Sexual-harassment scourge worth more than a soundbite

The last thing all women want to hear about is yet another sexual harassment case in a university. The molestation charge against a lecturer at Ubon Ratchathani University was made less than two months after a similar case at Thammasat University.

How such news is interpreted depends on the feelings one has towards an opposite-sex lecturer.

If you were a female student, you wouldn't want to trust any of your male lecturers. Life would be tougher for decent male lecturers too, as many students would no longer look at them in the same way.

If you were a parent, you might have to tell your child that it is quite okay to get a bad grade and to never go into a lecturer's room to beg for better marks.

It would be even worse for victims. Many keep quiet and spend the rest of their lives with the trauma. They are far too shy to report to authorities. This kind of nightmare is bad enough for these silent victims, so bad that they don't even bother to repeat it even to seek justice for themselves.

The surveillance of lecturer's offices may help the victims, but it is courage that one needs in order to file a case. The two students at Ubon Ratchathani and Thammasat universities are the brave ones; they were not discouraged by the legal procedures and consequences.

To many victims, reporting the incident would have been like reviewing a tape that records all nightmares that remain like bleeding wounds in their minds.

I couldn't agree more with Ubon Ratchathani University's President Prakob Wirojanagud as he praised the student, and called her a defender of women's rights. What was irritating was when he mentioned that the university would have to be thorough when it screened the applications of lecturers to protect the institute's reputation. A question here: how can one spot a potential sexual offender from a CV or a job interview?

Such a statement merely echoes the notions of many heads of education institutions that put the reputations of their institutes before their duty to protect powerless young females.

What may be a light at the end of the tunnel is an idea brought up by the Higher Education Commission to allow students to submit their cases via the Internet. This would kill two birds with one stone: students would feel safer filing a complaint on a website, and the teacher doing the harassing would not be aware of the investigation.

According to a seminar last month on sexual harassment, at least three cases of sexual harassment of students by lecturers at Thammasat University have been reported over the past decade. This figure could have been higher if Internet submission of complaints had been an option.

Another good proposed measure that may scare future culprits came from Suan Dusit University: a lifetime teaching ban for those guilty of such behaviour. However, there should be a more effective mechanism in place to deal with sexual harassment cases, especially when it can come in other forms, including verbal harassment.

The higher education commission may consider a precautionary measure: students - both male and female - should be educated on this issue.

Sexual harassment is not a new scourge, but it is one that has not been taken seriously enough. The situation is even worse when you look at news headlines each day. The sexual harassment allegation levelled against Kamthorn Cherdchukiat, an engineering lecturer at Thammasat University, was big news at first, but later disappeared from the media.

This is so out of proportion when compared to the news on another Thammasat student, Chotiros Suriyawong, who wore a revealing dress to the Subhanahongsa Awards in 2007 and sparked a social controversy. The media all paid attention to the news and so did the university, which held a conference and had Chotiros apologise for her fashion choice.

The latest case at Ubon Ratchathani University will soon fade away from the attention of news outlets and the public and society will forget that sexual harassment still exists. How I wish the media would help to amplify this issue in the same way they did the Chotiros controversy or the pregnancy of Kathaleeya McIntosh. I'd love to see news of sexual harassment cases, with positive angles addressing how we can tackle this problem, amplified throughout society for the sake of victims and women as a whole.

One problem is that the plights of the victims are not heard and women thus lack the necessary information to learn and adopt precautionary measures to protect themselves. If society and the media have time to spare to follow up on the break-up and reunion of Dome (Pakorn Lum) and Ploy (Cherman Boonyasak) or the Casanova-like behaviour of Kanchai "Num" Kamnerdploy, why don't they spare their time and resources on something that really benefits women as a whole?

Victims of sexual harassment are largely invisible, as they prefer not to report to authorities. We need more courageous women like these two students. Every party should get involved, for we can't really know where the next will be or who the next victim will be. It could be your niece, daughter, sister, friend or even yourself.