Gender-abusers in higher education and political impunity

A LOCAL English daily reported that incidences of sexual harassment take place in higher educational institutions and often remain under-reported. It is very unfortunate that students do not know what forms of conduct constitute as sexual harassment and to make a bad situation worse, guardians are more involved in victim-shaming or hiding occurrences of sexual harassment instead of building awareness. Data show that following the High Court ruling in 2009, the University Grants Commission directed all universities to form independent sexual harassment complaint committees (SHCCs) to protect students from sexual harassment. Ironically, specialists shared that most male students are unaware about the ruling or what constitutes as sexual harassment. The specialists added that even female students do not know which incidents they should report and how. Barely a handful of incidents are reported to the SHCCs of different universities, and statistics show that incidents of harassment mostly take place at the undergraduate level and none so far have been reported from the graduate level.
The report added that students of prominent public universities like Rajshahi and Jahangirnagar University have shared their frustrations regarding the way their SHCCs handled their harassment complaints and several faculty members supported that saying university authorities should take effective steps to create awareness among teachers, officials and students about the activities of SHCC. Under the current circumstances, most female students shy away from reporting the harassment they face on a daily basis, including inappropriate advances from teachers or fellow students.
It is certainly very disturbing that female students are being subjected to harassment both by teachers and students at universities. Such incidents are found more in government-run universities where party politics sway. It is common to think that those who are connected with party politics of the government in power can be bold about a sense of impunity. Our students’ involvement in muscle politics is spoiling academic atmosphere in a vicious way. It has become worse for the fact that the teachers are seen as political activists of vile party politics.
We want to see a movement unitedly by sensible teachers and students to save higher education for good education.