What's been happening with my undergrad thesis?
June 23th, 2024
Warnings: Discussion of sexual harassment and gender-based violence
So I've avoiding talking about an issue happening right now on my University. I don't know exactly why I feel so hesitant of like writing.
Turns out that almost two months ago there was a public complaint regarding certain faculty teachers who were being basically accused of gender-based violence and one of them was my thesis advisor.
The University's Gender Comittee decided to publish it after several students and staff made use of the protocol for gender violence that the University implemented and which basically was of no use. So the first complaint was for power abuse. We don't know the official situation but there was a rumor that he had lied to another teacher, who was looking for an assistant researcher, and he just told her that one of the most promising ones, a young girl who I personally know, was really lazy and never answered emails or something like that. And all that so another student, one who was favored by him, could obtain the position. She didn't knew about it and I'm inclined to believe her because she's a sweet and kind girl and when she heard about it (from the very same teacher she was working for), she felt really bad and ended up quitting out of shame (which is totally unfair because both are smart and hardworking women).
Anyways, later on it was discovered that he was harassing students who worked as faculty's administrative assistants and even slept with a couple of students a few years ago and then he, like a fucking total coward, ended up resigning and saying that his conscious was clean because he didn't do anything wrong.
I want to fucking punch him so much. I struggled a lot to not texting him and tell him what a piece of gargabe he is and that I wish he rots in fucking hell. Like I was, and still am, in total shock and also so betrayed because I had been working with him for almost year and a half and I totally trusted him. He's a piece of shit for using his work space, a fucking University full of young and naive girls, as a fucking dating app or hunting ground to take advantange of his subbordinates. Shit, I'm still so fucking pissed.
So yeah, I don't have a thesis advisor, my research is practically half done and I don't really know what the hell I'm going to do about it. I guess I'm kinda lucky for having problems enrolling the final curse in which we work to develop the actual research product, because I could have been left without an advisor at a much more critical time and I think, in retrospect, it was a blessing that it took me so long to register for the class because I had a problem with some missing credits.
Now we don't know very well what will happen with the semester, we were barely in the sixth week of classes, and all the students of the University have declared themselves in a Permanent Assembly, the professors have been meeting every week to talk about this problem and the administrative staff, with the Dean at the head, have said absolutely nothing. It is as if they lived on another planet, even though it is not only students who have made complaints in MANY faculties, this is also the second time in three years that the classes are permanently stopped for this same issue and we even have complaints made by other teachers for sexual violence and harassment by students and teachers. It's totally nuts. I've had teachers tell me that this is a recurrent issue and the people who could do something always look the other side, victims are basically isolated and treated like fucking pariahs. I've done jokes about burning down the faculty building but with each wall that we encounter it feels less and less like a fucking joke.
Anyways, I'm trying to take the situation calmly, at least with my undergrad thesis. Classes will resume or not, although it is most likely that they will. What will happen to the complaints and the gender-based violence protocol? Probably nothing, the truth is that there is a lot of apathy everywhere and as women we are always going to be seen and treated as a nuisance and complainers. I really hope that at least regulations are added so that teachers face sanctions if they sleep with students because, ethically, it sucks, whether there is consent or not and oh, god, I stopped talking to a couple of my friends who think this is normal and totally ok???? One of them even admited to "dating" one of his teachers before and I felt so bad for him, like my dude, that guy totally manipulated you and you didn't even noticed. We ended up having a huge fight about it, but it just pisses me off so much how normalized (and even idolized) disbalanced relationships are. And the saddest thing is that it's men who simply don't understand or see anything wrong even when it happens to them. I had a male friend once who was surprised when I told him one of his exes was basically harassing him and that it was gender-based violence.
There's a lot we need to do about situations like this and this is one of the reasons we need feminism and it totally pisses me off how TERFs are alienating people out of the movement. Many things are stopped because we are to busy fighting each other, calling out and harassing trans people and just having the same fucking discussions we had like 50 years ago when the feminists we're saying that gender doesn't determine who we are and what we can do. We should be fighting sexism in work and academic places not declaring that trans women are not women and trans men are just girls who hate womanhood, ffs.
