can be, and how people can be concerned about finding themselves maybe having to having to face a perpetrator or an offender subsequently in the criminal justice process. And we need to we need to and we do prioritize the needs of the victim in how we deal with offenses and investigations. So once that initial report is made, we have a duty through our National Crime Recording Standards to capture that information accurately so you can build up a picture of what offenses are taking place. That's the same for any crime. But beyond that, we're not under any obligation, there's nothing driving any agenda for us as to how we deal with that. We make decisions in partnership with the victim as to what they best want. So it may be they just want it to be recorded and us to have an awareness of it and be able to try and do things to reduce the risk of it happening to anyone again, and that's fine. We can do that. If someone does want to pursue a prosecution, then absolutely, we can do that we can look to identify the offender, interview them and charge them or report them and take them to court to get them suitably punished. But there are other options as well that we can explore in are really key in relation to hate crime. But one of those is looking around restorative processes. So if if, for example, someone doesn't want to pursue a matter through the criminal courts, we can look to facilitate a meeting between the perpetrator and the victim, so the victim has an opportunity to talk about the impact of that offending behavior, how it made them feel the issues that is brought about for them. And that can be really powerful for the victim and for the perpetrator, for the perpetrator to be confronted with the actual reality of the consequences of their offending behavior, but not within the criminal justice setting. Now, those, such a restorative meeting can take place within the criminal justice framework. It could be something which happens alongside a prosecution, but it can also happen aside from that, as well. And it just I want to just illustrate that that range of options that exist there, from very straightforward from a policing perspective, take your report, arrest someone, interview them and charge them, that's fine, we can do that. But if that's not what people want, and the victim wants, a more measured approach just for us to be aware or for us to explore other ways of flagging the impact the offense has caused for them, then that's certainly something we're really keen to do. And working with SARI particularly, or other agencies, has helped us to shape that more flexible approach to how we deal with things. So that we're not looking to apply a kind of one size fits all resolution because it doesn't work like that we know that. The impact of these offenses and all offenses can vary so much from one person to the other. And we're very mindful of that and want to work with victims. So being victim led in our actions is really, really key. And that's probably one of the most important things that I would want to leave you with today from the policing perspective here is that that we wouldn't make decisions without your consent. So in relation to other ways that we can support them again, linking into what Chloe had asked earlier. Hate Crimes we've spoken about so hate crimes, which could be an assault, criminal damage, public order offence, those harassment, those type of offenses where we've got a very tangible criminal offense that's been committed. They can be dealt with through the legislation and the reporting processes that I've explained. But there are lower level incidents that we're still really keen to know about, and offenses and incidents which wouldn't necessarily constitute a criminal offense in itself doesn't make them of any less interest to us. Because hate incidents, lower level, talk about things like maybe if someone is feeling if someone is feeling ostracized someone's feeling excluded, someone's feeling that someone someone gets up from a seat on a bus, maybe and moves away from you, because you sit down next to them. There's no criminal offense there. But that's that's a behavior which is discriminatory. And for us, that can be really important to map these these incidents because it helps us to build a picture of emerging and developing and community tensions, and how those prejudices are playing out in our communities. So we'd be really interested to hear about those type of incidents as well. Now they can't they can't result in any criminal action, of course, because there's no offense being committed there. But from a policing perspective, that doesn't mean that there's something we don't want to hear about. And those sorts of incidents can really help us to work with communities to understand the emerging issues that they're facing, because lower level issues can escalate. And we'd want to try and challenge some of those behaviors, just educate people a bit better and work with partners to achieve that. So people are less likely to become victims of hate crime in the future.

