Are universities closing ranks on sexual harassment?

Earlier this month, Singapore’s Minister of State for Education Sun Xueling disclosed in parliament that, in the past five years, higher education institutions in the city-state handled 172 cases of sexual harassment committed by students and staff.

Teaching staff and students are expected to uphold professional codes of conduct, she said, adding that “when there is a breach of those codes of conduct, the punishments are swift”.

Both students and staff can be suspended or dismissed from the university for their actions, the minister said in response to a question by a member of parliament on 3 November.

But she also said institutions needed to be more open and punctual in revealing charges of offenses that involved staff.

With so many incidents revealed by the minister, academics say it confirms what many have suspected – that the few cases made public represent just the tip of the iceberg.

While universities and the education ministry tend to treat such incidents as a disciplinary matter, many argue they should be seen as a cultural issue in a male-oriented society and dealt with as such.

In addition, academics have argued that the reputation-management approach favoured by rankings-driven universities regards sexual harassment cases as a risk-management problem, rather than a problem structurally embedded in universities.

Earlier this year, a National University of Singapore (NUS) lecturer, Jeremy Fernando, was dismissed for being in an intimate relationship with an undergraduate student – a clear breach of NUS’s code of conduct for staff.

“When cases like [that] come up, NUS would say: ‘Don’t talk about it; send it to us. We will tackle it for you. Just keep quiet',” Carissa Cheow, co-founder and co-president of ‘Students for a Safer NUS’ told University World News. “They approach it as a PR [public relations] problem,” she added.

A top Chinese political science professor, Zheng Yongnian, who was head of the East Asian Institute (EAI) at NUS for a decade, left the university in September, after sexual harassment allegations made by a female employee and investigations were launched by NUS and the police.

Zheng’s lawyers have said Zheng “categorically denies” all allegations and said his resignation from the East Asian Institute at NUS was unrelated to the harassment claims. Zheng is currently head of global and contemporary Chinese studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong branch campus in Shenzhen, southern China.

In comments to Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post newspaper this month, Zheng berated NUS for allegedly “taking the accuser’s side” even before investigations into the staff member’s complaint were completed.

Announcements were made last year by NUS and Nanyang Technological University on new penalties and other rules on sexual harassment on campus, in response to earlier cases at NUS of students filming fellow female students in the shower. In March this year, a 24-year-old male student at NUS who had mounted two spycams in the toilets of a women’s college, was arrested by police and suspended by NUS.

Sexual violence a cultural problem

In an article published last month former Singaporean academic Mohan Dutta, now at Massey University, New Zealand, argued that sexual violence is a cultural problem.

“This means it is often normalised in the dominant values, norms and practices,” he said.

Sexual violence on university campuses is a global problem, Dutta noted, and “reflective of the managerial university that is largely invested in reputation management, bereft of the ethic of care”.

He added: “The rankings-driven managerial university is invested in public relations and reputation management, deploying large teams of PR professionals to monitor and survey social media, and responding in PR-speak when crises emerge.

“An incident of sexual violence is, therefore, a crisis to be managed through risk-management responses. Because of this emphasis, universities lack explicit resources, frameworks and pathways for addressing sexual violence.

“In the absence of transparent and visible resources, sexual violence perpetuates itself in various layers of the organisation, in various forms, and often without consequences.”

In Singapore, “Asian cultural values”, which focus on the male father figure and ‘saving face’ lead to a culture of silence, Dutta said.

“The universities, reflecting the broader culture, appear to prefer that things not be brought to light, whether for ‘face saving’ reasons, or because of a resistance to structures and processes that actively promote transparency.

“The dominant approach of sweeping it under the carpet translates into most cases being dealt with without community and public accountability.”

For instance, a complaint of sexual violence may result in a full professor being given leave for a semester or a year, only to then return to the job. Or complaints might result in termination without disclosure, allowing the faculty member to secure a job elsewhere and continue his career, Dutta said.

“The universities, reflecting the broader culture, appear to prefer that things not be brought to light, whether for ‘face saving’ reasons, or because of a resistance to structures and processes that actively promote transparency.”

Referring to the Zheng case, Dutta noted that “any resolution, knowledge about and understanding of improvements to offer better protection to people in weaker positions appear limited”.

Similar to sexual harassment off-campus

A representative of the women’s rights lobby group AWARE (Association of Women for Action and Research) in Singapore told University World News the reasons for cases that occur on university campuses are no different from those that happen elsewhere.

“Hostile sexism and sexual objectification of women is deeply ingrained in our culture, to the point where many men feel entitled to derive sexual pleasure from women’s bodies with or without their consent,” she said.

“It is not clear that the situation is any worse on campuses than off campuses. Campus sexual violence cases do seem to get a lot of public attention, perhaps because society expects campuses to be safe places for youth.”

She added that on campus, students are relatively young – most are just entering adulthood – and so may be more vulnerable to sexual abuse than older adults.

“They may find themselves in situations or activities that they may not be equipped to handle, at the hands of faculty members or staff who are in positions of authority, power or trust,” AWARE notes.

But she also pointed to the prevalence of sexual harassment in cyberspace which the Singapore government has started to crack down on.

Dutta also argued that power structures in universities perpetuate sexual violence “because of the self-protecting tendency of power”.

“Those in power close in on ranks to protect others within their networks. To act on an incident of sexual violence is to break from the ranks,” Dutta argued, adding: “The targets of sexual violence are often at the receiving end of an unequal power relationship.”

NUS response

In an official response to University World News, NUS denied that was the case. “NUS has a duty of care to our students, and we take our responsibilities very seriously. In the past year, the university has taken significant steps in building a safer campus for all,” an NUS spokesperson said, pointing to the Victim Care Unit (VCU) set up by the university.

Established in August 2019, the dedicated unit on campus provides a central point of contact for all NUS students who are being or have been affected by sexual misconduct.

“The team offers a private and safe space for victims to seek support and to be heard. The VCU also organises activities to educate students about respect and consent,” NUS said.

“It provides centralised victim support; there is an established multi-level network of support in place at NUS.”

This includes student support managers, who are the first line of help at faculty level, while resident advisors and resident fellows offer support in student residences.

“We acknowledge they are trying their level best to address the issues despite structural problems,” said Cheow, of Students for a Safer NUS. But she pointed out that this structure is underfunded with just six staff to serve about 50,000 students on campus. And often cases start at the faculty or residential college.

“They will be looking for help at that level – staff will say: ‘We are not the professionals, our job here is to just report.’ That’s why faculties, halls [of residence] are not responding,” added Cheow.

“Because NUS says this unit is where people are trained to attend to these cases, other parts of the university don’t want to get involved. This gets complicated for students [and they] get shuffled to various offices,” Cheow said.

The NUS spokesperson said the university has made it a requirement for all staff and students to take a compulsory module on ‘respect and consent culture’. In addition, freshmen living on campus are required to attend face-to-face or online workshops with trained facilitators and residential staff.

This year, Cheow’s group rolled out a booklet for distribution during the student orientation as the workshops did not take place because of COVID-19 restrictions.

“We got a very good response … there was no such resource prior to this,” she said.

“Capacity-building efforts with student life, residential fellows, lecturers, counsellors all need to have the capacity to respond. Right now, that capacity is lagging. That is where we come in … we have to do it together,” she said.

Singapore’s other high-ranked university, Nanyang Technological University, did not respond to requests for comment.