FAQ Central Contact and Information Point for Social Safety

Undesirable behaviour refers to unequal treatment, (sexual) harassment or stalking, aggression, bullying and discrimination.

This is important because the University of Groningen aims to offer a study and work environment where everyone feels respected and safe. By contacting the Contact and Information Point, you can contribute to this. Your report or concern will give us a better understanding of undesirable behaviour, enabling us to take action to prevent it from happening again.

• You raise a concern if you have heard about or have seen situations in the study or working environment that (may) lead to undesirable behaviour. 

• Making a report means that you speak out specifically and directly about undesirable behaviour that you have witnessed of experienced yourself in the study or working environment.

• Filing a complaint means that you are invoking the formal complaints procedure.  If you need help submitting your complaint please contact the Confidential Advisor.

The Contact and Information Point can provide advice on what you can do in your situation.

If you have experienced undesirable behavior outside the university, you can turn to the police, centrum Seksueel Geweld, slachtofferhulp, confidential advisers of the student associations, or the ACII (for undesirable behavior during the introduction period).

If undesirable behavior outside the University affects your work or studies, you can turn to your supervisor or HR adviser, or to your lecturer, mentor, academic adviser, or student counsellor.

You cannot contact us with questions, complaints or dissatisfaction about general topics such as study matters, work assessments, financial arrangements, salaries or housing. As an employee, you can contact your manager or HR advisor for this. As a student, you can contact the study advisor or the Central Office for Legal Protection of Students (CLRS). The Contact and Information Point for Social Safety is also not intended for (urgent) medical or psychological assistance requests.

The web form you fill in is only visible to the coordinators of Contact and Information Point This also applies to the email correspondence after the web form has been received. The web form is stored for six months and will then be destroyed.

The coordinators will register your request for help, signal or report without your name and email address. Your name will only be disclosed to others if you want it to be, for example if a hearing is required. This will always be discussed with you in advance.

You can submit a signal or report without disclosing your name and email address. You can indicate this on the web form. Your anonymous signal or report will be registered and, if a pattern or trend is identified, may contribute to making undesirable behaviour visible.

Yes, that is always necessary. By working with a single point of entry for the Contact and information Point, the coordinators can maintain an overview and we can prevent signals or reports from falling between the cracks.

Only if the coordinators deem a personal conversation necessary to better assess your situation for referral, they will schedule a phone call with you. Good to know: the coordinators are there to provide adequate referrals; they will therefore not conduct an in-depth conversation. That is up to the support structure official to whom they refer you.

We ask you to briefly and specifically describe on the web form what undesirable behaviour you have seen or experienced in which situation, so that the coordinators can refer you directly to the right person. Important: do not send any privacy-sensitive information as an attachment to the web form.

If the coordinators have questions about your situation, you will receive an email requesting further contact. Sometimes a situation is so complex that a clear referral is not possible. In that case, after consulting with you, the coordinators will call in a team of experts to take a closer look at the situation. This team of experts is bound by clear agreements regarding confidentiality.

Yes, you can. The Contact and Information Point webpage contains more information, including where to go if you need immediate help. As it may not always be immediately clear where you can go in your situation, it may be wise to first contact the Social Safety Contact and Information Point.

Yes, you can always report this to us. We will then refer you to the Ombudsperson or the contact persons for whistleblowers procedure.

No, we cannot do that. You must file the report yourself. For advice/guidance on this, we refer you to, for example, the Centre for Sexual Violence.

Yes, you can. We will help you decide who can best help you in this situation.

The Contact and information Point is only there to provide information and referrals. If the referral has not led to a satisfactory result for you, we recommend that you contact us again.

The Contact and Information Point does not provide mediation services. However, the coordinators can refer you to the study advisor, HR advisor of Ombudsperson for this.

If you only submit a report, we will take your report into account in our overall assessment of the situation. You will not receive any feedback on this. If you submit a report and thereby express a concrete and specific opinion and help for support about a particular situation, you will agree with the person who supports you, how you will be informed on the follow-up.

Yes, in this situation too, we can advise you on where to go for help. Depending on your situation, this may be an internal officer, the Confidential Advisor or the Ombudsperson. They will support you and also can explain how any investigation into the situation will be conducted if this applies to the situation. Hearing both sides of the story is always an important principle in this regard.

The agreements on this are determined on a case-by-case basis. Usually, the expert team is called in for this.