The Voice Unheard

Ani­ta Saleem

In Pak­istan the voic­es of numer­ous peo­ple go unheard on issues such as pow­er out­age, infla­tion, CNG short­age, and of late, even the recent elec­tions.

Although the title of this arti­cle could eas­i­ly refer to any of these mar­gin­al­ized voic­es, my spe­cif­ic focus is on one group of peo­ple and their agony. I refer here to uni­ver­si­ty and col­lege stu­dents who often face sex­u­al harass­ment, and are per­haps one of the least heard groups with­in our oth­er­wise loud soci­ety.

While every­one seems com­fort­able dis­cussing and debat­ing nation­al issues, per­son­al issues like harass­ment often go unad­dressed. There are a num­ber of rea­sons why young stu­dents may not report abuse. First and fore­most, sev­er­al youth are unable to dis­cern whether their expe­ri­ences amount to harass­ment. Sec­ond­ly, the harass­ment might be insti­gat­ed by an indi­vid­ual in a posi­tion of pow­er, such as a pro­fes­sor, a teach­ing assis­tant or some­one high up in the admin­is­tra­tion. And last but not least, young peo­ple are often afraid that dis­clos­ing such infor­ma­tion would lead to them being judged harsh­ly by oth­ers.

Inter­est­ing­ly how­ev­er, stu­dents are not the only peo­ple who face these prob­lems; in fact this is a much broad­er issue that exists at all lev­els in our soci­ety. Regard­less of age, gen­der, occu­pa­tion­al sta­tus and social class, peo­ple can and do expe­ri­ence harass­ment in var­i­ous forms. Sin­gle women in employ­ment seem to be par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble to ver­bal, phys­i­cal and sex­u­al abuse.

Although seek­ing to con­trol harass­ment at all lev­els may be too great a task for the imme­di­ate future, there are cer­tain­ly things that can be done at an insti­tu­tion­al lev­el.

So what exact­ly can edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions do to put an end to this?

First­ly, stu­dents need to be edu­cat­ed about their rights. In 2010, the Sen­ate passed a bill against harass­ment of women where­by the offend­ers were sub­ject­ed to 3‑year impris­on­ment and a fine of Rs 0.5 mil­lion. Quot­ing the exact words of Sec­tion 509 in the Pak­istan Penal Code 1860, any­one who “con­ducts sex­u­al advances, or demands sex­u­al favours or uses writ­ten or ver­bal com­mu­ni­ca­tion or phys­i­cal con­duct of a sex­u­al nature which intends to annoy, insult, intim­i­date or threat­en the oth­er per­son” is to be found guilty.

Although the pri­ma­ry pur­pose of this act is to pro­tect women in the work­place, it would be a good start­ing point for edu­cat­ing uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents about their rights as cit­i­zens as it pro­vides a basic idea of what should be con­sid­ered offen­sive. The first part of the act states that who­ev­er is found “intend­ing to insult the mod­esty of any woman, utters any word, makes any sound or ges­ture, or exhibits any object, intend­ing that such word or sound shall be heard, or that such ges­ture or object shall be seen, by such woman, or intrudes upon the pri­va­cy of such woman” is guilty.

At an insti­tu­tion­al lev­el it is help­ful if these issues are addressed explic­it­ly. Per­haps the uni­ver­si­ty cat­a­logue or the stu­dent hand­book would be a good place to insert a sec­tion on sex­u­al harass­ment, where details of what exact­ly con­sti­tutes sex­u­al harass­ment are clear­ly out­lined. Very few uni­ver­si­ties like For­man Chris­t­ian Col­lege and LUMS have actu­al­ly done this so far.

The next step should be to allow dis­cus­sions on this top­ic and form a report­ing author­i­ty where stu­dents can lodge their com­plaints with empir­i­cal evi­dence (where pos­si­ble). Report­ing against some­one in a posi­tion of pow­er can be quite a daunt­ing prospect in itself and there­fore it is essen­tial to assure stu­dents that the insti­tu­tion is ready to hear their com­plaints and take seri­ous action (in the form of warn­ings, or in more severe cas­es, ter­mi­na­tion).

The High­er Edu­ca­tion Com­mis­sion for­mu­lat­ed the ‘Pol­i­cy Guide­lines against Sex­u­al Harass­ment at Insti­tu­tions of High­er Learn­ing’ in 2011 in which insti­tu­tions were instruct­ed to estab­lish sex­u­al harass­ment com­mit­tees and were asked to penal­ize such acts. Even though the imple­men­ta­tion of this pol­i­cy is sup­posed to at least decrease the inci­dence of sex­u­al harass­ment — if not end it alto­geth­er — 98 out of 138 uni­ver­si­ties and degree award­ing insti­tutes (DAI) in the coun­try have yet to adopt it. Recent­ly, the HEC pub­lished a list of the uni­ver­si­ty rank­ings, but what remains doubt­ful is whether this list has tak­en into con­sid­er­a­tion the secu­ri­ty pro­vid­ed to stu­dents by those insti­tu­tions.

Last­ly and per­haps most impor­tant­ly, stu­dents need to know that they won’t be blamed for hav­ing been sub­ject­ed to harass­ment. It is a sad fact that vic­tims are often blamed in our soci­ety for some­how ‘invit­ing’ the abuse. There­fore stu­dents must be giv­en the right to file com­plaints anony­mous­ly. Fur­ther­more, coun­sel­ing facil­i­ties should be made avail­able for those stu­dents who have suf­fered the trau­ma of sex­u­al harass­ment, with con­fi­den­tial­i­ty remain­ing a core val­ue.

If an insti­tu­tion receives com­plaints of this nature from its stu­dents it should be con­sid­ered a mat­ter of pride for the mere fact that the voic­es which have so often gone unheard are final­ly being giv­en a chance to be heard.

The writer is a fac­ul­ty mem­ber in the Depart­ment of Psy­chol­o­gy at For­man Chris­t­ian Col­lege, Lahore and tweets @anitasaleem