So in relation to our how you can contact the Constabulary and how you can find out more details about some of the things I've that I've spoken about, I'd like to refer to the the website that's shown on the screen now, the Avon and Somerset police website will give you lots of information about your local police force, and things that are going on currently through the newsroom pages of ways that we can help you as well. If you go onto the link there there, there will be your area tab, then you can find out who the local Officers are, who serve you specifically in your community. Now my team are the neighborhood team for Central and North Bristol. So I manage all of the local Officers who have a dedicated responsibility to serve local communities. So generally speaking, that's a specialism that police officers go into after having spent a few years working in an emergency response role. So when we join the police in the UK, you generally have at least two years where you're driving around in a police car and doing all the exciting things that that that brings. And after that two years, you do get a chance to specialize in other in other areas of particular interest. And neighborhood policing is one of those areas of specialism. So the Officers on my team they have, they have a designated area that they're responsible for. And they work with people in that community to resolve the issues that exist for them to have a problem solving approaches to some of the longer longer term concerns. And if you want to find out who your local Officers are, if you go onto the website, your area page and put your address or your postcode in there, then that will show who your local Officers are, how you can contact them, and also what the key priorities are in that area at the moment. And you can feed into that as well, for something that's not being responded to, you can let the Officers know so they can start to talk, to work on that as a priority as well. So I just want to reassure you around that stuff. That's the commitment that we make in terms of having those Officers available that really want to understand the needs of a community. So being responsible for Central and North Bristol myself, one of the significant changes that I've noticed to the demographic in the City Centre has been the increase in the number of overseas Chinese students in the City, which has been fantastic, adds to that diversity that we've got in the City. But we really want to work hard to engage with that community. So we can reach out and explain and build confidence in the police and what we can do, and get that two way conversation going. So we can have communication around issues that are of concern so we can respond to that. And we'll work with other agencies like the local authority, the council, SARI, the Bristol and Avon Chinese Women's group, and the Overseas Chinese Association, for example, to build those links and let people know that we are here for them to support and help them in any way that they need us. So that's what I wanted to cover and welcome any questions as I know will Alex, and I'll hand back from there.

Sarah Purdy  35:54  
Thank you very much, Mark. And there's just a question there has come in from Chloe who's been really helpful in highlighting some questions, saying, 'Would you still encourage students to report hate incidents they've experienced even if they're unable to provide identifying information?' Mark would you add to just pick that up?

Mark Runacres  36:14  
Yeah, of course, yeah, I would, that that would be really welcome is around is around mapping the information that's out there for us. So in relation to that sort of information, I think the best way for us to receive that would be if Chloe was to go on to the local website and find out who her local Officers, it has an emai link through that, and could then email the Officers. I'm very happy for Chloe to email me as well in the first instance. So we can start to understand what those type of issues are. Because as I said, it's really important for us to to map what's out there because these emerging issues as Alex said earlier, if they're not reported to us, these are the things that can develop. And if negative behaviors go unchallenged, then they can develop further and that's that's going to be problematic for all it's not what we want. So absolutely, really keen to get that information. If there's behaviors that have happened in the past, very much want to know about.

Alex Raikes  37:04  
Can I add to that Sarah as well, just to say that I mean it an example could be that cars cars are driving past and shouting out. And we've had that happen in a few different areas. And people can't, some people can't get the identifying information. But actually, if three or four people report, maybe one person does get the number plate and we then get able to identify someone, or if a lot of incidents are happening at a particular bus stop in a particular area. If you even if people report without knowing who's done it, you can combine the information or set up and the police can set up an operation once we've had it since in a particular location, so it's all helpful, all adds to the picture.

Sarah Purdy  37:46  
Thank you both very much. That's really really helpful and really useful information for us. I just wanted to outline a little bit about University support on offer and also how reporting into the university can help in the similar ways that Alex and Mark were suggesting, to help us build up a pattern of what's happening so that we can help to address these really horrible incidents that happen. So I think what we really want to encourage our students and staff to do, but I'm going to focus on the student side of things at the moment, is to tell us if something doesn't feel right. As we've heard, clearly, from Alex and Mark, racism, bullying, harassment, assault and discrimination are not acceptable. And whether that's happening within the University and is an issue around other students, or whether it's happening as has happened more recently, with particularly East Asian students feeling uncomfortable within the city, perhaps as a result of wider community issues, if it's something about the wider community let us know. If you let us know, then we will take action and I'll talk a bit more about what might happen in a moment. So if you see something you don't like, report it using Report and Support and the link is there for you.

