#katayoun

Hi everyone,

This is your current Welfare Officer, Katayoun

During these past two years at the SU, we have achieved some very exciting goals this year and I wanted to let you know about a few of them:

Consent

Consent was a big priority of mine this past two years, we worked collaboratively with UAL to tackle harassment and sexual violence. There have been some exciting changes so far, such as the reposting system which has been up and running for the last two years. Students can now report anonymously or non-anonymously. They can report a variety of stuff, such as discrimination, sexual harassment, problems on their course. You can access this here.

We have also worked collaboratively with UAL on two poster campaigns that promote consent and celebrate our diversity as a university, whilst taking a stand against discrimination, you will be seeing these around your campus.

A very big part of my campaigning was mandatory consent training. In the past two years, we have been implementing mandatory training for both sports and societies as well as foundation year students.

And I’m super stoked to let you know that UAL is now launching mandatory consent training for all foundation students and first years at one college. This will be growing over the years, and I’m so excited to see all the positive impact on the culture at UAL.

Zero Tolerance

In our Students’ Union, we care about the safety of our members. Which is why this year we have created a zero tolerance policy and poster campaign. As a Union, we now have an official zero tolerance policy against any forms of discriminatory behaviour at UAL and at our events, sports and societies. The policy will up on our website in September.

Cultural sensitivity training

We are now providing a cultural sensitivity training for clubs and societies. This is followed by the induction period as well as tour training. The training explores various conversations around race, institutionalised racism, attainment and cultural appropriation.

Trans Officer

We created a new role for a Trans Officer in 2018. This was result of a motion passed in student council, leading to a referendum. And in our latest elections, we elected our first ever Trans Officer which is super exciting and we can’t wait to see all the exciting work they do.

You can find out more about Al our first Trans Officer here

Student Sex Workers

Following a motion which was passed in our student council, we have started working towards a policy that is inclusive of our members who partake in sex work.

We organised a talk with sex work activists and discussed ally ship and politics of sex work and decriminalisation. It is really important for us that student sex workers know we’re on their side and support their rights.

Pregnancy and student parents

We worked with UAL to make sure they were hearing the voices of students who are parents or pregnant whilst studying. As the result of this I’m very excited to say that UAL have now added pregnancy on the Extenuating Circumstances (EC’s) form. They’re also in the process of creating a policy to help the access to study for students that fall under this category.

Another EC’s win this year has been changes made to medical evidence and time out policy. UAL has now extended the deadline for taking time out, and students are now allowed to provide EC evidence from private counsellors (as opposed to limiting it to UAL counsellors) - YAY!

Healthcare

We now have sexual health clinic regular visits at all UAL colleges. They are advertised on the website. For more information you can refer to the college coordinator at your college.

We’ve also created a map to help you find the clinics in your area, which you can access here

This year I also created info packs to help any trans identifying individuals who make be in need of further information regarding healthcare and wellbeing. This info pack includes information on healthcare, mental health services and activists groups in London for trans people.

This info pack also has information on sex workers rights and reproductive justice and abortion rights. It will be going live soon on our website and can be found on the advice and campaigns tabs.

The past two years have been some of the most exciting moments of mms student activism career, and I’m so excited to hand over my role to my successor Pinky, and to see what amazing things all the new officers have in the bag for the future of Arts SU.

Picture from last years Arts SU X Bishopsgate pride event.