Statement

Dear all,

Since the recent anonymous posts on Grudgebridge, we, the Welfare and Liberation Officers, want to do all we can to encourage Downing undergraduates to seek help, advice or even just an ear to listen. Though most accusations do not implicate Downing drinking societies, we feel that this is an opportunity to break the silence on racist, sexist, homophobic, or generally offensive behaviour, both within college and beyond.

We first want to highlight your Women’s (Anna Gelband and Naomi Wilson), LGBTQ+ (Liam Plimmer and April Jakso), Disability (Catherine Leake), and BME (Sohum Patel and Priya Edwards) officers, whose job includes supporting the minority students they respectively represent in college. As many of the incidents reported on Grudgebridge involve the targeting of marginalised groups, we want to highlight that we are trained and briefed to work with students, by signposting to other services, supporting individuals if the issue is taken to college, or just listening with confidentiality. As well as these roles, our welfare officers (Jane O’Connor and Georgie Thorpe) and our JCR President and Vice President (Jed Soleiman and Ali Hyde) also offer support to anyone in college.

We understand that real issues have been raised by this recent campaign on Grudgebridge. In response to this, and to provide a robust and legitimate complaint system, we would like to introduce another online Google form for students at Downing to get help from the JCR committee. This form asks for your name and CRSiD, but the responses will only be seen by our two welfare officers, Georgie and Jane. There are options for you on the form for your report to be passed on to another officer/Pres/VP mentioned above, but otherwise the submissions will only be seen by your welfare officers, who will of course bear confidentiality. This form can be used to report any incident/s, from however long ago, that come under the umbrella of behaviour that Grudgebridge is currently attempting to address, whether involving a Downing or non-Downing student, a society or an individual, in public or in private. You are welcome to use this form whether you would simply like to report an incident that you wish to discuss with the welfare officers/other JCR members of your choosing, or whether you'd like to take the report further and approach college with the support of the officers. We are here to listen and support. Please do not feel obliged to go into great detail on the form, as your own emotional wellbeing should always come first, but also do not be afraid of writing too much.

Please feel free to message any one of us with additional comments/questions/suggestions. We as a JCR want to be a strong community we can be proud of, where all feel welcome and included. The committee hope this system will bring attention to situations where it is needed, and bring real solutions to these accusations.

Signed,
President
Vice President
Welfare Officers
Women’s Officers
Disability Officer
LGBT+ Officers
BME Officers

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeUv3SS2ELr1KanDtSNd88ebkcvv9U6QtW4bLwwwWMCadKKfQ/viewform

Some further resources:
http://cambridgerapecrisis.org.uk/ https://www.breakingthesilence.cam.ac.uk/ https://www.counselling.cam.ac.uk/sexual-assault-and-harassment-advisor