Trigger warning: sexual harassment
The only thing I ever talked about when I was little, besides the Backstreet Boys, was going to college. Imagine my excitement when I finally was ready to transfer from community college to a university.
This was it!
The idea of going to college meant that I had opportunity. I was going to learn how to be a critical thinker, I wanted to make my family proud, I also wanted to beat stereotypes.
Fast forward a couple years, I was thriving academically and was honored to win the Mellon Mays Fellowship that was specifically for students of color studying Social Sciences. I was in love with my research and with the fact that my small cohort bounced nerdy ideas off each other all day.
Although, one of the requirements of winning the fellowship was having an advisor who could guide all of those ideas to inform research. I knew exactly who I wanted to pick.
My declared major was Anthropology but at our small liberal arts school the department was tiny, as in three professors but one was on sabbatical, tiny. Soooo two, there were two people to chose from to be my advisor. One was a tenured professor who had been with the school for more than a decade and the other was an adjunct prof. I, 100%, wanted to work with the adjunct professor.
Wanna know why?
She was (and is) a young, badass, Latina, mountain mama, profe. She was (and is) everything I wanted to be!
Enthusiastic.
Engaging.
Caring and so damn smart.
When I told my program advisors who I wanted as the advisor of MY research, they said no. My research was on Mexican-Americans who did not speak Spanish and the cultural patterns experienced by those individuals and they said no to the LATINA researcher from Stanford.
At the time, she was an adjunct and they said “we just don’t know if she will stay”. Folx, she definitely wanted to stay but they wouldn’t make her full-time which is a whole different story about this university. Ay ya ay, it should have been the first clue.
Instead, I worked with the tenured professor who specialized in African studies. He was from Nigeria but had been in the states for more than twenty years (this detail will be important later). If you took an anthropology class, it was likely you took it from him because again, tiny department. It was known throughout the campus that he was “out of pocket” with his comments and his actions. A friend told me he once said to her “You are so fat, that if you were in my village the men would go crazy over you”. Oh ya know, just casually in class in front of everyone.
This type of bullshit happened all the time to men and women on campus.
This was just common knowledge that the campus shared.
K so now, these program advisors are asking me to work with him one-on-one and I need to take one of his classes to graduate. I didn’t say anything to them because all these things I am sharing with you now are just upon reflection.
At the time, I was too naïve to talk about how uncomfortable I was.
Everyone else on campus seemed to know and not do anything about it so I just started thinking of ways to protect my body. I wore sweatshirts whenever I was in front of him so he can’t see my chest, I’d pull the sides of my backpack out so it covers my ass, I stop smiling whenever I was around him to hopefully deflect any comments about how pretty I was.
It was so creepy!
I would dread our morning meetings to go over my research. I started brining friends with me so I wouldn’t be alone with him, until he proved to be so comfortable saying whatever the fuck he wanted he dropped this bomb:
“You two must hate black people because you haven’t had sex with me yet!”
I froze while he was laughing and I looked over and my friend was laughing. I just remember being so damn dumbfounded and repeating “okay, time to go!” I don’t remember much from the rest of the day except what I was feeling.
It was betrayal, and being gaslighted, violated, and so uncomfortable.
I remember wanting to rub my skin off I was so creeped out. I had spent months and months trying to avoid shit like this and there it was. I remember thinking “does my body doesn’t have worth outside of sex?”
It didn’t seem to matter how smart I was, I still was just an object.
I wanted to believe so badly that the school had my back. So much so, that I felt guilty because I had brought it up and no one did anything about it so I thought something was wrong with me. I didn’t make sense to me that the school would let this happen. I was left scrambling to try and feel safe. When he said this comment I felt like I failed myself.
I put the sweatshirts on and he STILL thought of me this way!
Still thought it was okay to say those things to me. After everything I did he still used his position of power to take advantage of the situation.
I sent him an email fully detailing the experience and telling him I no longer wanted to work with him and how uncomfortable he made me.
His reply: “Oh Alyssa, it was in jest! I do not want to lose your friendship and all the hard work you have done with your research! I just didn’t know any better! I don’t understand American customs sometimes. I am sorry you felt it was inappropriate!”
Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit.
A cultural anthropologist who has been in the country for more than 20 years tried to say he was foreign. He tried to play it off as a joke that I just didn’t find funny. I was shook to say the least. He tried sending me two emails after that saying he was sorry and it was a joke.
I didn’t respond.
The next time we had a group meeting for the fellowship, I let my advisors know what happened and they all gave each other sideways glances like “So what now?”
And this my friends, is the most bullshit question of them all.
What now?
Now, all the students he hurt have to deal with the trauma that he created. The survivors from this man have to deal with the fact that it was common knowledge and no one did anything about it. The other professors and adults that knew did not do anything to protect those other students.
But you know who did?
That badass Latina professor, she was the only one who took my seriously and gave me the steps to take. I reported him to the school and opened a title IX Case against him where tons of victims of his abuse stepped forward.
AND!
All he got was a slap on the wrist. So, the next year he came back and did something even worse to an even younger student; but that is not my story to tell.
I felt compelled to share this because I am so damn angry and exhausted from people standing by while injustices happen. I am not sure where to direct the rage but I just want to say, I am here for you. If you need an advocate, sis let me know. If you need someone to stand by you while you do something uncomfortable, I am available. All it takes is for one other people to stand with you to feel a little braver.
That professor who stood with me gave me hope and she still gives me hope.
If you need someone like that in your life, please reach out.
NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE.
Love,
AC
Originally published at http://thislatinalefthome.com on August 30, 2020.
