Trigger warning: sexual harassment, pornography, rape

During my third week of school at Chapman, pornography was posted on the Canvas for my First Year Foundations Course.

It was labeled as an article about A Face in the Crowd, the film my class was supposed to analyze in the following week. When I clicked on the article module, the explicit content popped up right away while still on Canvas.  

Confusion flooded my mind as I wondered if this was an intentional act by my professor, an accident or a hack. Being an 18-year-old woman in a world with many abusive men in leadership positions, I was disgusted by the thought of a professor posting this explicit content. 

Regardless of the reason behind this, though, I wanted to make sure no other students in the class saw the post and that the person who posted the content was held accountable. 

To make that happen, I had to report to the university that unsolicited sexual images were posted to the class website. I thought I would be able to show some administrator the content, and they would take over from there.

I was wrong. 

At first, when a classmate and I tried to report the incident to an administrator, we were quickly dismissed, as if this was not a serious issue. Then, I was told in order for an investigation to be conducted, I had to file an official Title IX complaint against the professor, meaning he would be alerted that I was the student who reported him.

Nevertheless, I decided to file the complaint anyway, feeling as though nothing would be done to find out who posted the content if I did not report it. 

However, I no longer felt safe being in the same class as the professor I reported. Along with holding suspicions that the faculty member might be a sexual predator, I was fearful of his potential retaliation against me for taking the incident to an administrative level.

Fortunately, a staffer in the Office of Student Affairs was able to find me a replacement course, but not before the next class meeting. As a result, I would either have to attend one last class with the professor I reported or skip class; and although the staffer I met with could encourage the professor to excuse my absence, I was told that it would not be guaranteed. 

As an academically-conscious student whose scholarship status is dependent on maintaining a high GPA, I could not risk an unexcused absence lowering my grade and decided to go to class.

In hindsight, I realize I should not have had to make that decision. I suffered through class, anxiously keeping my head down; I could hardly look the professor in the eye knowing what he might have done. 

School is supposed to be a safe place, but in this moment, I had been stripped of the security every student deserves inside the classroom. 

As I continued in the complaint process, I had a meeting with the university’s Deputy Title IX Coordinator, who is a male. As a young woman, having to explain a form of sexual harassment to a male was uncomfortable. Across reports of sexual violence for survivors of all genders, men were perpetrators 78% of the time, so I worried that my experience would not be taken seriously. 

After this meeting, I was interviewed by the case investigator to detail my experience, even though I had already described what had happened multiple times. Having to talk about this traumatic incident over and over again was brutal, as it could never escape my mind. 

My right to an advisor was also violated during the investigation process: I was initially told that I had a right to an advisor during the interview, but when the interview began, my advisor and I were told that we needed to have filled out a form for my advisor to be present. There was no mention or copy of said form in any of the communication I had with the investigator in Human Resources. How was I supposed to have signed a form I didn’t know existed? The investigator explained that my options were to reschedule the interview and sign the form or to do it without my advisor. Having already spent a week being anxious about this interview, I decided that proceeding without my advisor was best for me mentally, but it was difficult to be questioned on my own. 

When the investigation wrapped up, it was determined that the pornography was posted by a hacker and not the professor, but I was not shown anything that corroborated this conclusion other than the professor’s statements he did not post it. 

I did not feel confident in the outcome of this investigation given the lack of evidence provided, so I appealed the decision, citing the lack of evidence and multiple violations of my rights throughout the process. I had 10 days to write and send the appeal, so once again my time and energy were dedicated to reliving the experience of encountering this unsolicited sexual content. 

The appeal policy stated that, “within 20 business days of receiving the appeal and the response, the Appeal decision-maker(s) shall issue a written decision describing the result of the appeal and the rationale for the result; and provide the written decision simultaneously to both parties.”

Twenty days passed, and I hadn’t received anything. I had to cram writing my appeal and balancing school work within 10 days, while the administrator responding to the appeal had double that amount of time and still did not send the results by the deadline. 

This administrator was able to take advantage of his position of power, and there was no one else to hold him accountable to following the university’s policies. 

From start to finish, time after time, I was disrespected and violated during this process. It was miserable. 

The majority of my first year of college was spent trying to get justice for the trauma my classmates and I experienced. It was bad enough that the pornography was posted, but the investigation that followed was even worse. 

The part that haunts me the most is that survivors of more serious incidents like rape have to go through this very process: they will be questioned intensely, asked to constantly repeat the horrible story of their experience and will ultimately be dismissed by male administrators who do not understand the horrors of sexual abuse. This needs to change. 

Administrators and faculty who deal with issues of sexual harassment must have true empathy for student survivors, so they do not re-traumatize students. Some questions can be asked and answered one time, instead of being asked to relive a traumatic experience in every new meeting. 

Hiring women and queer people into more Title IX and Equal Opportunity Office leadership positions will also help survivors feel safe when sharing their stories, improving the mental well-being of anyone who has to go through this process. 

Sexual harassment is all too real. Survivors deserve to be treated with dignity and support when doing the right thing by reporting it.