Tackling race related hate crime in the City and on campus

News

Posted on Wednesday 29 October 2025

The ongoing rhetoric around immigration and race across the country is creating difficult community relations and sometimes a hostile climate within our City and on our own campus.

We take this extremely seriously and in response the University and Students' Union have been taking steps to ensure student and staff safety, including:

Increasing campus safety patrols to raise visibility and focus on discrimination-related issues
Working closely with the North Yorkshire police on sharing intelligence, monitoring and tackling hate crime
Raising concerns at the highest levels, with York SU Sabbatical Officers and the Vice-Chancellor meeting with civic leaders and York MPs to discuss work on tackling hate crime and discrimination

We want to remind students and staff of the ways in which you can seek support and report incidents if you (or someone you know) may have been a victim of, or witnessed, a hate crime or discrimination:

If you are unsure if something might qualify as a hate crime or discrimination please reach out anyway, so that you can get the help and support you need.

We remain committed to ensuring that the process for reporting incidents is clear and accessible and to taking each and every report seriously. And we remain committed to supporting those who encounter discrimination, so that everyone knows we, as a York community, stand up against hate.

Community is our defining characteristic at the University of York. This is why we will always strive for the end of hate - so that everyone feels a sense of belonging, so that everyone believes they are seen and heard, and so everyone can live, study and work in a place that is safe, inclusive and welcoming.

Read our joint statement with York Students’ Union on tackling hate crime

Read our Race Equality guidance

Investing in Campus Safety

Some members of our community have expressed concerns about Campus Safety staffing levels. We can confirm there is no plan to reduce the number of Campus Safety team members, current proposed changes are about shift pattern adjustments. We are in fact investing in more front line patrol officers, aligning them to demand, and providing better training and equipment so that staff are able to deal with and triage multiple calls more effectively.