by Anya Josephs
Sexual violence is an ugly problem that’s been hidden away on college campuses for too long. Recent efforts to bring this problem to light have made national news and even gotten the attention of the President of the United States, who created a task force recently to address this issue. I’m a Columbia University student, and a coalition across student groups recently achieved some change in our sexual assault prevention policy, including the release of aggregate data about the number of sexual assaults on campus. This is a change that was desperately needed, as there is currently no reporting about how great the danger of gender-based violence on our campus is.
I know it is very high. Many of my good friends are survivors of sexual assault or rape. Columbia, like other colleges, has repeatedly failed to take care of their students when they report sexual assault or other forms of gender-based violence and harassment. Students at other schools have come forward with stories of being forced into psychiatric treatment or to leave the college, and at Columbia there have been reports of students having their reports ignored or grossly mismanaged. The policies about gender-based violence are intensely confusing and filled with dense legal language, and navigating this system can be totally overwhelming for survivors who are already dealing with the stress of recovering from violence on top of the demanding workload at university.
When I first heard about the attempts to reform my school’s policies on gender-based violence, I had been enduring persistent sexual harassment from a classmate for over a year. I had looked into reporting, but abandoned the idea because I could not understand whether or not my identity would be kept private and I was afraid the harassment would escalate if I reported it.
This is what the policy says about confidentiality. I still have no idea what this means.
Sejal Singh, an organizer in the campaign, took the time to help me navigate the process of reporting on top of all of her efforts to make the system better for everyone.
The student who harassed me (let’s call him Joe), was an acquaintance I made early in my time at Columbia. He was dating a friend of mine for a while. He found out I was bisexual and propositioned me for a threesome with his girlfriend, my friend. I turned him down, mentioning that I had a boyfriend because I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. He then suggested my boyfriend and I should have an open relationship, or that I should cheat on him with Joe and Joe’s girlfriend. He made these suggestions again and again. I tried everything—laughing along, asking him to stop, flatly rejecting him. He repeatedly asked very personal questions about my sex life, and at one point asked if watching two men kiss was “made me wet.” Eventually, Joe’s girlfriend broke up with him, and fortunately I didn’t see him anymore for a long time.
When I returned to school last semester, though, I found that Joe was in one of my classes- a class that meets twice a week, every week, all year, in a discussion section of about 20 people. He sat next to me and, as the other students introduced themselves, speculated to me in a whisper about what they liked sexually, loudly enough that the professor eventually shushed us both. While out to dinner with friends, he started stroking my arm. I told him to stop, and not only did he continue, he said “Your skin is so soft. I won’t be able to stop touching you in class tomorrow.” He stopped only after another (male) friend at the table insisted he do so.
I was terrified. I spent the whole class worrying that he would touch me again. He didn’t, but he did continue making sexual comments to me. Sometimes these comments were loud enough for others to hear, and sometimes when he was speaking in the class discussion he would add some implicit reference to very personal information he knew about me because of his former relationship with my friend, or because I had shared it with a group of friends when he was present, or that he’d learned from his constant stream of inappropriate questions. Right in the class discussion, speaking to the professor in front of twenty of my classmates, he was making jokes about or references to my sex life. No one else noticed, but I did—he clearly meant for me to. Once, he followed me home from class- I had intended to stay outside in the quad and study, but he started talking at me and walking beside me, and I decided to head home so that if he didn’t leave me alone by the time I got to my dorm, I could have the public safety officer call the police. Luckily, he didn’t try to follow me inside the building.
I couldn’t focus in class. I spent the whole time worrying that this might be the class that Joe made a “joke” so obvious that the rest of the class caught on and learned very personal information about me; that today he might touch me again and there would be no one there to stop him; that he might even follow me home from class and assault me. I did not want him legally punished—first of all, I didn’t necessarily want him to get in trouble, I just wanted him to leave me alone. Secondly, he knew extremely personal information about me, information that I did not want shared. I didn’t want the details of my personal life, every interaction I’d ever had with him, or the truth of some of the harassing things he’d said to me being scrutinized by a judicial system infamous for victim blaming. Nor did I have months and lots of energy to devote to the process. Thanks to Sejal’s advice, I was able to report him through an unofficial process.
I went into the reporting process knowing what I wanted. I wanted Joe removed from my class and told not to speak to me anymore. I’m lucky because I, unlike so many people who have experienced gender-based violence or harassment, got what I needed from the system. However, my experiences also show just how desperately that system needs reform. First of all, I couldn’t navigate it by myself, but needed someone to help talk me through the logistics of filing a complaint. Secondly, it took about a week and multiple in-person meetings with someone in the office of Gender-Based Misconduct, which caused me immense anxiety. Joe didn’t have to move classes until the end of the semester, which meant that even after filing I spent several weeks in class with him, with him knowing I had reported him. He followed the mandate to avoid talking to me, but I could feel him glaring at me throughout every class meeting.
Furthermore, nothing I told the office is confidential. When I mentioned my concerns about privacy, the woman I met with said that “she could see no reason” that what I said would be shared. However, they couldn’t guarantee my privacy—though they guaranteed their own. All my messages with the office were sent through a secure server, which I needed a password to access, and which disappear after thirty days, meaning I have no record of this process. When I said I was anxious about him sharing personal information about my sex life, she suggested I should speak to a psychologist about accepting my sexuality.
Joe has still taken no responsibility for his actions. He didn’t need to—the unofficial mediation process means I agree not to press for an official judgment by the university in exchange for whatever terms I want met. For me, this meant that he could no longer speak to me and would have to switch class sections. However, it upsets me to know that he still thinks what he did was an acceptable form of flirting. It upsets me that, even as one of the few perpetrators of gender-based violence that will ever be reported, he is still leaving the process thinking that he did nothing wrong—that, as I was told at the office of Gender-Based Misconduct, we had “definitely had a miscommunication.”
I was lucky that I had Sejal’s support in reporting. I also had the support of friends and family who I could tell about the harassment. I’ve had the privilege of being educated about feminism and have the knowledge to avoid victim-blaming myself. Even with all these advantages, the process was still difficult, time-consuming, and frightening. I am definitely one of the lucky ones—I was able to report, I managed to get my harasser removed from my life, and I haven’t faced any retaliation. The fact that I, as someone who experienced a comparatively mild form of gender-based misconduct and who was uniquely advantaged to deal with it, still had so much difficulty in getting the university to deal with my situation is one small example of how poorly our universities deal with gender-based violence and harassment.