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Jadavpur University Debating Society, JUMUN Issue Apology In Sexual Harassment Scandal
West Bengal, 13 May 2020 12:05 PM GMT
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"After what we have witnessed in the last few days, we would like to issue a public apology for unknowingly inviting some of the accused as our Executive Board members in this edition," JUMUN wrote in a Facebook post.
Kolkata's Jadavpur University recently came under the spotlight after a girl student alleged that some boys in the college have been circulating 'nude and semi-nude' photographs of girls on Google drive.
A Twitter user by the name of 'Aiyoobrows' narrated the trauma that women of her college have been going through for days now.
The tweets accused a student of JU, Gautam (name changed), of starting the account for Google drive and then sharing it among his friends, also from JU. The tweet soon went viral and several other women began coming forward to narrate about their encounters with Gautam and Rahul (name changed). They referred to the drive as an 'open secret', as no one had earlier been able to find enough evidence to accuse the men of the crime.
Gautam studied in the Department of Electrical Engineering, while Rahul still studies Economics in the JU. Sources say that the drive has been in existence ever since 2016, if not before.
Gautam, Rahul and the other accused have denied the allegations.
However, The Logical Indian investigation found that one of the accused who was also named in one of the tweets, Ankit (name changed), was aware of the drive being maintained but did nothing about it. While he denied having any knowledge of the incident in a Facebook post, a student of JU shared a screenshot of Ankit's testimony with us, where he claimed that he knew about the drive and Gautam and Rahul's alleged involvement, but did nothing to stop it.
In the aftermath of the incident, Jadavpur University Model United Nations (JUMUN) issued an apology for inviting some of the accused as their executive board members.
"After what we have witnessed in the last few days, we would like to issue a public apology for unknowingly inviting some of the accused as our Executive Board members in this edition. The decisions were not made when the Secretariat was aware of the wrongdoings perpetrated by the concerned individuals. We are also ashamed to have associations to the said individuals as an event in the past years," JUMUN wrote.
"To that end, what we have collectively decided to take a strong stand on this matter and have therefore, called this edition of JUMUN off as a mark of protest to our erstwhile members for misusing this event, this space that was meant to be academic and informative. This decision comes also to stand in solidarity with everyone who feels unsafe to attend Model United Nations conferences, rightfully so for the revelations are shocking and extremely disturbing," it added.
Jadavpur University Debating Society acknowledged the incident, and issued an apology.
"We feel sad that individuals representing our society have gone on and ultimately turned out to be the worst examples anybody could have ever given and we condemn, in the strongest possible way, everything that has been perpetrated. We hereby boycott all the individuals concerned from any future event/activity and appeal to other Debating Clubs/MUNs to do the same," the debating society wrote.
"We hope we can all come out stronger than ever from the trauma that these events have caused to all of us and pledge to be stricter and more aware to prevent similar instances to the best of our capabilities," it added.
Forum for Arts Students also put up a Facebook post acknowledging the incident.
"The fight against patriarchy, however, also requires that each of us realize the seemingly inconsequential but discriminatory elements in our everyday lives that contribute to this larger culture of abuse and violation. Such grave incidents reiterate the need to take a stand against casual misogyny and sexism that are practised in abundance in our social lives," the Forum wrote.
We did not name the accused here because our aim is not to call out individuals, but the toxic culture in educational institutions, even in prominent ones. What these men did is a reflection of a larger societal problem.
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