University of Surrey
The University of Surrey is based in Guildford, Surrey. It specialises in science, engineering, medicine and business. There are two campuses, the main campus is in central Guildford, the other a short distance away at Manor Park.
We ranked all 29 universities in the south of England against the following best practice criteria to assess how well each institution raises awareness of help available to survivors and encourages them to report. Other marks are given for campaigns and extra measures which show the university’s engagement with preventing and responding to sexual assault. Each received a mark out of 5.
- Anonymous form: There is not a form on the university’s website that allows survivors to report an incident anonymously.
- Campaigns: The students’ union recently ran a campaign on consent, raising awareness of the importance of consent and how to report an incident a student may have experienced regarding this.
- Sexual assault advice page: There is a small section on sex and consent on the university’s sexual health advice page which lists the wellbeing team as a point of contact if students are “worried about any of this information”.
- External contacts: On the university’s ‘sexual assault/abuse’ webpage, it lists the local sexual assault referral centre, a sexual health clinic and a support centre.
- Other measures: The university provides online learning for students as part of their induction, as well as within residential induction talks, about consent and sexual misconduct. The students’ union website also has a page on consent with a quiz.
Mark: 4/5
A spokesperson for the university said: “All frontline staff are trained by our local Sexual Assault Referral Centre to support victims of sexual assault. All our residential mentors are required to undertake ‘Bystander Intervention’ training to identify situations where our students may be at risk, demonstrating that sexual misconduct is not tolerated on our campus.”
Header image: Matt Eason CC BY-SA 3.0 , from Wikimedia Commons