Student Union
- By Katie Nicora
Sex Assault Not Unusual on Campus, Says #MeToo
She’d never been in his apartment at night, or even dusk, as it was now. Low purple light spilled into the living room, its walls lined and stacked with books. Light from the TV flashed red, blue and white, the nightly news.
She was 19 and the man beside her -- an intern supervisor -- was far too old to be putting an arm around her shoulders. Or sliding closer on the couch, as he was doing now, cupping her face in his hands to plant a kiss.
The story surprised her friends, but not deeply. Same song, different verse, they said. All her friends had experienced that particular blend of discomfort and fear brought on by an older man overstepping his authority.
In the days following, she poked around, searching out other female students who’d worked with him. One by one, they told her the same thing: No, they’d never gotten weird vibes. No, they’d never been invited to work at his apartment. And no, he’d definitely never touched them.
Knowing it would be another case of “he said/she said,” and that she had no evidence to show the school, she let it go. Statistics show that is not an unusual response.
But these past few weeks have seen a wash of public support for victims of sexual harassment and assault after powerful Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was outed for longtime predation.
Survivors are speaking up louder than ever, and campus activists are using that momentum to end the dynamic that powerful men -- like professors -- have over students who are eager to please intellectually and for good grades.
Women 18-24 are more likely to experience sexual violence than any other female demographic in the U.S., according to Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN). College students within that age group are three times more likely than the average American woman to be assaulted. Young women within that age group not attending university are four times more likely.
According to a 2014 report from the U.S. Department of Justice, about 80 percent of victims knew their offender. No matter where they occur, these incidences are likely to go unreported, off or on campus. Nearly half of all targets say they thought their offender was under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of assault.
And, 20 percent of both groups cited fear of reprisal as the reason for not reporting.
“It’s absolutely heartbreaking,” said Clarke Rose, a student at the American University of Paris. “More importantly, it’s [expletive] necessary” to bring the issue to light.
Awareness campaign
In the days following allegations against Weinstein, millions took to Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and other social media to share the hashtag #MeToo. The posts were part of an awareness campaign, aimed at exposing the pervasiveness of sexual harassment and assault, and rape culture in the United States.
Rose took part in France’s parallel – and somewhat more aggressive – campaign, #BalanceTonPorc, or “rat out your pig.”
“A lot of people have responded to #MeToo by asking why survivors are always the ones who have to come forward and bear our traumas in order for people to see us as human,” said Sofie Karasek, 22, to MTV. Karasek organized a candlelight vigil for the survivor advocacy group, End Rape on Campus, in Washington.
“It’s also a crucial time to point out that people accused of sexual assault don't just leave college and then disappear into the ether,” she said. “They can become powerful people who run companies, like Harvey Weinstein.”
In the weeks since, more allegations have spilled out, many against notable and powerful men. Female legislators and state employees have spoken out about their male colleagues in California, Massachusetts, and other states, citing harassment and inappropriate behavior.
In the last week, a criminal investigation was opened into allegations of sexual misconduct against three psychology professors at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. At Berklee College of Music in Boston, the administration caught flak this week for allowing a professor to quietly leave the school after a student accused him of sex abuse.
“Rather than being able to fully focus on coursework and learning, these students are burdened with the constant fear of violence and harassment on campus,” said Shivani Desai, a national campus organizer for the Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF).
“The #MeToo movement highlighted a reality of violence that women, queer, and trans folk already painfully and intimately knew – because we live it day in and day out,” Desai said.
“The power and reach of millions of voices provided a national platform, one that emphasized the dangerous culture that affords perpetrators and bigots positions of power and allows them to make harmful decisions.”
Student activists are “meeting with their administrators” to push back on issues like Title IX guidelines, which prohibit gender discrimination -- such as sexual harassment -- at colleges and universities that receive federal funding. Those guidelines were recently rolled back by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
A recent poll out from ABC News and the Washington Post shows 54 percent of American women have experienced “unwanted and inappropriate sexual advances” in the workplace. Thirty percent of women said their male colleagues were the perpetrators, with 25 percent saying these were colleagues who held sway over their careers.
Like their college-age counterparts, 95 percent of American women reported the offending male colleagues went totally unpunished. Since the last similar poll conducted in 2011, a majority of those polled said they consider sexual harassment a serious problem.
“Students have been organizing against sexual violence for countless years, and they will continue to fight for themselves and their communities,” Desai said of on-campus activists.
“What is most important, is that at this moment in history, we, all assault survivors, are sharing and listening and loving and finding out, we are not alone,” Rose said.
Do you know someone who has been harassed or assaulted by an older, more powerful person? Please share your thoughts in the Comments here, and visit us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. Thanks!
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US advisory council ends Nigeria visit, signs student exchange deal
Members of a U.S. presidential advisory council have approved a student exchange deal between an American college and a Nigerian university as part of the council's effort to strengthen collaboration on education, health, entrepreneurship and development between Africa and Africans living abroad.
The council also visited a health facility supported by the United States Agency for International Development in the capital.
Nigerian authorities and visitors chatted with members of the U.S President's Advisory Council on African Diaspora Engagement as they toured a healthcare facility in Karu, a suburb of Abuja, on the last day of the council's three-day visit to Abuja and Lagos.
The facility is one of many supported by the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, to improve the management of childhood illnesses, family planning, immunization and delivery.
The tour was part of the council's effort to promote African diaspora-led investments in technology entrepreneurship, education and healthcare delivery.
"They're doing a phenomenal job there, it really gave us a sense of what the healthcare system is in Nigeria," said Deniece Laurent-Mantey, executive director of the advisory council. "This is our first trip as a council to the continent and we chose Nigeria for a reason — the diaspora in Nigeria is very active, very influential, and they're really a source of strength when it comes to our U.S.-Africa policy. And so for us coming to Nigeria was very intentional."