So students and staff can report through reports and support. And you can either do that anonymously, or you can ask to have advice from an advisor. And if you report it anonymously, anonymously, it's a bit like Mark and Alex was saying about, we might not have all the details, but we might know that there's a pattern of things going on. So if you report something, ticking the report anonymously box, we will look at it, we won't be able to take perhaps individual action about an individual because we don't know who you are, or who they are, but we will start to build a pattern. And as a result of information, we had an anonymously at the University, around the concerns around particularly our Chinese students feeling uncomfortable in the city, we contacted the police, we contacted the City Council, we contacted SARI. And as a result of that, the police I know stepped up their monitoring activities in the parts of the City that we were concerned about. And Alex got in touch to offer SARI's particular support for this issue. And we were able to reach out to students and say we know you're worried about this. These are places you can get support from, and that was as a result of anonymous reporting. So it can be really effective and really helpful. But if you want to hear back from someone to get support for yourself, then do request an advisor to get back to using Report and Support again, it's just a different box to tick and you go through and someone will then get in touch. Our Wellbeing Team monitor the student box on a regular Monday to Friday basis, and they will get back to you with advice with support, and they will follow up with you. This is a really good way of you being able to get some support, and then take it through steps depending on how far you want to take it, a bit like Mark said, have a discussion with one of our Advisors, they might suggest, for example, a specialist organisation like SARI, or it might be something we can deal with in house. So I'd really encourage people to use Report and Support and you can use either routes and it will go forward but in slightly different ways.

What about if it's something that relates to a student or a member of staff even, then, you can formally report that using our acceptable behavior policy. And we can, we will then take that forward through a process which will be dealt with in a very professional and also a confidential way in terms of ensuring that it's taken forward in a way that allows both sides to present what's happened but very much to support the individual who is concerned and who is worried about what they might be bringing forward. So it's, that's available to you, you can go on the website, but you could also go in through Report and Support that will also take you through that process. If you, if it's something that's around one of our students, and we need to take action. You can also always talk to our Student Complaints Officer, we've got her email address there and her phone number, and she deals with lots and lots of queries from both staff and students about issues that they may be concerned about and she can give advice. And the final way is a Bristol SU Just Ask Advisor. So the SU also run an advisory service and they too are able to give you advice. And I've noticed that Alex has popped a question in there saying 'if people report anonymously by report and support, can anything be done? I was told no'. So Alex, as I was trying to explain, you won't get feedback as an individual about what's happened. But we monitor the anonymous reports through reports and support to see if there are patterns there. And if there are concerning things that have arisen, like, for example, the concerns of our Chinese students in particular who were raising concerns about what they were experiencing in the City a few weeks ago. We then took action on that. So we didn't have individual cases or individual names, but we took action on it. And that's an example of the sort of thing we can do. If we have anonymous reports. We always encourage people if they feel comfortable in making a personal report so we can support them as individuals, because if you report anonymously, we can't let you know what we've done apart from perhaps in a student newsletter or something. So ideally, if people want action about an individual or want support themselves then choosing the box that allows you to an Advisor to get back with you is the best way to do it.

So moving on to support that's available for students. So we've got our wellbeing support services, which you can contact through Wellbeing Access. And we're currently running a full service via Skype and other video facilities and on the phone, but obviously, we're not able to meet people face to face, but to reassure you, those services are up and running and they can also refer you on to relevant services around the University but also more widely across the city. And if you've been affected in some of the ways that Alex and Mark both referred to incredibly devastating effects it can have on you as an individual if you've been subjected to some of these things. Do think about submitting an extenuating circumstances form if your studies have been affected, the Wellbeing Support Team can help you through that process. So can your personal tutor so get in touch with someone to talk about that.

