Written by Willow Kang @Oldmanheart
Sexual misconduct in universities is a grossly under-researched problem. In spite of it being prevalent, sexual misconduct by faculty staff often goes unreported. This problem disproportionately affects women, but men are also vulnerable. At least 13% of women in academia experience sexual assault by a faculty member, and 41.8% experience sexual harrassment. Yet, only about 15% of student victims contact a program or resource. Thus, the numbers reported by universities are underestimated. It is imperative that this problem is addressed, so that women can feel safer in universities.
Relationships between students and teachers in higher education are unbalanced and power dynamics are inevitably lopsided. Teachers are academic mentors for students. For many people, higher education remains as the main gateway to the labour force. In universities, students are expected to produce excellent grades and research. Behind the curtain, professors play a large role in influencing their students’ future career prospects. This relationship, with its long-term commitment, creates unequal dependency between two people. Asymmetrical power dynamics may be further worsened by other ‘alienating’ factors, like the student’s race, sexuality, socio-economic status, or nationality. Privilege is evident in academia, with 84% of full-time professors being white and 60% male. Widespread prejudice against minority students further tips the scale of equity towards teachers. Burdened by unequal power dynamics between teachers and themselves, students, witnesses, and other faculty members become less willing to report a professor who abuses this professor-student relationship.
Power dynamics raise the costs that fall on victims who choose to speak up. Although significant strides have been made to address sexual misconduct in wider society, the high risks that come with reporting an incident prevails, and for vulnerable students, the cost is even more exorbitant. Especially for smaller fields, relationships with influential professors can be a great help when students go on the job market. But this also means that accused professors can use their influence to hinder a student’s career. Any negative opinion from those academic ‘titans’ are likely to ruin a student’s career. Negative opinions from professors may also hold sway over scholarship reviewers, who may choose to discontinue scholarships for students following public accusations. Every year in the U.S, over 1.7 million scholarships are awarded, while the NCAA awards more than $3.5 billion in athletic scholarships to over 150,000 student-athletes. It is evident that many students depend on scholarships for financial aid to help them continue enrolling in higher education. Without this scholarship aid, students may be forced to drop out of their studies. International students who are sponsored by grant funding are exceptionally vulnerable. Professors who serve as Principal Investigators (PI) on the grant have nearly complete autonomy over hiring and firing funded students, giving them increased leverage to coerce students into staying silent. Furthermore, leaving the grant programs may jeopardize the ability of international students to stay in the United States, and face deportation, sometimes into unimaginable circumstances. Otherwise, professors may mislead students or withdraw their guidance during project-work, which negatively impacts the student’s academic progression. These consequences are thinly-veiled threats against victims of sexual misconduct who choose not to stay silent. However, they are also enabled by the imbalanced professor-student relationship.
Problems on the organizational level are also a potential can of worms. While there are 23 federal whistle-blower statutes in the United States, not a single one pertains to higher education. While most states have whistleblowing laws in some forms, how they protect students vary widely. Title IX is a federal civil rights law in the US that prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other education program that receives funding from the federal government, but Title IX complaints do not immediately trigger whistleblowing protections for students. The two processes are handled by different agencies with different filing processes. If the student fails to file for both, they are not guaranteed whistleblower protections. Bureaucracy also impedes investigations into sexual misconduct. In an investigation, the different interests of the decision-makers creates a conflict of interests that will not allow the best decisions to be made in the student’s interest. Elsewhere, sexual assault victim advocates also report that the inherent bureaucracy in schools minimizes Title IX compliance and does not prioritize the welfare of the victim. This apparent lack of protection for victims is a major factor in why many still choose to stay silent.
In addition, universities are not incentivized to hold predatory professors accountable for their crimes. The academic reputation, staff makeup, and resources of a university is important in deciding a university’s position in almost all ranking systems. If it became known that a faculty member is responsible for sexual misconduct, the university’s reputation will surely take a hit, which in turn affects the university’s ranking. Universities may choose to silence victims in order to preserve their reputation or ranking. When a prominent figure is involved, schools are even less inclined to acknowledge their wrongdoings. At most, faculty members may be encouraged to resign or retire in order for schools to keep incidents as low-profile as possible. As a result, victims may never get their justice. Besides ignoring students’ concerns, there is also a growing use of non-disclosure agreements by schools to cover up sexual assaults. Non-disclosure agreements are legally binding and hold significant penalties if violated. This prevents victims from ever speaking up about their experiences, and thus allows perpetrators to face little consequence. For example, in the George Washington University’s Institute for International Economic Policy, five students informed university supervisors that another senior institute employee had sexually harassed and assaulted them, and that their sexual assault was openly discussed in the workplace. The majority of their complaints went ignored, and students were told that “sometimes you need to work with people that you don’t necessarily get along with”. Following that, the five students filed suit against George Washington University for mishandling the investigation. In several of the students’ cases, courts proved that George Washington University violated Title IX and allowed a sexually hostile work environment (Doe 1 et al v. George Washington University et al.) Yet, until now, this story has been kept relatively quiet and the employee in question has faced little repercussions.
Despite the #MeToo age being in full swing, sexual misconduct in certain areas of society still goes unaddressed and persists invisibly. Currently, universities are still the way to go for women who wish to climb a higher corporate ladder or enter STEM careers. If the education system disregards the harm that sexual misconduct does to their students, many more will be unseen victims of a misogynistic environment, with trauma becoming too distressing for some students. If we want to foster a more inclusive academia, we must stop turning a blind eye to the prevalent issue of sexual misconduct in academia and iron out the different factors that enable this abuse to occur.
Citations:
Young, S. L., & Wiley, K. K. (2021). Erased: Why faculty sexual misconduct is prevalent and how we could prevent it. Journal of Public Affairs Education, 27(3), 276–300. https://doi.org/10.1080/15236803.2021.1877983
The Advocate.org: ‘Study: Nearly 90 percent of full-time professors are white’ https://www.theedadvocate.org/study-nearly-90-percent-of-full-time-professors-are-white/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20National%20Center,25%20percent%20are%20white%20women.