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Sexually harassed and abused on campus

JP/Budhi Button - Source: Komnas PerempuanReports of sexual harassment and abuse on campus, usually against students and either by lecturers or peers, are believed to be vastly underreported

The Jakarta Post
Thu, June 2, 2016

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Sexually harassed and abused on campus

JP/Budhi Button - Source: Komnas Perempuan

Reports of sexual harassment and abuse on campus, usually against students and either by lecturers or peers, are believed to be vastly underreported.  Each reported case is only the tip of an iceberg; many more victims are silent. The Jakarta Post’s Evi Mariani investigated and here is her report.

Between book shelves in a small library in a state university campus, Maria tensed up when her much older lecturer approached her to show her a book.

There were only the two of them in the library in an office of a research center, where Maria arrived at 9 p.m. at the lecturer’s request to discuss her paper, which she had to present the following day.

“Every time he showed me a book, a sense of unease slid in,” Maria, not her real name, told The Jakarta Post in a café in Yogyakarta. At that particular time, her sense of unease transformed into a freezing moment when she felt his hand brush over her chest and she could sense his intention to grab her breasts.

It was not a coincidence, she was sure, but she did not know what to do except freeze. Then she could feel his body close to her, so close that she could feel something that she was sure was his penis on her body.

“Why didn’t I do anything?” she said, blaming herself.

Maria said it was not the first time the lecturer, EH, who was at that time the head of the School of Social and Political Sciences at Gadjah Mada University (UGM), asked her to come to the research center and ushered her into the library.

She said the first time EH asked her to meet him in person was when she submitted her paper much later than the deadline. She emailed him, submitting her paper anyway and told him she would accept if he refused to grade it because she knew it was late, but he told her to meet him instead at the research center at 8 p.m. “I didn’t have any bad thoughts about it,” she said.

EH told her that the paper had the potential to be developed into an undergraduate thesis; he even made some notes that “gave me a wealth of knowledge”. Afterwards, he asked her to join him in a “small project” to review a journal and he asked her several times to discuss the project in person with him, usually at the research center.

Maria said she sometimes felt uncomfortable with some physical contact EH initiated, including the moments when he showed her a book, but the advances fluctuated so she was never sure what to do until the moment when she was certain the touching was intentional.

“After that night, he asked me to meet him again. I agreed because I wanted to be sure. If he did it again, I would report him,” Maria said.

But he didn’t. He was polite and detached. So she did not report him until the next year when she heard that there were other female students who experienced harassment from EH and the reports had reached the campus bureaucrats. “At that time he was also about to step down as the head of department, so I was encouraged,” she said.

According to an email correspondence between Maria and the department, the faculty decided to suspend EH from teaching in class and giving thesis consultations.

Sources who requested anonymity said the faculty also sent EH to counseling at the Rifka Annisa Women’s Crisis Center and his suspension would be lifted depending on the results of the sessions. As of the date this article was written, the dean’s office had not responded to the Post’s request for confirmation.

Maria said she was happy with how the faculty responded to the case and she felt supported. She also had supportive friends, she said.

She said the faculty even initiated some campaigns to raise awareness about sexual abuse on campus by screening Hunting Ground, a critically acclaimed documentary that uncovers the rape culture on campuses in the US. But she had one complaint.

“I still see him on campus,” Maria said. She even almost ran into EH in the basement parking lot on campus, where she felt very awkward. “I don’t know. I don’t think he should still have been on campus. How would his other victims react when they see him?”

Interviewed lecturers and women rights activists said they believe that cases of sexual harassment and abuse in universities are vastly underreported. If there is one report, it means there are more victims who choose to be silent.

There are also rumors about cases having happened in the past, but the cases were mostly swept under the rug. Therefore, there has
been progress, as nowadays reports are processed and investigated and administrative punishments are imposed.

But no one gives campus bureaucrats incentives to equip themselves with a system to prevent such cases from happening again, to encourage reports and to ensure the reporting system is sensitive toward victims.

What often happens is some lecturers would support the victims while others would rally to support their colleagues. Often times, it turns into a battle of the sexes within the department.

In 2008, when the University of Indonesia’s (UI) School of Law received a report from a student that a lecturer, a seasoned criminal lawyer, sexually abused her during thesis consultations the faculty became divided.

“They called us, those who wanted the lecturer to be punished, ibu-ibu [mothers],” said Lidwina Inge Nurtjahjo, a lecturer in the School of Law and the head of the Women and Children Law Clinic at UI.

It was reported that TN often asked students who needed thesis consultations to meet him at his law office far from campus, or even at his apartment, where the alleged abuses happened.

The debate about punishment given to abusive educators also revolves around the consideration that the lecturers are an asset to the universities. The Post’s sources confirm that such debates happen among the lecturers and campus bureaucrats every time an abuse report surfaces.

After a university investigation, the married lecturer, TN, was later dismissed for good as a teacher in the university.

The case was reported to the police, but it did not progress beyond that. TN said the relationship was consensual, but the lecturers who sided with the victims said the unequal power relationship defied the “consensual” claim.

Universities in Indonesia do not have strict rules about lecturers having intimate relationships with students. If there is any, like UGM’s lecturers’ code of ethics, no one knows about its existence.

In a reported case of abuse in the School of Humanities in UGM in 2008, a graduate degree student accused one of the lecturers she met during an extra-curricular workshop of abusing her.

The married lecturer, a renowned professor who wrote papers and taught gender studies, claimed it was a consensual relationship, said Damairia Pakpahan, a feminist who provided the victim with counsel.

Saras Dewi of the UI’s School of Humanities said that lecturer-student relationships should be prohibited on campus because of the unequal power balance.

“We have to build a campus that gives a sense of safety to the students,” she said. Saras said the members of the school responded well in the case of reports against poet Sitok Srengenge, who was accused of abusing his students. Sitok was not a permanent teacher at UI, but was sometimes invited to teach there.

“The leaders of campus bureaucracies must have a clear standpoint; they have to listen to victims,” Saras said. “There is still a masculine culture among lecturers, but they need to learn to be more gender sensitive to protect the students.”

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