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On-Campus Confidential SVSH-Specific Support:

  • PATH to Care Center: (510)-642-1988
    • 24/7 Care Line: (510) 643-2005 
    • A confidential, free, campus-based resource for urgent support around sexual assault, sexual harassment, interpersonal violence, stalking, and invasion of sexual privacy

On-Campus Confidential Counseling:

  • Social Services: (510) 642-6074
    • After-hours support line: (855) 817-5667
    • Social Services offers counseling, crisis intervention and support, referrals, and clinical case management for students, also a counseling resource for those who may be hurting their partners
  • Counseling & Psychological Services: (510) 642-9494
    • After-hours support line: (855) 817-5667
    • CAPS offers short-term counseling and psychiatric services for students
  • Be Well at Work Employee Assistance (for Faculty and Staff)
    • Be Well at Work is the campus faculty and staff program that provides free and confidential problem assessment and referrals.

On-Campus Other Confidential Resources:

  • Students Ombuds Office: (510) 642-5754
    • Students Ombuds Office provides informal dispute resolution processes for any conflict or concern with a confidential Ombudsperson
  • Staff Ombuds Office: (510) 642-7823
    • Similar to the Students Ombuds Office: a resource for staff to discuss, create strategies, and resolve any workplace conflicts that may arise through mediation, training, or group conflict resolution

Local Community Resources:

  • Bay Area Women Against Rape (BAWAR): (510) 845-7273  OR  (510) 345-1056
    • 24 Hour Hotline: (510) 845-7273 & (510) 345-1056
    • 470 27th St, Oakland, CA 94612
    • Community organization that offers free and confidential in-person counseling, advocacy, referrals, and hospital, police, and courtroom accompaniment for individuals impacted by sexual assault and rape
    • * Closest center to campus
  • San Francisco Women Against Rape: (415) 861-2024
    • 24 Hour Hotline: (415) 647-7273 
    • 3543 18th Street, #7, San Francisco, CA 94110
    • Community organization that offers free and confidential peer counseling, support groups, medical & legal advocacy, and referrals for individuals impacted by sexual assault and rape
  • Family Violence Law Center: (510) 208-0220
    • 24 Hour Hotline: 1(800) 947-8301
    • 470 27th St, Oakland, CA 94612
    • FVLC provides legal assistance in obtaining Civil Harassment Restraining Orders, advisor representation during Title Ⅸ administrative proceedings, and legal advocacy
  • Alameda County Family Justice Center: (510) 267-8800 
    • 470 27th St Oakland, CA 94612
    • One-stop center with 30 onsite and over 50 offsite agencies and programs that provide services and support to individuals and families who have experienced domestic violence, sexual assault and exploitation, child abuse, elder and dependent adult abuse, and stalking
  • A Safe Place: (510) 536-7233
    • Domestic, dating, and intimate partner abuse organization
  • Asian Women’s Shelter (SF): 1(877) 751-0880
    • Domestic, dating, and intimate partner abuse organization
  • Tri-Valley Haven: 1(800) 884-8119
    • Domestic, dating, and intimate partner abuse organization

National Resources and Crisis Lines:

Reporting:

If you are afraid for your safety or want to report an incident, you may seek help from your local police department who can also help with restraining orders, a safety plan, and investigations.

What are Assault, Harassment, Abuse & Stalking?

These terms can be defined and used differently depending on the context. Below are some of the ways that the PATH to Care Center describes various forms of harm. Even if an experience does not exactly match the descriptions below, someone can still be experiencing harm. 

For specific legal and policy definitions, please see UC Policy Definitions of Prohibited Conduct and CA State Law Definitions.

If you have experienced any of these, please consider your immediate safety. It may help to talk with a confidential PATH to Care advocate, friend, family member, or other person who can provide support. Additional support resources are included above. 

Sexual Assault

Sexual assault is a term that encompasses any and all forms of nonconsensual, sexual contact or behavior and can happen with people someone knows (e.g. romantic partners, co-workers, housemates) or strangers. 

Forms of sexual assault may include:

  • Rape/attempted rape
  • Coerced or forced sexual acts
  • Sexual exploitation
  • Incest or child sexual abuse
  • Unwanted sexual touching or physical contact
  • Stealthing – nonconsensual removal of safer sex barriers (condoms, dental dams, gloves) during sexual activity. 

Consent

Consent is an integral part of safe and healthy sexuality. It is an ongoing agreement between partners about what they want to experience.

What consent can look like:

  • Explicitly asking and communicating with your sexual partner(s) if they are okay with initiating or progressing any sexual activity

“Are you comfortable with . . .?”

  • Communicating with your sexual partner(s) beforehand about what you need, desire, and are comfortable with

“I would enjoy doing . . .”

  • Periodically checking in with your partner(s)

“Are you still ok with this?”

