During the first few weeks of classes, it is not unusual for a professor to say that students are welcome to go to office hours or arrange to meet with them if they have any questions or concerns. I thought I would be one of these students who eagerly took advantage of this offer, but now I am crippled with anxiety by the mere thought of going to office hours. This is because, before I transferred to The New School, the first time I ever met with a professor alone transpired into over a year of sexual assault, serial sexual harassment and psychological abuse.
Discussions around sexualized and gendered violence, although extremely important, trigger me. There are times when I want to shut out all conversations around Brett Kavanaugh’s U.S. Supreme Court confirmation and the revisions of The New School’s own Title IX policy, as I am reminded of my own traumatic experience, which I would rather forget. But these conversations need to happen regardless.
Besides constantly hearing these conversations, falling behind at school renewed a lot of my anxiety. I want to and have been meeting with my professors while I make up work, but this is usually followed by me having a panic attack in my room. I am sure that if my professors knew my situation they would be fine arranging to meet over a platform like Zoom or Skype, but I do not want to explain my trauma to each professor, as it is emotionally taxing.
Like most people who find themselves in abusive situations, I never pictured that it would happen to me. I was just released from the hospital, after staying more than a week with vasculitis, during my first semester of university. This was in the midst of midterm season, and while I should have been more concerned about my health, my grades were my top concern. I had a midterm scheduled in an advanced French course just a few days after I was released, so I thought meeting with my professor would be the best route to finding a solution.
Instead of helping me, my professor forced himself on me, and I cannot recount much of what happened after, even if I wanted to, because I was in such a state of shock. I would like to say that this assault was an isolated situation, but it was not. Over the next year, he would wink at me, even while in front of the class, put his hand on my back and molest my breasts. While this was horrible, the psychological abuse felt worse at times. He would, on a whim, raise or lower my grade and threaten to not grant my transfer credits– he was the transfer credit coordinator for my program–unless I went to his office hours alone.
My abusive relationship, if you could call it that, with my professor ended when I left my previous institution due to my search for better medical care. While this did not happen at The New School, it almost doesn’t matter to me. I still have to deal with being triggered here because my trauma has made me fearful of gendered and sexualized violence in any university setting.
What happened to me should not have happened, but it did, and I did not do anything to deserve it. Schools will likely continue to be a place where I relive trauma, but we need to stop violence in academic settings. The biggest concern that a student should have is whether or not they need to pull an all-nighter, not whether their professor is a predator.
Illustration by Olivia Heller