The Growing Menace of Harassment

11 April 2018 | News

Although there are no figures for sexual harassment in science, the numbers could be high.

The School of Life Sciences (SLS) at the Jawaharlal Nehru University was established a year after JNU got set up in 1969. On the verge of completing 50 glorious years, the University is in the limelight for an althogether different reason.

The recent trigger came in when Prof Atul Johri, School of Life Sciences was arrested  on charges of sexual harassment levelled against him by eight female students of JNU.

The shocking part is that there are a total of 31 such pending cases of sexual harassment which have been assigned to a temporary Internal Complaint Committee (TICC) in the JNU.

Students' Reactions-

"My campus appears to be highly unsafe. In the present case .Patnaik .Lama happened the be Profs from my centre ie School-Of-International-Studies
I feel vulnerable." - Anima Sonkar, Research Scholar, SIS, JNU; Ex-VP, ABVP, JNU (on March 22, 2018, on Twitter)

"Large-scale have taken place against Prof Johri, who is a supporter of the JNU VC M Jagadesh Kumar. But there is no mention of Prof Lama as well as Prof Karat and Prof Pathnayak who are shielding him. You can see the hypocrisy of the Left,” - Vinay Kumar, ABVP's JNU wing president (Reported to Catch).

"The GSCASH was quashed by the JNU administration in 2017. But members have been 'voluntarily elected' to the Committee. Had the complaint against Johri been formally made to GSCASH, and had GSCASH existed in formal terms – the first step taken would have been to change the supervisor-  Shruti Simha, a member of the Gender Sensitisation Against Sexual Harassment, JNU (Reported to Quint)

 

The question arising in the minds of many is that if the environment in JNU is becoming so unsafe,  can students be assured safety in other institutes?

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