...permeates the whole university according to a former graduate student in philosophy; an excerpt:
When I first arrived on campus in fall 2007, I was required, along with all new instructors, to take what I thought was a routine training seminar on sexual harassment. Looking back, I clearly should have seen what transpired as a red flag. At this particular seminar, we were taught that it’s perfectly fine for instructors to have sex with their own students. It was considered “unwise” to engage in these sexual relationships during the course of the semester, but it wasn’t exactly prohibited. We’d simply need to alert the proper administrative authorities, and make certain the sex didn’t affect our grading.
It didn’t end there. About half an hour of this training was spent fielding one participant’s complaint that provocatively dressed women were in fact sexually harassing him. This was treated by the seminar facilitator as a legitimate concern. Never did the facilitator mention that the “problem” of revealing dress is frequently (and erroneously) used as a justification for sexual assault and rape.
In retrospect, I should have been prepared for the kind of abuses this type of “training” enabled. Some graduate students whispered about colleagues in my department having sex with their 18-year-old students. Several acquaintances saw one colleague escort two drunken 18-year-old female students back to his apartment one night. Another colleague spoke of finding a graduate student in a compromising position with an undergraduate in our student lounge.
It isn’t clear whether or not any of these young women, particularly those seen at the bar, were intoxicated past the point of meaningful consent. In other words, I can’t be sure whether or not either of my colleagues committed a criminal offense or was just culpable of a despicable misuse of power. I’m not terribly comforted either way....
All I know is that I found the place poisonous from the outset, as did many – perhaps most – of my acquaintances and friends. I saw the university respond to serious allegations with impotent coverups. And I know graduate students who were excised from the university because they chose to speak out about the abuses they saw. I happen to be one of them....
Such a thing never would have happened at Penn State. You can’t get away with “treasonous” behavior there and survive.
Since I have never been good at keeping my mouth shut for political reasons, it’s probably not surprising that I was systematically pushed out of the Penn State system after I raised private concerns with administrators about the sexist and racist behavior I observed in a class. That was never forgotten; indeed, I was marked as a troublemaker out of the gate. The department escalated its abuses for the remainder of my three semesters at Penn State. In the end, they waited until I was vulnerable to make their final move.
Ultimately, I was more or less denied a one-semester medical leave of absence after I was diagnosed with lupus in 2008. On the one hand, I was told that I could leave for a semester, but I was also told I would not receive health insurance while I was gone, nor would I be guaranteed funding on my return. Faculty half-heartedly suggested that this wasn’t actually termination, but of course it was termination, as later meetings with administrators made plain.
When the university finally moved to push me out of my department in 2009, I felt so beaten down by the two years of struggle I’d undergone that I lost the resolve to stay and fight. By then, I just wanted out. I had been the subject of a targeted bullying campaign that culminated in a letter written by the department’s then-graduate director to the administrators handling my case. Through them, I learned that the very graduate director who had continuously assured me he was trying to be my advocate, had written a letter filled with trumped-up charges and outright lies about me.
The day I found out about that letter, one officer dealing with my case noted to me that I was “unwittingly getting caught up in dysfunction that started long before you even got here. I don’t even understand why you want to work with them.” Indeed, just before my arrival, my department (philosophy) had been embroiled in lawsuits and was placed in receivership. Due to swirling allegations of sexual harassment and faculty infighting, the department was not permitted to govern itself or admit new graduate students for a few years. During this time, many students were pushed out of the university for political allegiances seen as disloyal to the department. Several faculty members left, some of whom later sued as a result of what they viewed as campaigns to remove them from the university.
Looking back at the timeline I ultimately prepared for legal counsel, I am once again shocked by how meticulously calculated my expulsion from the university was. Nevertheless, the graduate director who purged me (and another student in similar circumstances the year after) has since been promoted to a deanship. For a long time, I have stayed quiet about what happened to me and others at Penn State. Then Sandusky happened, and it seemed wrong to keep quiet any longer.
Recent Comments