Teach students to come out and openly speak about such incidents, as majority of the students choose to remain silent
LAHORE: How appropriate and empowering would it be if the students are actually directed to come forward and complain about inappropriate or wrongful treatment rather than being told to keep a measured distance of six-inches while interacting with their fellow batch mates from the opposite gender?
But that wasn’t the case in Bahria University as it went forth imposing the latter and asked its students to maintain the ‘disciplinary’ six-inch distance. But such directives do little to control and stop incidents from happening and the recent case of harassment that was experienced by female students of Bahria College, Islamabad, is proof.
Over 80 female students were harassed verbally and physically at the hands of an invigilator during their board examination a few days ago.
Lately, co-education has been deemed the root cause of the problem of harassment and many have suggested segregating male and female students as a solution. However, the Bahria College incident lends credence to the fact that segregation is indeed not the solution.
What should be done is to teach students to come out and openly speak about such incidents, as majority of the students choose to remain silent, fearing severe consequences such as failing their exam in this very case.
Sameen Akram
Published in The Express Tribune, May 31st, 2018.
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