  • Letting your partner(s) know you can stop at any time 

“We don’t have to keep going if you don’t want to”

What is not consent:

  • Ignoring or not acknowledging “no” 
  • Silence, doubt, or uncertainty
  • Mental and physical incapacitation due to the influence of drugs and/or alcohol
  • Previous sexual activity and/or consent (assuming it covers future and/or different activities)
  • Lack of verbal or physical resistance to sexual advances
  • Pressuring, forcing, or coercing someone to consent 

Consent in one moment does not assure consent in the future and nobody is obligated to give consent even if they’ve done so in the past. If consent is absent, ignored, or forced, there has been a violation of boundaries and it may be a sexual assault.

Sexual Harassment

It is everyone’s right to feel safe and free from harassment in learning and work environments. Sexual harassment is any verbal, visual, or physical harassment of a sexual or gender-based nature. 

Sexual harassment can include:

  • Explicit or offensive jokes or gestures about sexual acts, sexual orientation, or gender identity
  • Offensive remarks about an individual’s (or whole group of people’s) sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, including misgendering or using incorrect pronouns
  • Inappropriate and explicit conversations regarding sexual acts
  • Unwanted sexually explicit texts, phone calls, emails, or images
  • Street harassment, “catcalling”
  • Unwanted romantic advances, flirting, requests for dates or sexual acts
  • Unwanted physical contact
  • Pressuring someone to engage in sexual activity with someone else
  • Making work or academic conditions dependent on sexual/romantic favors
    • Quid Pro Quo (“a favor for a favor”): when a service, act, or item is exchanged for something in return. This abuse of power can be perpetrated by anyone who has power and authority over other individuals like supervisors, professors, graduate student instructors, coaches, and club presidents
    • Examples include offering a new job, pay raise, better research opportunities, letter of recommendation, or better grade in exchange for a date, kiss, massage, or sex; also can include threatening to make the work or learning environment negative unless sexual favors are granted

Sexual assault and sexual harassment are similar in that both behaviors take advantage of power differences in relationships, the workplace, or learning environment. The primary difference between the two is that sexual assault involves physical contact and sexual harassment does not need to. Sexual assault can result in criminal prosecution whereas sexual harassment violates civil laws. 

Dating/Intimate Partner Violence

Partner abuse is a recurring, chronic, deliberate pattern of aggressive and/or manipulative behaviors done by one partner (or ex) to gain power and maintain control over another/others in a relationship. 

Partners may be married, dating, seeing each other, hooking up, or broken up. Relationships may also include those that are polyamorous or non-monogamous, as well as ones with dynamics such as BDSM or kink.

Some abusive relationships have no physical violence but include behaviors such as those described below in the Power and Control Wheel.

Tactics of power and control include economic abuse, coercion and threats, intimidation, emotional abuse, isolation, minimizing, denying and blaming, using children and pets, and using privilege.

Relationships can exist on a spectrum varying from healthy, unhealthy, and abusive.

Healthy relationships generally are…

  • Supportive
  • Trusting
  • Respectful during conflict
  • Communicative
  • Mutually negotiated
  • Loving/caring
  • Physically and emotionally safe

Unhealthy relationships or ones that are abusive may include:

  • Poor communication
  • Lack of trust
  • Disrespect
  • Poor conflict skills
  • Lack of mutual support 
  • Over-dependence that prevents individual pursuits

Though abusive relationships may have similar elements to unhealthy ones, the important difference is the use of behaviors to exert power and maintain control that denies the partner(s’) physical/emotional wellbeing. Abusive relationships may not start out hurtful. Control and aggression may emerge over time, often after a great deal of emotional investment and commitment.

Stalking

Stalking is a pattern of unwanted and/or repeated direct or indirect contact by an individual towards another person (or their loved ones) that is upsetting, threatening, or intimidating. Often, survivors know the person stalking them (an ex-partner, co-worker, or someone they may have briefly come in contact with.) 

Signs of stalking

  • Someone repeatedly follows you or is waiting at your location without cause
  • Unwanted calls, texts, emails, or images sent to your home or work place
  • Repeated letters or “gifts” given directly to you, or left in a location for you to find, continuing even after requests to stop
  • Obtaining information about you through third parties (friends, family, coworkers, etc.)
  • Excessive, unwanted interaction on your social media accounts
  • Seeking or demonstrating access to personal information about you which you did not directly disclose
  • Personal property is damaged or missing, especially intimate or highly secured items
  • Changes to your home, space (online accounts) or personal property (car) that indicate someone has entered or accessed it without permission

Cyber Stalking

Stalking behavior is not limited to in-person behavior; it frequently includes technology-based abuse or “cyber stalking”:

  • Posting threatening or personal information on the Internet (known as doxing/nonconsensual image sharing)
  • Harassment or threats via the Internet (Zoom chat, social media, email)
  • Tracking/monitoring through use of GPS or software (via apps, car, cell phone, cameras, malicious computer SpyWare and/or online databases)
  • Hacking email or other online accounts to pose as you or demonstrate control

Similar to intimate partner violence, stalking is way for individuals to assert power and control over others. The repeated stress, worry, and fear that stalking evokes can negatively impact someone’s health.

Get Support

Learn more about your options and how to seek safety at the PATH to Care confidential support and advocacy page.