Abuses in College

I wanted to write a little bit about bullying, emotional and verbal abuse, and non-protection of students in a college environment. I have been very upset lately by the news that children students can now bully someone if their justification/rationalizations for the abuse are because of religious reasons/intolerance. We call it intolerance for a reason, it is hate speech.

No one, not a child, not an adult should be subject to verbal/emotional abuse because someone else is unloving. No one, not a school teacher a school district, a governmental body should make a law that it is legal for one student to abuse another or be allowed to stand by while a child is abused and do nothing. This is reprehensible. This is disgusting. This is institutionalized abuse. This is a bunch of law-suits begging to happen. Hopefully the courts will deal with this. But there is no reason that one child should not be protected from hate speech.

I’ve heard lots of stories from other survivors of emotional/verbal, bullying, and other abuses in learning institutions. It breaks my heart. As a culture we are saying we just don’t care about abuse and that is sick and pathetic. I went through it much of my education while being a minor. I’ll try to write about that another time.

In college I had several really bad professors and by that point I knew it was not my fault, that I did nothing to encourage or foster inappropriate behavior and I went to my advisor, who was the head of the department I was majoring in.

It was a professor who did not manage his class. Half the class was police officers and if I’ve learned anything about cops it is that they enjoy power and pushing around others with it. During the first class session they were loud and disruptive, making disparaging comments, one was about me in front of the whole class. The teacher did nothing. The next week he showed a film where everyone seemed to feel empowered to be loud and make inappropriate comments during the film. He didn’t address that. The next week everyone was now loud and verbally abusive, even about the professor who had lost all their respect and who was openly being ridiculed as well by students’ comments.

My complaints to him, which started after week two, were explicit on what was happening. I was emphatic, I was not there to be someone’s abuse victim. I was not there to be yelled at and to have my words yelled down and drowned out. His first suggestion to me was to drop out of the class and lose all the money I had paid for the class and to take the class another semester. My response was why should I have to pay, why should I be penalized, why should I have to alter my educational semesters for bullies? His efforts to combat the emotional and verbal abuses resulted in the behaviors getting much worse. He implied several times that it was up to me to come up with a method of addressing this. I found that hilarious.

As I told my advisor I had no desire to be part of some great societal/educational experiment with the groupings of the law enforcement majors and the social science majors into one class.

I had no desire to sit and be silent while a County Sheriff discussed the thesis of his study, which was to be that African Americans distrusted police officers due to a move away from community policing starting around 1900 to a more direct approach with criminals. But apparently not due to racism inherent in our society, in the police departments, and in specific police officers.  Yeah right and not due to people of color and poor people being disproportionately targeted, arrested and charged with crimes and incarcerated. Or beatings, or assaults while in custody or deaths while in custody. Or refusing to adequately police their neighborhoods or engage the communities and people. Yeah I totally believe that it was due to changes in policing more than 100 years ago. Wow, social science at work.  

My advisor finally forced him into openly addressing the issues in class and making a no talk rule during lecture and question and answer periods. It took him until about week five to gain some measure of control over the class. The departments decision at the end of the semester was to offer the class separately for the departments.

Another time my advisor went to the other department and insisted they address the issue. The issue in the other department was a student who was harassing other students before the start of a specific class and the department made all kinds of excuses for him; as he had a mental health issue (recently diagnosed with bi-polar) and the department was psychology and he was on disability, getting his college tuition paid for by the state.

My stance, and I stand by this, was that it doesn’t matter what personal issues someone is dealing with, they must adhere to the student code of conduct, or they must be made to or be ejected from the school.

No one should sit and stare at me for forty-five minutes while I was pointedly ignoring him. No one can make me talk to him. I had already seen how he treated others. This was a college campus and certain behavior was expected of me and by me, by the school, and of and by the other students.

No one should be harassed or bullied or forced into conversations, at any time or for any reason, with someone about their private life, his recent mental health diagnosis and hospitalization, the break-up of their marriage, his child, why he used force on her to stop her from leaving, but only once, and why it was okay to do so. And no department should be allowed to defend, excuse, and explain that behavior and say it was okay, he’s not a stalker, he didn’t physically beat his wife (which we don’t know and I don’t think it enters into his using others for his own “therapy.”).

I aint his momma, I ain’t his therapist, I ain’t in a support group or a twelve step program with him. I owe him nothing. I am there for me and for knowledge and learning. I am there for learning and I paid. I am not there to take care of someone. I am not there to expect someone to take care of me. I am there for me.

My advisor went to the professor first. She was all excuses for him. She suggested that I wait for the class in another part of the building and offered a room for me to sit in that was far away from the classroom, too far to walk. 

My advisor went to the head of the psychology department. She was excusing his behavior and explaining his mental health issues, diagosis, life story, as though it is okay that he be in college and be explaining how special he really is because he is now in college and also has a mental health diagnosis. Big deal! So did tons of other students. I did and I had never asked for one special treatment by professors or fellow students.

My advisor told me the story. I said I don’t care what his story is. You don’t see me telling everyone my story of heartache, accosting students while they are relaxing and preparing for class, interrupting their efforts and reading and studying, talking at the top of my voice so everyone in the classroom can hear me, demanding their attention while I use them as therapist, staring at them and pissed because they won’t take part. She said yes I agree. 

She had told them they were going to stop this behavior and they were going to stop this behavior this week, end of story. I think the head of my department standing up for me and demanding they stop him was what really had an impact. She told them they were going to have a meeting with their student and inform him of proper and appropriate behavior. And they did. And it stopped.

Otherwise I would have gone to the Dean of Students, the President of the College, and if it continued and no one intervened I would have sued their asses. I think they got that threat and it was why they stopped it. I was lucky that time, I was much older and more capable of standing up for myself. I also had an incedible advisor/head of the department and she was one empowered woman. She was the only professor that I sought out at my graduation night. She helped make that night possible.