@AshokaUniv has one of the worst records of handling sexual harassment complaints and the head of this centre, as head of their ICC had an atrocious approach to consent, & as student rep to the committee, I've personally witnessed how spectacularly they failed complainants. https://twitter.com/CSGS_Ashoka/status/1273550317364207616

It was so horrible, as a committee member I was traumatised and resolved to never approach this committee with a sexual harassment complaint. It was composed of five female academics btw who did this, so fuck idpol, while we're at it. They have continued to have a terrible record

So spare me, if I only laugh bitterly at the ways in which these people advance their careers as 'feminist academics' thinking on the "imp questions of gender, queerness & desire" while completely fucking over real women on campus who approached the uni. All talk, opp. action.

I was 23 & only one with a background in law when I was elected to the committee. We were not trained - only after a case came up & they fucked it up phenomenally, that a oneday workshop was conducted towards the end of the year. optional workshop for the class in the last sem.

One day maybe I will write in detail about how each and every one involved in that process in 2016-17 was culpable in a grotesque perversion of due process, grown ass female academics with zero understanding of the nuances of consent and utter retraumatisation they unleashed.

I'm still shaking when I type this coz it's one thing when spaces are hostile overtly, you expect nothing and don't buy into the process. What's truly dangerous about places like Ashoka (& they're not alone in this) is there is veneer of legitimacy, the right language used, but

In practice, it's a rotten system worse coz you subject yourself to it. I got a taste of how vile academia can be during those months, almost put me off pursuing an acad career. Profs on the committee afraid to go up against Madhavi Menon told me privately they were sympathetic.

I was vocal on the committee pointing out their numerous procedural & substantive flaws - became an irritant to the process. It affected my mental health, wanted to quit, but was dissuaded from it by other profs privately, didnt realise then how unfair it was, that responsibility

I don't wanna talk abt the complainant's experience which was far worse than my own. But even being on that committee, as a survivor of violence was so horrifying. I didn't feel safe brining my own case to them after what I saw. In the appeal process, I was asked in an interview

If a woman is in a male student's room after midnight, wouldn't that mean something? I remember sitting there stunned, that heads of their departments had notions like this, well, in 2016. I obviously vehemently rejected the allusion, but I felt so dejected, something died in me.

One person I want to appreciate with my full heart, is the lovely Maya Saran, Math dept, the only decent person in this entire process. Where the ones in humanities + soc sci who built careers on feminism utterly failed, she came through, as a dissenting voice. She got consent.

And used her position in the Appeals process to fix some of the damage wreaked by the original committee, but not only did the people involved fail to live up to their roles, the system itself is rotten and designed to not work at all actually. @SaraNAhmed has written about this.

I will write about my experiences sometime. I held on to the documentation thankfully. But even later, even as they changed the committee structure, they continued to fail complainants in sexual harassment cases. Read about it here - https://www.youtooashoka.com/home 

Maybe people who want to associate with this university and this centre should be aware of what they are associating with.

@parodevi @anarrain @aziakashmir @JyotiPuri_2

I recounted my experience in details to @vqueeram once for some research they were doing for preparation on a panel on sexual harassment proceedings in universities. Every time I think about this, I can't but shake in rage & grief over the hypocrisy & optics of liberal arts unis

Thank you. So much love and strength back. https://twitter.com/vqueeram/status/1273675382818889729?s=20