Deviant teachers, hapless students

It sounds so distressing! Of all places in this ill-starred country, it is the University of Dhaka which has finally been made to wear the stigma of sexual harassment -- following unabated recurrence of this abhorrent incident. The most disgusting aspect of the matter is female learners are finding themselves to be hapless victims of their revered teachers. The malady has long plagued various departments of the institution.  But of late, it has snowballed to such an extent that the university syndicate had to wield its usually dormant disciplinary power.
The latest of this filthy practice has taken place at the university's Department of Theatre and Performance Studies. It involves none other than the chairman of the department. The students of the department have for some time been demonstrating against the alleged involvement of the teacher in a case of sexual harassment.
The essence of the news lies not only in the said harassment at a department of Dhaka University (DU). The disturbing part of the matter is the university authorities have reconstituted the committee against sexual harassment. Comprising mostly teachers and led by DU Pro-Vice Chancellor (Academic), the new 5-member committee replaces the body formed earlier. It becomes apparent that the previous committee could not succeed in reining in the deviant teachers. Teachers with moral deviation! My eye! But one has to believe it. It's in news.  Earlier, the university authorities 'temporarily' terminated the chairman of the Theatre and Performance Studies Department. All these steps have been approved by the DU syndicate.
That a teacher at a university has been fired by the authorities concerned for sexually harassing a female student fills one with incredulity. We have to keep in mind that the country is Bangladesh, which is still comfortably nestled in the warmth of time-honoured values. A male university teacher casting dirty look at his students was once beyond the furthest stretch of one's imagination.
During this writer's days at Dhaka University in the early to mid-seventies, male students used to mix freely with their female classmates or batch-mates. Apart from a few isolated incidents of 'violent crush', the relationship between male-female students was normal and healthy -- based on pure friendship. It continues still today. Against this backdrop, male teachers on the prowl for their female students would have stunned the campus at that time.
In his memoirs of Dhaka University, Poet Buddhadev Bose says that the male students at the institution in the decade of twenties were completely barred from talking to their female classmates. The young ladies, with their eyes downcast, used to be 'chaperoned' by their dour-looking teachers, whom they silently followed to the classroom, the segregated common room and back, and then to the horse-drawn carriage home.
The practice began relaxing, in phases though, only in the early part of the sixties. Nowadays, female students are seen freely chatting with their male classmates or other youths until long after evening.  Yet the respect for female classmates or batch-mates on the part of the young men remains more or less intact.
Given this picture that now prevails on the DU campus, the indecent behaviour of some teachers with their female students is painful. Maybe, many students pass through this ordeal-like harassment silently. They do not disclose their nightmarish and traumatic experience to others for fear of reprisal by the teachers concerned. These black sheep must be identified; and driven out of all educational institutions including the other public universities, and colleges.     

shihabskr@ymail.com