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from the I'm-not-touching-this-with-a-ten-foot-pole dept.
The Guardian has a fascinating piece entitled Sexual paranoia on campus – and the professor at the eye of the storm. There is a lot going on in this article/interview and it touches on a lot of different issues in both society and higher-ed in general. Some choice quotes:
But you do end up making strange bedfellows. The people supporting free speech now are the conservatives. It's incomprehensible to me, but it's the so-called liberals on campus, the students who think of themselves as activists, who are becoming increasingly authoritarian. So I'm trying to step carefully. It's not like you want to make certain allies, particularly the men's rights people.
Kipnis's original essay was provoked by an email she received about a year before, informing her that relationships – dating, romantic or sexual – between undergraduates and faculty members at Northwestern were now banned. The same email informed her that relationships between graduates and staff, though not forbidden, were also problematic, and had to be reported to department chairs. "It annoyed me," she says. The language was neutral, but it seemed clear that it was mostly women this code was meant to protect. She thought of all those she knew who are married to former students, or who are the children of such couples, and wondered where this left them. It seemed to her this was part of a process that was transforming the "professoriate" into a sexually suspicious class: "would-be harassers all, sexual predators in waiting".
On a personal note, when I interact with students (which is every day), it's always either with an open office door, or in a public area. So as not to be discriminatory, I do the same for all students, men, women, or others. This sort of culture on campuses does make everyone suspicious of everyone else and it makes it hard to trust others. Students can't trust the instructors because they might "do something", staff can't trust the students because even a false accusation can be career ending, so there's this overall chilling effect that occurs when what should be a collegiate environment turns into an us vs them thing. This is definitely worse in some places than others, but there is an undercurrent of it everywhere. I applaud Laura Kipnis for bringing these issues to the light -- if we're going down this route, it should at least be a conscious community decision rather than bureaucratic policy handed down from University Counsel and risk assessment teams.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Hartree on Thursday April 13 2017, @11:26PM (4 children)
And the problem of sexual harassment is real.
There is also a problem that it and a number of other subjects are regarded as third rail issues such that the mere accusation of them leads to possible ruining of a career or reputation. Thankfully, when that's the case there's no pattern of behavior and that can help the victim of such.
Perhaps one of the worst problem is that those cases where false accusations are made can lead to real reports of harassment being taken less seriously. And that can lead to a situation where someone with a known pattern of behavior gets away with it for longer.
I don't have a good solution. One injustice is remembered far longer than those times the system worked.
My father was a high school teacher and this was a concern (all three of the above) to him and his peers back to the late 1940s when he started teaching. This is hardly a new problem.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday April 13 2017, @11:41PM
Academic employment is like the San Francisco of employment.
Meaning, it's like nothing at all like the real world. This is the only place where Dykes with lowly non-degrees can be heard wasting everybody else's time with their niggling nonsense.
I'd agree that it is a minefield, though. Now college girls sit in the front row wearing skirts or butt-shorts and sleeveless tops, with both of their legs over their desk constantly tossing back and adjusting their hair (to show their armpits) and smelling like french whores, and then they file sexual-harassment suits when they get C's in the class or when the professor holds his gaze for 2 seconds.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday April 13 2017, @11:42PM
The policy suggestions of reducing the chance that a student will ever be out of eyesight/earshot with a professor seems like a smart move to me. Do that, and there's independent witnesses to whatever happens.
And I completely agree with your assessment: I distinctly remember the conversations I had with the dean of students at the institution I was working for most recently, and it's sad how much effort is required to ensure professors don't try to sleep with their students.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 14 2017, @12:01PM
I don't have a good solution. One injustice is remembered far longer than those times the system worked.
I do, due process of law and all the other machinery of the legal system. It's still far from perfect, but much better than the current situation in colleges. It's worth remembering here that a number of these sexual harassment cases are based on evidence so flimsy (sometimes even transparently false), it wouldn't have gone near a real court.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @02:42PM
One injustice is remembered far longer than those times the system worked.
One injustice is too much. I'd rather let a hundred guilty men go free than to allow one innocent go to jail, especially when the alleged crimes are petty and the mere accusation (even with a later acquittal) can destroy the career of the accused.
And yes, unwanted sexual advances and even molestation are petty. Save for young children, no mentally healthy person would suffer permanent injury to such offenses.