Being sexually harassed at school is a difficult problem to handle but with some encouragement from my friends, I worked up the courage to tell the university authorities about what was happening. To my dismay, no actual consequences were doled out to the professor. However, I did learn a lot about how the tenure process works at the university.
The guy who I reported was pretty high up within the university and was well respected and considered an asset. Like when this guy wasn’t making inappropriate comments about his female student’s cleavage he was apparently writing major grants to bring in millions of needed dollars to fund the university. The loss of this funding would apparently negatively impact the university worse than some silly non-stop unwanted comments and advances ever could.
It was then explained to me that I was probably just imagining these things and that I should know that this professor was one of the most consistent professors in terms of teaching over the years. I protested that he was also consistent in harassing students as per testimonies previous students gave on social media once I started asking about him. Nevertheless, the campus official said that you can’t believe everything you read on the internet before warning us not to be near the accused professor when he was drinking. That’s when the totally playful and not weird “Tickle Monster” comes out.
I still felt that the university official was being obtuse and I called them out about it. They then explained that when a professor is put up for tenure there are entire committees and review boards that have to give them the recommendation. It would look really bad for many people in the university if they had signed off on giving this professor tenure 10 years ago. Besides, it wouldn’t be fair for them to be punished when the first rumblings about this professor’s behavior only came out 12 years ago. How were they to know?
So there you have it folks it turns out that institutions are more important than the individuals and you just have to deal with your problems by transferring universities. Surely other universities wouldn’t do the same.