JNU Circular On Counselling Session On Sexual Harassment Criticised By Students – Education News
A circular for a counselling session by JNU on sexual harassment, which says girls are “supposed to know how to draw a tangible line between them and their male friends”, has drawn the rage of student associations who said it reeks of victim shaming.
The internal complaints committee (ICC) of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has uploaded the circular on the varsity’s website saying that it will organize a counselling session on sexual harassment on January 17. It also said that such sessions will be organiszd on a monthly basis.
Under the subhead “why is the counselling session required”, the circular said that it will make students aware about what consists of sexual harassment. It also said that students are being counselled during the orientation programme and on the inception of each academic year, they need to refresh their knowledge about the same, time to time.
“ICC comes across a number of cases where sexual harassment takes place among close friends. Boys generally cross (sometimes advertently, sometimes inadvertently) the thin line between friendship’s bantering and sexual harassment. Girls are supposed to know how to draw a tangible line (between them and their male friends) to avoid any such harassments (sic),” the circular read. It also stated that the ICC has a zero-tolerance policy towards any kind of sexual harassment.
The JNU Students’ Union president Aishe Ghosh said it was a victim shaming remark. “The ICC in JNU makes a blatant victim blaming remark where it asks ‘women to draw a tangible line to not get harassed by their male members’. The ICC time and again in JNU has passed such regressive remarks or conducted itself in a way to moral police the survivor,” she said in a statement. “Such a remark, creates a space where harassment in such lines will become rampant and will lead to become an unsafe space for women,” Ghosh said.
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