Protecting female varsity students from sexual harassment on campus

Unfortunately, incidents of sexual harassment still prevail in our universities. These incidents remind us that there is apparently no safe place for female students, not even in their own campuses. Five young people allegedly assaulted a female student physically and sexually inside the campus of Chittagong University a week ago. They also captured the incident on video and threatened her to make it viral. It has been alleged that all of them are students of the university and members of the ruling party's student wing. But even after several days of such a serious incident, the university administration could not identify the people involved.

This is not the first incident of sexual harassment in Chittagong University. Before this, on September 21 last year, there were allegations of harassment of two female students by four members of that particular student group. The authorities could not take any action against them then. Ironically, the university has a Sexual Harassment Prevention Cell. No action has been taken against any of the complaints lodged with this cell so far. The authorities are not able to take necessary measures to prevent sexual harassment. On the contrary, they banned female students from entering the residential hall after 10:00pm. By imposing this ban, they have put the female students in greater danger because this restriction means that the authorities are not going to take responsibility if a female student is sexually assaulted after the mentioned period.

We earnestly hope that our universities will be free of sexual harassment some day. And it is not impossible if the authorities take action as required.

Ashikujaman Syed,

Research Assistant,

Bioinformatics Research Lab,

Center for Research Innovation and Development (CRID),

syedashikujaman@yahoo.com