SU Security Review Update: 100% Bag and Person Checks

In Term Two, we announced the Students’ Union would be launching a security review into the current bag and person search policy for our two late-night venues, Medicine and the SU Venue nightclub.  We sent surveys out to students who attended events with the 100% search in place as well as students who attended an event with a standard bag search. It’s time to share the results of your feedback!

The Background

Bag and person checks were one of the most discussed and conflicting issues we found in our research on student safety when attending SU events in our venues during our SU Security review during the 2022-23 academic year. Students commented on this process in free text responses to multiple questions in our SU Security Review. For example, we asked students ‘What are the security team doing well?’, and bag and person checks were the most mentioned answer. It was also the most common answer for our subsequent question, ‘Name one thing the security team could improve on’. We went back through the free text responses for the questions around safety in our venues and with our current security team to see what kind of feedback we received on this process in the free text responses. Requests for stricter bag and person checks outnumbered comments that stated they were fine.

The conflicting feedback revealed we needed to further investigate student feedback on this policy to get a more definitive answer.

How did the trial work?

During the time of the trial, if you attended one of our venues where we trialled 100% bag and person searches, you would have received an email asking you to complete a survey. We also sent surveys out to students who attended events during the trial where there was a standard bag and person check in place.

Both surveys included questions on how safe you felt in the venue. For the 100% bag and person check we additionally asked whether your feelings around safety at the venue were influenced by the 100% bag search policy and whether the longer wait time negatively impacted your experience at the event.

The results

From the student responses, there was not an obvious indication of a desire for a 100% bag search policy. No respondents from Medicine answered they would feel safer with a 100% bag and person check, including the non-binary students who participated in the survey. 48% of female respondents in our standard bag search survey who attended the SU Venue indicated they would feel safer with a 100% bag search policy compared to 13% of male students. White, Asian or Asian British, Black or Black British and not listed (Tamil) students answered they would have felt safer at the SU Venue if a 100% bag search policy was implemented there.

However, there may have been nights where the trial was not enforced properly. Additionally, there were students who indicated the 100% bag search felt no different to the standard bag search and this was because they were searched.

Finally, the sample size was small. We only had around 50 students complete each survey for the entire Term, which is a very small percentage of the number who attended those events. We would like to thank the students who provided feedback because it gave us insight into students’ feelings about safety while attending our late nights. We also saw an improvement in our previous survey about safety with no respondents answering they felt ‘very unsafe’ at our venues while attending late-night events.

The surveys also gave us some insight into how safe certain groups of students feel in our venues when attending late-night events.

Get the results

Next steps

We will be using the data collected from your feedback to help decide whether we change our security policy around bag and person searches during club nights or keep our current policy. We may run more trials to help determine our next steps, and we will keep you updated on this policy!