Happened again. Big name got dropped in a sexual harassment suit. Shit been going on for decades. Everyone knew. Nobody said a thing. Dude is too big to fall. Bring in too much money, too much rep for the institution. Too many yes-men squirming around him trying to have some of his aura rub off them.
Complaints were treated internally only. Many were made. Money exchange hands with the promise of retraction and silence. Then the institution has the fair game of saying “we had no idea, all those years and there were no complaints against the man”. To be fair, they were dozen of complaints but since they were retracted, there were no complaints in the end. I shouldn't say those things, I have an NDA 🙂 been a while they figured out the lowly staff may be lowly in their eyes but we know things, so better protect themselves from us.
And how many victims left instead, disgusted of the process and knowing full well speaking against God himself is a professional death sentence. Academia is already cutthroat, do you really want to braid the rope to hang yourself ?
This time a victim went public. Shit got known. It made the fucking news.
The administration reacted in a fraction of second. They knew it was coming. How come they already had a public relation firm ready to take over the communication bureau hours before journalists started to call ? They even sent a nice letter to everyone, to students, to staff, to donators. Gotta give the impression they were proactive right ?
“We knew nothing, disciplinary actions have been taken immediately and measures were implanted to prevent such terrible things from happening again. The institution take sexual violence very seriously and yada yada yada yada.” Bunch of letters and words stringed together to say nothing just to say they said something.
But in the end we all know that everyone knew. We all know they'll protect him and whatever disciplinary action he will face will be trivial, if they even exist in the first place. Who fucking care about the victim when there's very important things to consider like grants, subventions and h-index.
By the way he's back at work. Didn't even bother staying out of sight for more than a week. He had the galls to call a meeting to apologize for the mistakes that has been made (not those that he made, literally said “mistake have been made”) and for all of us to work together to put this sad incident behind us. Someone stayed after the meeting to pitch a collaborative paper.
Nothing has changed. Nothing will change. Priorities there are skewed.
So I'm leaving. It will have zero impact. I'm just a lowly support staff. I wrote my letter saying I can't work for an morally corrupt system. HR took my letter, read it and told my concerns have been duly noted and if I may please contact [name] for my termination paperwork, also please submit the list of equipment I may have in my possession so IT can make arrangement to retrieve them. Oh and btw please note we don't make recommendations and will only confirm time of employment as required by law.
As for me, still don't know what I'll do. I have a decent chunks in savings and live quit frugally so it's not an immediate worry.