sexual harassment between grad students being mishandled by director of program
Seattle, WA
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Posted about 1 year ago in Education
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I am in a very small graduate counseling program, and part of it includes an 18-month internship class with only 8 people that I am in the middle of. One of the men had been behaving inappropriately sexually (telling sexist jokes, winking, unwanted sexual touching) toward me and when I met a student in a different program who had also been sexually harassed by him, I chose to report it with her.
Part of what I reported was that this man had also dated the only other two single women in the class and insisted that it all be kept a secret (which was really inappropriate for our program, which requires a certain level of self-disclosure). I did not initially provide names of these other students, and did so only after being told by the dean that my confidentiality would be maintained. After reporting it to the dean of my college, the director of my program was asked to take some action. He called individual meetings with the other two women, the man who was harassing us, and myself (though he did not talk to the other student in a different program who had reported this with me, because she was not in the program he directs) and gave them all my name and told them all the nature of my complaint without my consent or knowledge and then called a meeting with all of us together. The meeting was extremely distressing--the nature of my complaint was not taken seriously, instead the message that "boys will be boys" was given to me and I was lectured by the others in the room that I had taken things too far by reporting the behavior. Needless to say, the classroom environment after that is now nearly intolerable for me. The dean of the school acknowledged that the director of my program mishandled it, but did nothing other than to take over the case herself. The only thing she is going to do is call the man who was harassing me into her office and tell him his behavior was inappropriate and that he will be monitored. I have experienced a great deal of anxiety/panic and depression as a result of this and am deeply distressed by the idea that I will be in such a small classroom with this man and in some of those classes, the director of the program, for the next 8 months. I am going to request that someone trained in sexual harassment issues come in to talk to our class about what has happened and help us process through that. If it doesn't work, however, and I am still experiencing the same distress I am currently experiencing, is there any legal recourse for me here--if not against the sexual harassment, against the way the director handled it? - Is this your question? Add additional information Answers (1)
Dennis Andrew Chen
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