Liliana Cardona Marín
The students of various programs and faculties of the Technological University of Pereira (UTP) had their glass filled with professors who want to be smart with them. For this reason, yesterday morning they held a sit-in at the main entrance of the Institution in order to make the situation visible and that the facts no longer become part of the landscape and that those in charge of the solution look the other way.
The voices of the complainants
Juliana Sarta, representative of the Industrial Engineering students, referred to what is happening and also to what she experienced personally: “the truth is that different issues of bullying have been presenting at the University for a long time. In my case it is from a teacher who doesn’t even teach me, he had a physical behavior that made me feel uncomfortable, when he asked me for a favor but invaded my personal space, he did not maintain that minimum distance that there is normally between two people” .
The student asked the teacher in the most cordial way possible to please give her permission, because she felt uncomfortable, but she assures that her reaction was terrible and that she literally arrogantly replied: “Am I making you uncomfortable? If that’s the case, I’m leaving”, she says that he replied: “I’m doing him a favor and I simply asked him for permission”, to which the man said again: “It seems that he was harassing you, did you say that? ”, the student refers that when one realizes that it bothers another person, they say an apology.
“After that I kept finding comments from other people who told me: Juli is happening to me with X teacher and coincidentally it was the same one. That is why we need to do something through this sit-in, we want to leave the message of non-conformity and awareness as to what we should denounce, because what the University entities are going to do is review the complaints that there are, and if there aren’t? ”.
Another student, who preferred to keep her identity confidential, said she had had the same problem with the same teacher: “he referred to me as my mommy and I had to put up with it for a whole semester, he constantly licked my legs and I He would call on a Friday or Saturday night with the excuse that it was for work on the subject and he would ask me if we were going to have a coffee, that he could take me home or if we were going to have lunch. He talked to me about his personal life, wherever he saw me he was looking for a way to get closer and that’s why at one point I decided to stop going to classes, because of the disgust of being close to that person, I can’t tolerate it. I at least have a strong character and it scares and impotence me to think that there is a bald person in this situation and that she is very afraid to say what is happening to her ”.
Messages that denote the despair that women are reaching.By the University
From the Vice-Rector for Social Responsibility and the Gender Perspective Strategy, which includes the topic of Gender Violence, Mr. Pablo César Tabares attended, who explained: “It is very important to clarify to the entire university community and the general public that the UTP , has developed a strategy on gender-based violence. The group of young people who are demonstrating today have identified some fact and are in the campaign to officially denounce it.
Tabares clarified that the University has a resolution, 1769 of 2012, which regulates the formation of the Gender-Based Violence Committee. “With it, some people are commissioned to receive each of these complaints and create the route for the complaints to come to a happy end. The University, as the regulation of the Ministry of Education says, has a scope, we have limits and from there it passes to the external sector that is the Police, Ombudsman or Prosecutor’s Office”.
Regarding the students’ complaint that the cases do not go through the mail, he replied that “It is not true, all the complaints are really dealt with. I invite you to report and not only by mail, you can approach the PAI professionals of each faculty, in the Integral Health Area or in the General Secretariat and you do not have to be the victim directly, you can be a witness, we attend to any type of complaint.
other voices
“We want you to feel, for our voice to be heard in this regard, not to be overlooked, because you see a lot that is minimized. It is not normal for us as women to feel insecure with our teachers”, reported the representatives of the Gender Committee of the Literature program.
Professor Jorge Ossa, teaches in the Faculty of Basic Sciences and knows the complainants, because he has taught them mathematics, he has been at the UTP for 18 years and reported that: “I always make students aware of defending themselves from any aggression, because there are teachers who They bully, they treat women and men badly. Some of them told me what happens with various Industrial Engineering professors, who harass them, but the Institution never has clear paths to address these problems, an action that tends to preserve the integrity of the student is never carried out and, on the contrary, these complaints they can even be reversed”.
“Harassment is something that has been seen in all faculties, there are program directors who have complaints of harassment, directors of master’s degrees, it is something that has been seen not only with students, but with teachers, cafeteria workers, security guards, it is generalized. The route is built but it is very new and it is not punitive, nothing is achieved and nothing is done”, commented Estefanía Gutiérrez, student representative of Bienestar.
care path
1.Entry through the mail [email protected] 2.Risk assessment with psychological or medical monitoring 3.Attention and referral 4.Follow-up.