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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Harassment: From the Boardroom to the Classroom

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We’ll begin this piece by extolling a prophecy that the recent sexual exploitation of women by political heavy hitters and Hollywood big-shots will soon be small potatoes compared to the revelations that will eventually have to be dealt with in a more sensitive area of our culture. What we’re talking about are our holy, sanctified, all-American college campuses. Of course, we’ve known for years about the exploitation of young women by college athletes. It was laughed at and most people chuckled at the mention of the star quarterback or basketball center having first dibs at the beauty queen or the cheerleader. That was bad enough. But there has never been even a mention that the older guys strutting around the campus, the college professors, both men and women, have had their way with their female and male students forever. This stain of sexism by the academicians has been willingly ignored by college administrators, faculty ethics panels and the media in order to keep the hallowed halls of ivy free of such low-life behavior.

The legendary “casting couch” is nothing compared to the power these professors have over their students. Educators hold the power of grading over the heads of their students. Careers are made and lost with marks given for academic achievement. There is no one looking over the shoulder of the grade-giver in universities. Classroom performance and exam scores are the province of the instructor. It is he or she who looks at those young people sitting in the laboratories or lecture halls and knows how much power they have over these young people. And now it is not just the men who wield the sexual power in colleges and not only young women who are their prey. Gay, lesbian and transgender professors feast on both male and female collegians trading good scores for sexual favors. They consider they are in a marketplace. These are crimes.

College sports’ sexual scandals have been covered up for years because of the need to have athletes bring in the dollars to their schools and to elevate the popularity of schools through their sports’ achievements on the gridiron or on the floorboards. This has to be remedied. Athletes have to learn that crimes against women have consequences. Rapes and physical assaults by jocks have to be treated as criminal. And by the same token, college professors who trade sex for grades have to be weeded out, punished in courts of law and forced out of their profession. Until these corrections are made, the harassment, rape and intimidation of both young men and women will continue on our college campuses. It’s time to wake up and treat this disease wherever it exists. And it surely it not relegated only to Hollywood and D.C. It’s everywhere.

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