I honestly thought that after my recent visit to Carleton University I would not get a chance to write about them ever again. Not so, however. Feministing reports that the school's administration just came out with an extremely offensive statement about a student who has been a victim of assault on campus: "Carleton University is being sued by an assault victim who says the school failed to have adequate security measures in the building where she was attacked. In response, Carleton has said that the student didn't keep a "proper lookout" for her own safety and should have locked the door to the lab where she was working." It is incredible that a university in Ontario, of all places, would engage in such blatant attempt at victim-blaming.
As I have discussed in an above-quoted post, Carleton is trying to squeeze out of the university's curriculum all courses that would give the students the skills necessary to analyze, question, and change ideological conditioning. They strive to create mindless little drones who would perform their duties and shut-up. In Carleton administration's ideal world, it would be possible to blame the victim of an assault for "provoking" the crime and get away with it.
But they can't get away with it. I am going to write a letter on my departmental letterhead protesting this disgusting statement to Carleton University's President and Vice-Chancellor. For those who want to do the same, here is the address where we can send our protests. I believe that doing this in a letter format will be more productive than sending an e-mail.
Dr. Roseann O’Reilly Runte
President and Vice-Chancellor
Carleton University
1125 Colonel By Drive
Ottawa, ON, Canada K1S 5B6
P.S. Here you can find the description of the attack and Carleton U's unconscionable response. I have to warn you, though, that the details are painful to read.
15 comments:
While Carleton is very much at fault for the victim-blaming statements, I think it's a serious overreach to say that they want to "create mindless little drones". As a student in Carleton, I've found a lot of my courses, including law, history and women's and gender studies, did challenge existing systems of belief.
I'm not saying they managed to sqqueeze out all of such courses yet. But that seems to be the ultimate goal.
This is unfreakingbelievable. :-(
Good idea on the letter of protest. We need to let these people know this is NOT ACCEPTABLE.
Come on, guys, Clarissa is from McGill and of course she considers all the rest of Canadian schools bad. I'm so tired of this McGill and UofT snobbery. :-( :-( :-(
Oh, get off of it. I'm not even sure where McGill is (pardon my ignorance) and I'm still incensed by this. What kind of snob does this make me in your world?
I so wish I could say that the destruction of the Humanities could never happen at McGill or UofT or any other school. But that's unfortunately not true. The push to destroy the Humanities has been wide-spread and aggressive. This is not an exclusively Carleton's problem. It's just that this tendency is more blatant at Carleton.
The result of critically oriented courses being pushed off the curriculum is that the administration feels free to push any kind of patriarchal, conservative and illiberal agenda. The response of the students at Carleton U shows they haven't succeeded as well as they thought. Yet.
Oh, I'll say something very politically incorrect now... I am wondering why nobody is questioning why is the victim of attack suing the university in the first place? Does anybody really sincerely believe that university can and should guarantee 100% security to anybody? Even the police cannot guarantee 100% security...
This is one thing which disgusts me in North America - people are so litigation happy, and sue not the real culprits, but whomever has the money. When I broke the leg in the lab it did not occur to me to sue the university for not creating different working conditions. Because conditions were reasonable. There are optical tables in optical labs, you know... But boy, how scared they all were, and how relieved they were that I did not sue. Because the good lawyer would rob the shit out of them for not having a policy for climbing onto optical tables if such climbing is required to do the job, and for not training everybody to do it.
Please note, I do see the difference between my own carelessness and being a victim of an unprovoked attack. I am not blaming the victim for the attack, I am blaming her for trying to redistribute the responsibility from the attacker to the university.
V.
I understand what you are saying, V. I'm also against frivolous suing. But I have been on Carleton U's campus very recently. I spent 3nights there and I haven't seen any security ONCE. The place is located pretty far away from everything. The campus is pretty poorly lit at night. Believe me, it gets scary as soon as the sun goes down. If something happens to you, you have no idea where to go or whom to call. And that was during a major conference. I was genuinely scared every single day.
Other schools I have visited or attended take measures to guarantee people's security on campus. Carleton does nothing and will do nothing until they suffer through several lawsuits.
I'm sorry to hear that you broke your leg, though. :-(
I've always felt safe at Carleton, even at night. The university actually does a lot in terms of security, especially after the sexual assault discussed here. I'm sorry you felt unsafe, but the claims that Carleton does nothing to guarantee security are wrong.
Maybe they removed the security for our conference. That's the only explanation I have for the difference in our experiences.
I wonder if people would feel the same about Carleton, suing and safety on campus if this horrible assault happened to them.
I attended Carleton, and I don't think the security situation at night is as bad as you make it seem. When I attended in the late 1990s, I volunteered for Foot Patrol - you could call for two escorts, one male and one female, to walk you across campus. I'm pretty sure they still have this program.
I don't think Carleton is engaged in victim-blaming, either. The nature and wording of the victim's lawsuit was predicated on the university's responsibility to provide a safe environment, and the university's legal response dealt with the same issues. If the university did not respond to lawsuits in a manner that protected its own interests, the students and staff would suffer - money that could be used to fund education would be used for paying off lawsuits. (I am not trying to judge the merits of this particular lawsuit, just saying that the university has a duty to its financial stakeholders - including students - to ensure that it is not paying out millions of dollars unnecessarily.)
While I would also agree that there is a problem with the death of the humanities in North American universities, it does seem a bit snobbish for someone from a university that receives millions of dollars in alumni donations (McGill) to criticize a publicly-funded university that relies on tuition, government funding, and (unfortunately) corporate sponsorship for its operating funds. I would have gone to McGill if I could have (I was accepted) but I couldn't afford to go away to university, so I did the best I could at Carleton. It might be time to inspect your own educational privileges before criticizing the educational choices that other people make. Critical thinking is not solely the province of the humanities, either; the ability to analyze and deconstruct BS was greatly valued in the Physics department, I assure you.
First of all, I want to clarify the confusion about my relationship to McGill. I left that school 6 years ago and am in no way affiliated to it now. I've worked at two other schools (Ivy League) since then and my criticism of them is nothing if not immense. At this point in my life, I'm starting to work at a state school in the US.
Second of all, I take exception to the suggestions of my "educational privileges". I don't know what those are in relation to me. I didn't criticize anybody's "educational choices", although I reserve the right to do so if I feel so inclined. Feel free to criticize mine. There is no bigger critic of my own choice to attend Yale as me.
As to the Carleton's "duty" to spend its money on its students, please don't make me laugh. Carleton is a big joke in the academic community for destroying their language and literature programs completely. Anybody who says that this was done for the students' benefit, is beyond misguided.
As an alumnus of Carleton, you would do your school a much greater service by criticizing its bad choices than by defending everything they do.
"Privilege" has turned (together with "tolerance" and "community") into one of those words people use to bully others into not having opinions. Very annoying.
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