Help is available if you or someone you know has experienced harassment on campus or on university business.
Harassment is behaviour that creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for the victim/s. Behaviour motivated by any factor can be considered harassment if the victim finds it demeaning, offensive and unacceptable. It may be related to age, gender, race, disability, religion, nationality, sexual orientation or any personal characteristic; this is considered hate crime.
Harassment can be a single significant incident or repeated incidents of unacceptable behaviour. Harassment can be physical, verbal and non-verbal. Non-verbal harassment includes posting on social media outlets or other types of online channels.
Examples of harassment
Examples of harassment may include:
- racial harassment eg:
- name calling or ridicule based on culture and ethnicity
- verbal abuse and racist jokes
- intrusive questioning concerning racial issues and origins
- exclusion based on nationality
- harassment because of health and disability such as:
- name calling or ridicule
- prejudging capabilities without reference to them
- exclusion based on disability
- uninvited/patronising or unnecessary assistance
- homophobic comments or jokes
- violating the dignity of the victim/s
- derogatory or embarrassing comments on an individual’s personal appearance
- comments on an individual’s religious or political convictions and affiliations
- ‘lad culture’ and ‘banter’ which is sexist, misogynist or homophobic
- online abuse eg:
- offensive or discriminatory comments and insults, threats of physical or sexual violence
- denial of service attacks, online impersonation, dead-naming
- violations of privacy such as ‘doxing’ (posting private details online such as a person’s address or phone number with the aim to cause alarm or distress) or sharing intimate and private images of a person online without their consent.
The University has a Policy on Bullying and Harassment for students.