Content warning: Mentions of sexual harassment and abuse
The University of Michigan has once again demonstrated that even when things change, more things stay the same. Despite replacing former University Provost Martin Philbert and former University President Mark Schlissel and overhauling the entire Title IX office into the Equity, Civil Rights & Title IX office, we are back to square one. On June 7, The Michigan Daily published an investigation into the allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse by a professor in the School of Nursing, Robert Stephenson. The investigation involves two former U-M students and workers at both the Center for Sexuality and Health Disparities and the School of Nursing, one of them a graduate student and Professor Stephenson’s advisee from 2015 to 2019. Since February 2022, the students have participated in an ECRT investigation, which has only led them being dismissed, minimized and retraumatized. The Daily’s investigation details the abundance of evidence provided by the abuse survivors as well as how ECRT misinterpreted it to reach the stunning conclusion that Stephenson had not violated any U-M policy. The two former U-M students appealed the decision on Jan. 11, 2023. It took ECRT five months to reconsider and overrule it, which means that the graduate students will likely go through the entire retraumatizing reporting process again.
Graduate workers have gotten the message. The University does not take our wellbeing and safety seriously. This latest devastating story reveals what graduate workers already know: Power hierarchies, culture and the organizational workings of the University enable and normalize abuse. Could this harassment be prevented? The answer is yes. The Graduate Employees’ Organization has proposed expanding the LSA Transitional Funding Support Program to cover all graduate student workers at the University and not only Graduate Student Research Assistants within LSA. This expanded TFSP will provide financial support and stability to any grad worker transitioning out of an unhealthy and/or abusive relationship. Transitional funding will allow us the financial autonomy to escape abusive situations when we consider it safe. The University already has a program like this; we’re calling for it to cover all grad student workers. For example, Stephenson’s victims would be covered in the TFSP proposed by GEO. Yet, instead of working with GEO members to address the harassment crisis and listening to evidence and survivors, the University administration is refusing to take responsibility and is hiding behind technicalities. Academic Human Resources’ lack of concern for the gravity and extent of this problem caused GEO members to vote to walk out of negotiations on June 23, 2023.
A key point of contention between graduate workers and U-M AHR has been the reporting requirement in the process to access the TFSP. We have seen how despite multiple reports to multiple officials, former Provost Philbert ascended to the position of provost after sexually harassing grad workers and employees for decades. Despite multiple reports to multiple officials, University of Michigan doctor Robert Anderson perpetrated thousands of sexual assaults against his patients during his 37-year career at the University. Despite enough evidence for the world’s largest computing society to ban Professor Walter Lasecki from its conferences for five years, the University’s investigation found that he hadn’t violated University policy and allowed him to resign. All too often, reporting processes at the University of Michigan fail to deliver justice for survivors or any accountability.
Reporting not only fails to deliver justice to survivors, but it can actually harm and retraumatize them when it becomes mandatory. As experts on harassment and discrimination have shown, there is growing evidence that mandatory reporting policies in fact discourage survivors from reporting sexual misconduct and cause them further harm. Mandatory reporting is a violation of adult autonomy and harms the entire campus community. Requiring it can cause discussions of sexual-, racial- and gender-based misconduct to be silenced and thwarted, and creates barriers to seeking help. Requiring graduate students and workers to talk to ECRT or to Individuals with Reporting Obligations in order to receive supportive measures is not advocating for their safety and wellbeing. ECRT and Title IX offices in general are primarily responsible for investigating reports of sexual misconduct and must remain neutral and impartial. This means that they cannot advocate for survivors, guarantee confidentiality or provide long-term support.
The University’s commitment to mandatory reporting has gone as far as to change the LSA TFSP from stating that “no proof of a harassing or abusing relationship will be necessary for transitional support” and that “the meeting does not constitute a formal report of harassment nor is it an opportunity to seek counseling and conflict resolution.” Currently, the program states that “any type of harassment, including racial, and sexual and gender-based harassment should be reported to the Equity, Civil Rights and Title IX Office (ECRT).” The change in the application process betrays the premise on which the program was conceived: the recommendations of the LSA Preventing Sexual Harassment Working Group toward advancing a culture of respect, inclusion and safety.
The TFSP should work as a supportive measure, providing grad workers with a way out of abusive situations, not as a way to coerce workers into reporting. Reporting systems would not immediately solve these problems. These systems have frequently failed at the University, Stephenson being a prime example. Reporting systems could even make the problem worse by triggering retaliation, leading to an atmosphere of fear and silence. Students are less likely to cooperate with investigations when their disclosure was compelled, leading to less successful investigations and unsafe campuses.
Harassment and discrimination are incredibly widespread problems at the University, yet AHR’s actions show that they have no interest in making sure all graduate student workers are protected. Forty percent of women and 24% of men reported having been sexually harassed while a student at the University, more than one-third of Black and Latinx graduate students reported racial discrimination and more than one-fifth of LGBTQ+ students reported experiencing discrimination or harassment. Not only does AHR want to impose mandatory reporting for these victims, but they are also refusing to extend the TFSP to graduate workers beyond the narrow slice that are working as Graduate Student Instructors. Harassment is not restricted to the time frame of a contract, so neither should the mechanisms for its prevention. Under AHR’s current proposal, Stephenson’s survivors wouldn’t have been covered. Nothing prevents AHR from extending this protection to all graduate workers — that is, except their own intransigence. It should be shocking to all of us, given the innumerable high profile incidents in the past decade, that University administrators would want to leave even a single graduate worker unprotected. They are enabling harassment.
But enough is enough. On Friday, June 23, while discussing TFSP, GEO members walked out of bargaining. AHR said that addressing harassment can only be done in the context of a “larger conversation.” They are wrong. These contract negotiations are the only venue for this conversation because it’s the only place where graduate workers have the power to stand up to the University’s administration. As the harassment and abuse crisis shows, when we’re in the lab, doing fieldwork or the classroom, we’re at the mercy of our supervisors. It’s only when we’re standing together in our union that we have the power to fight back and demand real change. We refuse to be harassed and abused any longer. We are fighting to change the power dynamics of the University, and we will not stop until we’ve done it.
Garima Singh is the Feminist Caucus Chair for the Graduate Employees’ Organization. She can be contacted at feministchair@geo3550.org.