And our postgraduate research students who sit more within our sort of staff more than perhaps in the student body, have access to our acceptable work behavior, workplace Advisors, trade union representatives, also their course, and also the HR Operations Team and we've put some links in there for some of those colleagues. Our acceptable workplace behavior Advisors are trained volunteers who are very skilled at knowing how to help you navigate the processes that we have, for support within the organisation. So that's more for postgraduate research students and staff.

So I think that takes us through to our last slide, which has some reminders about where to report. You heard from Mark about not being afraid to call the police about these issues and there are the phone numbers there. But also the other ways through the website to find out who your local community policing staff are so you can discuss it with them. SARI, we've heard from Alex, SARI have very keen to support people who are going through harassment, discrimination or abuse for any number of reasons that we've heard about so do get in touch. Also with the Bristol Hate Crime and Discrimination Services. So do get in touch with SARI, you will get support from there and with the University let us know through Reports and Support because actions happen. I'm very grateful to the police and SARI for responding to our concerns which came anonymously from students, but which have resulted in the actions that we've talked about today. So I hope that's given you a little bit of background. I can't see any outstanding questions typed in at the moment on on the page here, but I'll give you a moment to see if anyone has got something they want to raise. We will be posting a recording of the session available later today on the bristol.ac.uk/students/international webpage, along with some other places, so we'll make sure that it's available to you through that route. And then we'll also put information out so you can highlight it to colleagues and other students.

I'd like to really thank Alex and Mark for their time. Alex, do you want to come in there?

Alex Raikes  48:22  
Thanks, Sarah. I just I mean, I just wanted to reiterate to everyone. Nothing's too low level. I think often people think, 'Oh, you know, I think that's not serious enough. I don't see, you know, there's no point reporting' but if it's, if it's stuck with you, and it's bothered you, and it's made you I don't know, ruin your day or affected your thought processes, it's serious, you know, report it, even if it's just to offload and talk about it. We've had in Bristol, we've been doing quite a lot of work with the Overseas Chinese Association and the Chinese, Avon and Bristol Chinese Women's group and other organizations and they've been, for example, Chinese elders have been quite upset about people not sitting next to them on buses, and things like that. Now, that's not a crime, but it is upsetting. And so what we said to them is talk to at least talk about it, talk to us about it, because you can offload and at least what we can say is, yeah, that's horrible. But I think this situation will pass, it will get better. And SARI seen. And so as Mark, for example, after other global incidents, I don't know like a terror attack, which is very different to corona, we had quite a spike in incidents toward some Muslim and faith communities, but they calm back down pretty quickly, and the most important thing was that people reported it so we could put in place the right measures to keep people safe and to do a lot of reassurance and do things like tell people don't share certain things on social media, because it makes people more worried than they need to be. So that's, you know, that's why it's so important that we all talk to each other and don't suffer in silence.

Sarah Purdy  49:58  
Thank you very much indeed Alex. Mark, any final comments from you?

Mark Runacres  50:05  
I just yeah, just thank you for the opportunity really, really keen to, to reach out, engage and hopefully being able to provide information does build people's confidence in them in reporting things to the police. I think Bristol is a great city to work in great city to live in, and I'm really keen that people have that confidence to let us know so they stay safe, feel safe and enjoy the city in all the best ways they can.

Sarah Purdy  50:32  
Thank you, Mark. We really appreciate it. I think we might have a question coming in. Kelvin, did you want to ask a question?

Waiting to hear back.

Okay,

Just give colleagues a moment. So we've got a couple of questions coming in, I think from people. So if you want to type them into the chat, perhaps that will be the easiest way for us all to see them.

I'm not seeing anything coming through there. So I don't know if our moderators want to let us know where the... oh!, 'a lovely presentation'. Thank you. That's very kind. Thank you very much.

Alex Raikes  51:47  
We've got we've got a few minutes haven't we because sometimes it takes a while for people to get their computer to work.

Sarah Purdy  51:54  
Absolutely. Speaking from personal experience, yeah, absolutely. 

Alex Raikes  51:59  
Yes, particularly if you're sharing broadband with a number of other people. 