The council was created by President Joe Biden in September to improve collaboration between Africa and its diaspora in terms of economic and social development.
Akila Udoji, manager of the Primary Healthcare Centre of Karu, said officials in Nigeria were pleased that the council members were able to visit.
"We're happy that they have seen what the money they have given to us to work with has been used to do, because they have been able to assist us in capacity-building, trainings, equipment supply and the makeover of the facility," Udoji said.
Earlier, the council signed a deal for a student exchange program between Spelman College in the southern U.S. city of Atlanta and Nigeria's University of Lagos.
Laurent-Mantey said education exchanges are one of the council's top priorities.
"In Lagos, we had the president of Spelman College — she's also a member of our council — she signed an agreement with the University of Lagos to further education exchange programs in STEM and creative industries between those two universities," Laurent-Mantey said. "And I think for us it's very important, because Spelman College is a historically Black university, and so here we are promoting the importance of collaboration between African Americans and Africans."
In March, the advisory council adopted its first set of recommendations for the U.S. president, including the student exchange initiative, advocating for more U.S. government support for Africa, climate-focused initiatives, and improving U.S. visa access for Africans.
The council met with Nigerian health and foreign affairs officials during the visit before leaving the country on Wednesday.
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5 killed, dozens injured in clashes over Bangladesh jobs quota system
At least 5 people were killed and dozens injured in two separate incidents in Bangladesh as violence continued Tuesday on university campuses in the nation's capital and elsewhere over a government jobs quota system, local media reports said quoting officials.
At least three of the dead were students and one was a pedestrian, the media reports said. Another man who died in Dhaka remained unidentified.
The deaths were reported Tuesday after overnight violence at a public university near Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka. The violence involved members of a pro-government student body and other students, when police fired tear gas and charged the protesters with batons during the clashes, which spread at Jahangir Nagar University in Savar, outside Dhaka, according to students and authorities.
Protesters have been demanding an end to a quota reserved for family members of veterans who fought in Bangladesh's war of independence in 1971, which allows them to take up 30% of governmental jobs.
They argue that quota appointments are discriminatory and should be merit-based. Some said the current system benefits groups supporting Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Some Cabinet ministers criticized the protesters, saying they played on students' emotions.
The Bengali-language Prothom Alo daily newspaper reported that one person died in Dhaka and three others, including a pedestrian, were killed after they suffered injuries during violence in Chattogram, a southeastern district, on Tuesday.
Prothom Alo and other media reports also said that a 22-year-old protester died in the northern district of Rangpur.
Details of the casualties could not be confirmed immediately.
While job opportunities have expanded in Bangladesh's private sector, many find government jobs stable and lucrative. Each year, some 3,000 such jobs open up to nearly 400,000 graduates.
Hasina said Tuesday that war veterans — commonly known as "freedom fighters" — should receive the highest respect for their sacrifice in 1971 regardless of their current political ideologies.
"Abandoning the dream of their own life, leaving behind their families, parents and everything, they joined the war with whatever they had," she said during an event at her office in Dhaka.
Protesters gathered in front of the university's official residence of the vice chancellor early Tuesday when violence broke out. Demonstrators accused the Bangladesh Chhatra League, a student wing of Hasina's ruling Awami League party, of attacking their "peaceful protests." According to local media reports, police and the ruling party-backed student wing attacked the protesters.
But Abdullahil Kafi, a senior police official, told the country's leading English-language newspaper Daily Star that they fired tear gas and "blank rounds" as protesters attacked the police. He said up to 15 police officers were injured.
More than 50 people were treated at Enam Medical College Hospital near Jahangir Nagar University as the violence continued for hours, said Ali Bin Solaiman, a medical officer of the hospital. He said at least 30 of them suffered pellet wounds.
On Monday, violence also spread at Dhaka University, the country's leading public university, as clashes gripped the campus in the capital. More than 100 students were injured in the clashes, police said.
On Tuesday, protesters blocked railways and some highways across the country, and in Dhaka, they halted traffic in many areas as they vowed to continue demonstrating until the demands were met.
Local media said police forces were spread across the capital to safeguard the peace.
Swapon, a protester and student at Dhaka University who gave only his first name, said they want the "rational reformation of the quota scheme." He said that after studying for six years, if he can't find a job, "it will cause me and my family to suffer."
Protesters say they are apolitical, but leaders of the ruling parties accused the opposition of using the demonstrations for political gains.
A ruling party-backed student activist, who refused to give his name, told The Associated Press that the protesters with the help of "goons" of the opposition's Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami party vandalized their rooms at the student dormitories near the Curzon Hall of Dhaka University.
The family-of-the-veterans quota system was halted following a court order after mass student protests in 2018. But last month, Bangladesh's High Court nulled the decision to reinstate the system once more, angering scores of students and triggering protests.
Last week, the Supreme Court suspended the High Court's order for four weeks and the chief justice asked protesting students to return to their classes, saying the court would issue a decision in four weeks.
However, the protests have continued daily, halting traffic in Dhaka.
The quota system also reserves government jobs for women, disabled people and ethnic minority groups, but students have protested against only the veterans system.
Hasina maintained power in an election in January that was again boycotted by the country's main opposition party and its allies due to Hasina's refusal to step down and hand over power to a caretaker government to oversee the election.
Her party favors keeping the quota for the families of the 1971 war heroes after her Awami League party, under the leadership of her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, led the independence war with the help of India. Rahman was assassinated along with most of his family members in a military coup in 1975.
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