At last month's Rep Council Kota Brown - Subject Rep for Games Art - raised the concern that some students found SiSo inadvertently exposing their deadname to classmates. This issue has now been resolved thanks to the joint efforts of Kota, Faran, and the Digital Services and Henrion Media Stores teams.
Previously, users were asked to enter "First Name (inc preferred name in brackets)" on signup: this had reliably been interpreted by students who do not go by their legal first name to mean they would need to disclose it. This name field was then used verbatim when booking equipment, as users could select to allow a booking to be picked up by any other member of their cohort. This created a safeguarding issue, potentially outing trans students to their classmates and exposing them to harassment.
Thanks to the work of Digital Services, this field has now been changed to ask for students' first or preferred names; and the Henrion Media Stores team, who were already aware of the problem have dilligently agreed to extend their previous offer of replacing students' legal names with preferred names on request to ensure only preferred names are displayed for all students whose details might expose a deadname to their cohort.
Any student who continues to encounter this issue should raise it with the Henrion Media Stores team - and if you encounter a similar issue, please raise it with your Course or Subject Rep so it can be solved as quickly as possible.