Open letter misrepresents action taken by university against students as failure to take sexual harassment seriously: NLSIU
Open letter misrepresents action taken by university against students as failure to take sexual harassment seriously: NLSIU
Around 200 alumni of National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru have written an open letter, to initiate disciplinary action against two female students for sharing details about sexual harassment by a university student The institution has been questioned. outsider. The letter made several demands before the NLSIU to provide more support to survivors of sexual assault.
According to a former student who talked Hindu, a man (not a student), who was allegedly sexually assaulted by a student of NLSIU, reached out to the facilitators of two student SHIC (Sexual Harassment Investigation Committee) in March. She explained that the purpose of student facilitators is to act as a single point of contact and to provide a support system to victims.
“The victim was trying to explore her options with regard to filing a police complaint or initiating formal proceedings at the NLSIU. Since she was not a student and was not sure about initiating action, she decided to alert the NLSIU community about the perpetrator through internal emails and social media pages. He asked the facilitators to do this on his behalf,” said Mukta Joshi, class of 2019, from NLSIU.
He said the student facilitators then contacted the sexual harassment policy advisor, who was also a faculty member, who asked them to use their discretion and not object. Hence, the students went ahead and shared the name of the alleged perpetrator and the details of the attack on the email and Facebook group.
Thereafter, the alleged offender lodged a disciplinary complaint against the student assistants. Alumni members said that taking cognizance of this, the university initiated proceedings and found the facilitators guilty of “big misconduct”.
“As a fine, the NLSIU directed that they either issue a public apology or pay a significant monetary fine,” the letter said, adding that they chose to pay the monetary fine.
According to sources, the student facilitators have now appealed to the executive council of NLSIU for further action.
Responding to the allegations, the NLSIU said in a lengthy statement on Thursday, the open letter “misrepresents the action taken by the university against the students as a failure to take sexual harassment seriously.”
“Indeed, action was taken against the students for failure to comply with ‘NLSIU’s Principles of Conduct, 2002’ and ‘NLSIU’s IT Policies’,” the statement said. Number of parties involved during the complaint process, whether or not it results in formal proceedings before SHIC”.
“The student facilitators have bypassed the sexual harassment mechanism provided by the university, which they were assigned to maintain their role as facilitators. The university takes sexual harassment matters very seriously. NLSIU has never stopped its students from discussing issues of sexual harassment. However, using NLSIU digital resources to publicly name a matter that would be detrimental to that individual’s reputation is not conducive to the kind of community that we at NLSIU seek to nurture,” the statement said. Having said.