October 2, 2013, Year 4, Issue 36
It’s been about a month since many new students streamed onto the CEU campus for their general orientation. The week-long program provided information on everything from navigating the university campus to a session teaching students the complicated task of using a browser to check their e-mail. Notably absent this year – just as last year - was the required presentation and dissemination of the CEU sexual harassment policy.
“I didn’t even know … that there is a sexual harassment policy,” one new student responded when I asked whether it was mentioned during the orientation week. Unfortunately, I am sure this student was not the only member of our community who was unaware of the policy’s existence. You may wonder why this omission is important; after all, we should all know at this point in our lives and academic careers that sexual harassment is intolerable.
First and foremost, the CEU sexual harassment policy requires that “an orientation meeting for … students to acquaint them with this policy and the relevant procedures for enforcing it shall occur at the beginning of the academic year.” This means that the university is required to brief incoming students on the policy and related procedures, such as lodging complaints with the appropriate authorities. In addition, the policy also requires that it “be published in the official handbooks for … students, and shall be made available widely within the University community” along with relevant procedural information. If, however, new students from this year (or last year) look under the policy section of their student handbooks, they will notice that the policy is nowhere to be seen. Instead, the handbook directs inquirers to two separate websites – and until recently neither contained the sexual harassment policy. Before late September the only place where I could locate the policy was, strangely enough, on the website for the computer and statistics center. The policy has finally been uploaded to the Student Life website, but it is still missing from the archives for official CEU documents.
What makes these several omissions particularly egregious is that the student life office had already been made aware of the handbook and orientation requirement in March during an appeal to student representatives for feedback on the student handbook. Their response at the time was, “we will definitely include the policy in the handbook!” So, what happened? With this in mind, allow me to pose a few questions. If you or a friend were sexually harassed or assaulted by a fellow member of the CEU community, do you know what resources and options are available? Should you want to file a complaint against the perpetrator, do you know where to go, who to contact, and how to go about filing a complaint? In such a situation, do you know what your rights are as student, staff, or faculty - or as a resident in Hungary? Do you know where to find this information?
As far as I’ve been able to ascertain through repeated searches, this information is not available in one place, but rather requires anyone concerned to hunt through several different lengthy policies and perform a few knowing Google searches. I have to wonder why this information is not contained within one easily accessible (not to mention heavily linked and distributed) website. The Sexual Harassment policy was last updated in 1999, surely someone could find time during the past 14 years to accomplish this task.
Aside from the administrative issues of CEU’s failure to abide by its own policies, this glaring series of chronic oversights is a problem because sexual harassment and sexual violence are an unfortunate reality and not infrequent occurrence at our university. While the endemic nature of sexual harassment at CEU merits its own discussion, here it serves to illustrate how vital it is that CEU informs the hundreds of annually incoming students about the sexual harassment policy and its related procedures. People come to CEU from vastly diverse communities, and with many varying ideas on what constitutes appropriate behavior. If our university aspires to be a safe and friendly space for discussion and learning, our introduction to this space must also include educating students about expected conduct and available resources.
As students, it is our guaranteed right to have access to all student-related policies, and it is the right of all CEU students, faculty and staff to exist and work in a safe community. CEU’s continued negligence in these matters is both unacceptable and untenable. How are we to ensure the safety, respect and dignity of our diverse, unique community if CEU as an institution disregards its own basic obligations to its members?
Alex Fleming
USA,
Gender Studies
Image: Artwork by Mira Shihadeh, downtown Cairo.
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