Sarah Purdy  52:05  
Ah, here we are. So there's one for you Alex there I think about social media what kind of things should people not post?

Alex Raikes  52:11  
So to be honest, there's quite a lot of scare mongering goes on. And sometimes for example, someone records the incident and they get put it online before they spoke to the police or us and then that causes a lot of fear and it can cause it can actually lead to the wrong response. So also sometimes, I don't know we, for example, with regards to corona we were worried there could be hate crime associated with it almost soon as it happened, but you know what, we've been very careful not to that on social media to say corona hate corona hate because that's going to lead to more incidents. And so my view is, if something happens to you don't post it online so it goes viral and that scares loads of people or in fact, it gives other people ideas, report it and get advice on how to deal with it before you do anything like that. That's That's some some tips from me, but Mark might have a few more.

Sarah Purdy  53:14  
Mark, any reflections on social media?

Mark Runacres  53:20  
Yeah, I mean, it's, um, yes, social media can be a minefield for us in policing, in terms of how it's misused. And we are interested as as little issues and incidents in being made aware of where people are being victimized and targeted. And our options to deal with that can be challenging, but certainly, as I said, in relation to all crimes more widely and incidents, really keen to know what is happening so we can do our best to try and monitor and mitigate the impact of that more generally.

Alex Raikes  53:55  
Mark, what would you say to the question 'what do you think people should post on social media?'.

Any ideas? Because we've seen haven't we, we've seen people post things about hate crime, and it's gone viral before you've been able to take action?

Mark Runacres  54:11  
Yeah. Generally, it's it's not it, being honest, that's not particularly helpful to it for us to it for because it does kind of let let the genie out of the bottle in many respects and we lose control of that. So, for us, if there are issues that need to be reported to us, it is best for us to have that information and be able to act on that and take that investigation forward. And then if it's if it's, you know, tweeted and retweeted and posted and shared on wider social media networks and platforms, then it just draws in more more response, more reaction, and that that just can be counterproductive in terms of actually dealing with with the issue as it originally was. So I would, broadly speaking, ask people to refrain from that, but I can appreciate and understand the reasons why it happens. But it does, it makes it makes it a lot more complicated for us for us to deal with.

Sarah Purdy  55:10  
That's, that's really useful feedback. And I think perhaps, we might think about... do either of your organisations have sort of guidance on that we could signpost, people to or provide a link to on our website?

Mark Runacres  55:27  
I'm not sure what specifically we've got from a police perspective, I would need to check but just I know that Yeah, as I've described, it just can become really complicated.

Alex Raikes  55:36  
We, we could put a few lines together couldn't we Mark? if we thought to, because we've got, I mean, you've done loads of work on hate crime, but we could talk, put our heads together and just come up with some tips. I mean, sometimes, you know, people post things and it leads to identification of witnesses, you know, but, like Mark said, just need to be careful and also, think before you post you know, think before you share as well because sometimes times, if you can see it's scary, frightening sharing it's gonna scare and frighten a lot more people than need to be scared and frightened. And it's not a hard fast answer to it but I think Mark and I will try and come up with a few lines of advice for people because it could be helpful for not just this forum, but lots of others too.

Sarah Purdy  56:19  
Absolutely, that would be fantastic if you can and I think will be something that will be helpful for us to be able to signpost to at the University so I'd appreciate that very much. I haven't seen any other questions coming in. I'd like to thank everyone for taking part today for their questions, to Mark and Alex for giving your time I know you're both very busy, and we really appreciate you doing this today. Do get in touch, Alex has posted the website for the student inclusion team, the email address, so do get in touch with them if you've got any questions about the webinar. And as I said, we will be putting it up. So people who haven't been able to join us can see it or you can provide links to colleagues. So thank you very much for joining us. Stay safe, stay well stay well. And we will keep in touch with people. And do let us know if you're worried about things because this is an example of how we've been able to address things, both by today but also by some practical actions out there that teams have been doing so thank you, and take care everyone.

Alex Raikes  57:30  
Thank you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai