Right this is the major update on the progress made by the assembly and booklet it produced (i.e. me doing alot of writing and making alot of noise).
Vice-Chancellor of the university is taking LGBT issues seriously, the matter has been passed to the Equality & Diversity committee, who are looking at how to dissemminate the information to the universities teaching staff. Thus hopefully reducin the amount of comments being made by lecturers that have offended LGBT Students.
Accomodation services are treating cases where LGBT people are being discriminated against in halls seriously, this means that they will seek to prioritise the moving of an LGBT student wishing to move rooms and looking at how to resolve the matter. They will also be running a poster campaign to draw attention to the issue and there is a section in the accomodation handbook for dealing with instances of discrimination, which the university takes seriously (anyone found to be discriminating against someone in accomodation based on that persons sexuality/gender/etc faces disciplinary action from the university).
Student advice centre, have got alot out of the booklet, they are a hate crime reporting centre & looking at running an awareness campaign with us & the racial minorities assembly, are going to order dental dams into the union, help financially challenged students (ones who's parents dont support them due to disownment) to access funds and challenge LEA's about unfair judgements, provide advice and support to students who are experiencing discrimination from lecturers/coursemates/flatmates, provide links to local GUM clinics and help with accomodation issues and generally raising the issue if you are having problems as well as supporting you through it.
Leeds Student Newspaper have also gained from the booklet and are asking for advice concerning articles about LGBT issues. They are welcoming submissions of articles about LGBT issues if anyone wishes to contribute anything. The society will also support anyone wishing to submit material to Leeds Student by sending it from the LGBT societies e-mail account.
I know most of you won't be affected by this unless you experience a problem, but its nice to know that this help support and advice is available and will be taken seriously, just in case anything happens.
I'll let you know if there are any improvements concerning the union exec. Apart from that, things are looking good!
So glad to report something positive on here for once!
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Nic - Union Council LGBT Assembly Chair
Contact me at - lgbt.assembly@leeds.ac.uk / nicturner_85@hotmail.com
nice to hear your hard work is finally paying off! Just a thought; might be an idea to pass on the booklet to Nightline, they might get something out of it....
Good stuff. I think the accommodation issue is particularly useful. I remember thinking in the past that because the halls are not on campus (well, most of them, at any rate), students get the impression they can do whatever they like in them, and discriminate against anybody. Making the accommodation services not just aware of prejudice and discrimination but also react to them is a real step forward.
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'I've discovered the secret of life. A lot of hard work, a lot of sense of humor, a lot of joy and a whole lot of tra la la.' Kay Thompson
The Accomodation services manager was more than happy to look into moving things forward. It's just a case of having easily accesible information for people so that they realise that they can do something about it, and cos ppl sometimes don't say owt cos they think they wont b taken seriously, showing them that it will be taken seriously n dealt with.
Another update here, The exec are going to run a campaign pushing for anonymous marking, throughout the whole university (some departments already have it, others don't). I'll provide more information about it as it comes up, but if anyone wants to get involved that'd be brilliant.
Adding to the other updates, the Vice-Chancellors meeting went well, he supports anonymous marking and things are looking good, we just need abit of support with the campaign to get it pushed through.
The booklet is going to be dissemminated and used to train ALL university staff about LGBT issues and working practice.
There's also been a set of guidelines produced for research students about questionnaires, which will be sent to Union Academic Reps along with the booklet to try and prevent people being offended by being sent various questionnaires that are either discriminatory or stereotypical, via webmail.
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Nic - Union Council LGBT Assembly Chair
Contact me at - lgbt.assembly@leeds.ac.uk / nicturner_85@hotmail.com
