Personal safety

Ask for Angela

Ask for Angela’ is a safety awareness campaign, offering support to people across Southampton who may find themselves in a difficult or unwanted situation during a night out. Posters are placed on the back of toilet doors or within the toilet spaces of supporting bars and venues advising people that support is available should you need it.

You will find the Ask for Angela poster in a number of popular bars and venues across Southampton, including Junk, Orange Rooms and PopWorld.

Should you find yourself in an unwanted situation, you can simply walk up to the bar staff within the supporting venues and ‘Ask for Angela’. The staff within supporting bars and venues are trained to understand this code and can react in a manner of ways, including, but not limited to:

• helping you into a taxi,
• removing you to a safe space, such as staff or welfare rooms, or
• simply keeping an eye on the situation.

The Ask for Angela campaign is also supported by Solent Students’ Union and Union Southampton. For further advice or support, please speak to the Student Hub.

Hate crime

The term 'hate crime' can be used to describe a range of criminal behaviour where the perpetrator is motivated by hostility or demonstrates hostility towards the victim's disability, race, religion, sexual orientation or transgender identity.

These aspects of a person's identity are known as 'protected characteristics'. A hate crime can include verbal abuse, intimidation, threats, harassment, assault, and bullying, as well as damage to property. The perpetrator can also be a friend, carer or acquaintance who exploits their relationship with the victim for financial gain or some other criminal purpose.

The law recognises five types of hate crime on the basis of:

• Race
• Religion
• Disability
• Sexual orientation
• Transgender identity

Any crime can be prosecuted as a hate crime if the offender has either:

• demonstrated hostility based on race, religion, disability, sexual orientation or transgender identity

or

• been motivated by hostility based on race, religion, disability, sexual orientation or transgender identity

Someone can be a victim of more than one type of hate crime.

Hate crime behaviour would include

• Threats
• Damaging property
• Violence
• Harassment
• Inciting hate crime

The Student Hub is a third party reporting centre. Students may be more comfortable to report an incident of hate crime to us. Please contact us:

T: 023 8201 5200 E: student.hub@solent.ac.uk

Reporting a crime

Have you been a victim or witness of crime?

Being a victim of, or a witness to, a crime can be very upsetting, and may have an impact on your wellbeing, your living situation, and your studies.

If you have been a victim of, or a witness to, a crime and would like to talk to someone in person about what has happened, you can contact the following support services within the University:

Student Hub

Students' Union Advice Centre