- Bullying Bullying is a form of harassment and is when a person or group of people misuse power in a relationship to repeatedly and intentionally harm others. The outcome is the victim feels distressed, less powerful or helpless and there is a risk to their wellbeing. Bullying can be physical, verbal, or cyber harassment, or social exclusion or intimidation.
- Harassment Harassment is perceived or actual unwelcomed conduct that humiliates, offends, or intimidates people. Harassment is bullying conduct that is neither appropriate nor relevant to a situation. This includes words, as well as acts, pictures, and images that create a hostile or threatening atmosphere. Behaviours that can be considered harassment include: verbal abuse; offensive gestures; ignoring or segregating a person or group. The effect of harassment is to make a person feel insulted, offended, intimidated and unable to perform a task effectively or, ultimately safely.
- Sexual Harassment
Sexual harassment is unwanted or unwelcome sexual behaviour, whether verbal, physical or electronically communicated which makes a person feel offended, humiliated or intimidated. Behaviours that can be considered sexual harassment include: staring or leering; unnecessary familiarity, such as deliberately brushing up against a person or unwelcome touching; suggestive comments or jokes; insults or taunts of a sexual nature; intrusive questions or statements about a student’s personal life; displaying screen savers of a sexual nature; sending sexually explicit emails or text messages; inappropriate advances on social networking sites; accessing sexually explicit internet sites; requests for sex or repeated unwanted requests to go out on dates; behavior that may also be considered to be an offence under criminal law, such as physical assault, indecent exposure, sexual assault, stalking or obscene communications. Sexual harassment is not interaction, flirtation or friendship which is mutual or consensual. It is not mutual attraction or friendship.
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DiscriminationDiscrimination in student education occurs when a student is denied a benefit, or the equal opportunity outlined above, or treated less favorably than another student, on the grounds of a personal characteristic or attributes (e.g. race, gender, religion, disability etc.). Discrimination can be either direct or indirect. Direct discrimination occurs when unlawful distinctions are made between individual students and student groups based on any of the discriminatory grounds. Indirect discrimination occurs when a seemingly harmless policy, rule or practice has a discriminatory effect on an individual student or student group.The following discriminatory grounds: age; breastfeeding; career status; family responsibilities; impairment/disability (past, present or future); industrial activity; lawful political belief or activity; lawful religious belief or activity; lawful sexual activity; marital status; parental status; physical features; pregnancy or potential pregnancy; race, color, nationality, ethnic or national origin; sex; personal association with a person identified by reference to one of the above attributes.
If under any circumstances, a prohibited activity occurs, the following outlines the process for addressing the activity: