It has become so ordinary
October 26, 2023 12:21 AM Subscribe
Over the last two decades, US colleges and universities have emphasized policies to protect students. But some within academia are now calling on institutions to do more to defend professors and other staff, who are also commonly targeted. Today’s academics have become public figures online and in the media in a climate of rising political polarization, racism and misogyny, and attacks on intellectualism. from The Lurker: It didn’t matter if she knew you — if you were a professor and Asian American, you were a potential target. [CW: stalking, racism, academics]
It seems really strange that no-one can or will do anything about this. This stalker seems seriously unhinged.
Over time, I've had a few stalkers and I have one now, but today I feel there is enough awareness that I can get help from the police. Years ago, it was different. The police would laugh off the threats I was getting, though they did actually go out to visit a woman who was threatening me, which helped immediately.
posted by mumimor at 2:57 AM on October 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
Over time, I've had a few stalkers and I have one now, but today I feel there is enough awareness that I can get help from the police. Years ago, it was different. The police would laugh off the threats I was getting, though they did actually go out to visit a woman who was threatening me, which helped immediately.
posted by mumimor at 2:57 AM on October 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
It seems really strange that no-one can or will do anything about this. This stalker seems seriously unhinged.
It's bizarre how slowly the sorts of authorities who handle public order are to respond to anything which is on the Internet. I feel like it was upwards of a decade ago that the medium for harassment was shifting from mail and telephone (which police have historically recognized as "threatening") to social media. And when it was first becoming an issue, all sorts of authorities expressed perplexity about how stuff on the Internet wasn't "real". But it's been a long time, and the Internet isn't some sort of exotic locale frequented only by hardcore nerds and incomprehensible to the general public any more. But as far as police and other authorities are concerned, it might as well be and they haven't really adapted at all on this issue.
posted by jackbishop at 3:37 AM on October 26, 2023 [28 favorites]
It's bizarre how slowly the sorts of authorities who handle public order are to respond to anything which is on the Internet. I feel like it was upwards of a decade ago that the medium for harassment was shifting from mail and telephone (which police have historically recognized as "threatening") to social media. And when it was first becoming an issue, all sorts of authorities expressed perplexity about how stuff on the Internet wasn't "real". But it's been a long time, and the Internet isn't some sort of exotic locale frequented only by hardcore nerds and incomprehensible to the general public any more. But as far as police and other authorities are concerned, it might as well be and they haven't really adapted at all on this issue.
posted by jackbishop at 3:37 AM on October 26, 2023 [28 favorites]
They fully recognize the internet as real when it’s the medium that people threaten (or just criticize) them on.
posted by eviemath at 3:46 AM on October 26, 2023 [44 favorites]
posted by eviemath at 3:46 AM on October 26, 2023 [44 favorites]
It's bizarre how slowly the sorts of authorities who handle public order are to respond to anything which is on the Internet
Police budgets depend on police not actually doing most of their jobs - why would police budgets go up if crime was going down? - so ignoring crimes that afflict anyone they don’t like - women, minorities, academics, etc - serves two convenient purposes in that context.
posted by mhoye at 4:53 AM on October 26, 2023 [22 favorites]
Police budgets depend on police not actually doing most of their jobs - why would police budgets go up if crime was going down? - so ignoring crimes that afflict anyone they don’t like - women, minorities, academics, etc - serves two convenient purposes in that context.
posted by mhoye at 4:53 AM on October 26, 2023 [22 favorites]
One thing that can help in some cases is being in a strong union. (The notable exception being when the person doing the harassment is a fellow faculty or union member.)
posted by eviemath at 4:57 AM on October 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by eviemath at 4:57 AM on October 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
The Internet poses very real logistical problems for local police. Unlike the other crimes they deal with, the odds are good that the stalker/harasser is somewhere out of their jurisdiction — which means joint investigations, sometimes with departments in entire different states. It requires bureaucracy,
In short it’s a pain in the ass, and humans being who they are the police find other things to concern themselves with.
(Needless to say the situation is even worse internationally)
All of that is of course piled on to the fact that the victims tend to be people who get lower priority to begin with.
It’s not a good situation.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 5:44 AM on October 26, 2023 [14 favorites]
In short it’s a pain in the ass, and humans being who they are the police find other things to concern themselves with.
(Needless to say the situation is even worse internationally)
All of that is of course piled on to the fact that the victims tend to be people who get lower priority to begin with.
It’s not a good situation.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 5:44 AM on October 26, 2023 [14 favorites]
It seems really strange that no-one can or will do anything about this.
Who should be doing what?
The police could send an officer to caution this person - but it is more than possible they already did. It's also possible that some of the stalker's accusations that Umamaheswar threatened her are the result of various officials talking to the stalker and telling her to stop the harassment.
The police could arrest her and charge her with a hate crime, but where it was all talk they would certainly not incarcerate her. Theoretically they are trying to hold fewer people in jail and trying to only do so for the most serious crimes. Holding her instead of a shoplifter who actually committed a property crime is likely to arguably be a poor use of police resources. This is just a person ranting at a keyboard. It's a low priority for them.
Chances are arresting her, let alone prosecuting her, would require an expensive, time consuming police investigation. They can't use any of the evidence her victims collected in case the victims falsified it, so they would have to investigate it themselves, long after years of the original data has been deleted. I imagine even if Xitter receives a court order requesting the data they don't have the staff to comply. We have no way of knowing if Xitter has received a dozen such requests from law enforcement already. They might have.
Meanwhile she has moved to posting and then deleting shortly after. This could be the result of some official confronting her with a print out of the things she posted. Now getting evidence to prosecute is really hard.
She's in a different state than many of her victims so they likely consider her at low risk of escalating to actual violence. She doesn't have a slew of followers, so they probably consider the risk of someone else acting on the accusations to be small. She talks about rape and stepping on fingers and punching someone in the face, but there's not a lot of specific, concrete, weapons based threats that a small woman could plausibly carry out. "I am going to rent a car and drive to her house. I've got my cousin's gun," would likely get the attention of the authorities, where fantasies about people dangling by their fingertips does not.
Back in the day (the fifties through the seventies), police often used violent intimidation in cases like this. It was an cheap, quick, extralegal way to put pressure on someone whose behavior was antisocial. Needless to say it was misused, and likely frequently ineffective. When done to mentally ill people, as it often was, it frequently led to them being too frightened to leave their home. Of course nowadays a lot of stalking behaviour is done by people who don't get out much and who live on the internet. Frightening the stalker this way is not going to keep her away from the internet.
Similarly the old practice the police had of taking someone like the stalker to a mental hospital and dumping them there with instructions to the staff to admit them is not one that they can employ nowadays. She'd be released within four hours, or the moment she asked to be released and told the staff she didn't want to talk to them.
I suspect there is basically nothing legal or practical or effective that anybody can do, or they would have already done it.
posted by Jane the Brown at 5:45 AM on October 26, 2023 [13 favorites]
Who should be doing what?
The police could send an officer to caution this person - but it is more than possible they already did. It's also possible that some of the stalker's accusations that Umamaheswar threatened her are the result of various officials talking to the stalker and telling her to stop the harassment.
The police could arrest her and charge her with a hate crime, but where it was all talk they would certainly not incarcerate her. Theoretically they are trying to hold fewer people in jail and trying to only do so for the most serious crimes. Holding her instead of a shoplifter who actually committed a property crime is likely to arguably be a poor use of police resources. This is just a person ranting at a keyboard. It's a low priority for them.
Chances are arresting her, let alone prosecuting her, would require an expensive, time consuming police investigation. They can't use any of the evidence her victims collected in case the victims falsified it, so they would have to investigate it themselves, long after years of the original data has been deleted. I imagine even if Xitter receives a court order requesting the data they don't have the staff to comply. We have no way of knowing if Xitter has received a dozen such requests from law enforcement already. They might have.
Meanwhile she has moved to posting and then deleting shortly after. This could be the result of some official confronting her with a print out of the things she posted. Now getting evidence to prosecute is really hard.
She's in a different state than many of her victims so they likely consider her at low risk of escalating to actual violence. She doesn't have a slew of followers, so they probably consider the risk of someone else acting on the accusations to be small. She talks about rape and stepping on fingers and punching someone in the face, but there's not a lot of specific, concrete, weapons based threats that a small woman could plausibly carry out. "I am going to rent a car and drive to her house. I've got my cousin's gun," would likely get the attention of the authorities, where fantasies about people dangling by their fingertips does not.
Back in the day (the fifties through the seventies), police often used violent intimidation in cases like this. It was an cheap, quick, extralegal way to put pressure on someone whose behavior was antisocial. Needless to say it was misused, and likely frequently ineffective. When done to mentally ill people, as it often was, it frequently led to them being too frightened to leave their home. Of course nowadays a lot of stalking behaviour is done by people who don't get out much and who live on the internet. Frightening the stalker this way is not going to keep her away from the internet.
Similarly the old practice the police had of taking someone like the stalker to a mental hospital and dumping them there with instructions to the staff to admit them is not one that they can employ nowadays. She'd be released within four hours, or the moment she asked to be released and told the staff she didn't want to talk to them.
I suspect there is basically nothing legal or practical or effective that anybody can do, or they would have already done it.
posted by Jane the Brown at 5:45 AM on October 26, 2023 [13 favorites]
SCSU police mostly hand out parking tickets and roll up on students canoodling in cars.
Re: the article itself, the interviews were done about a year ago. Is that a typical publishing timeline? (Just curious)
posted by Baethan at 5:50 AM on October 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
Re: the article itself, the interviews were done about a year ago. Is that a typical publishing timeline? (Just curious)
posted by Baethan at 5:50 AM on October 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
Holding her instead of a shoplifter who actually committed a property crime is likely to arguably be a poor use of police resources.
This particular point can and should be addressed. The relative worth of someone being forced to live in fear vs. some goods getting pocketed needs to be rebalanced. One detects the icy hand of capitalism in the current situation, where money is being placed before people.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:09 AM on October 26, 2023 [38 favorites]
This particular point can and should be addressed. The relative worth of someone being forced to live in fear vs. some goods getting pocketed needs to be rebalanced. One detects the icy hand of capitalism in the current situation, where money is being placed before people.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:09 AM on October 26, 2023 [38 favorites]
Who should be doing what?
…
I suspect there is basically nothing legal or practical or effective that anybody can do, or they would have already done it.
The husband in the article, who is also one of the stalking victims, is a lawyer and clearly states the variety of laws that the person seems to have broken (with hate motivation being a compounding factor), as well as some of what law enforcement could be doing but hasn’t.
posted by eviemath at 6:15 AM on October 26, 2023 [31 favorites]
…
I suspect there is basically nothing legal or practical or effective that anybody can do, or they would have already done it.
The husband in the article, who is also one of the stalking victims, is a lawyer and clearly states the variety of laws that the person seems to have broken (with hate motivation being a compounding factor), as well as some of what law enforcement could be doing but hasn’t.
posted by eviemath at 6:15 AM on October 26, 2023 [31 favorites]
Any women’s shelter will tell you how much police fail to use tools that are available to them even in severe and clear-cut cases where the perpetrator has escalated beyond words (such as the complaints sent to employers detailed in this article, but in all too many domestic violence cases this includes a lack of police action after actual violence, breach of restraining order, breaking and entering the victim’s residence, etc.).
posted by eviemath at 6:20 AM on October 26, 2023 [25 favorites]
posted by eviemath at 6:20 AM on October 26, 2023 [25 favorites]
The article also discusses how the focus is often on catching and punishing perpetrators, with folks just kind of throwing their hands up when challenges arise in doing that. But that lots more could be done to support victims of stalking and harassment, especially by universities (or other employers). One helpful support would be having someone uninvolved tasked with documenting the social media harassment so that none of the stalking victims have to put themselves through that, and otherwise having institutional support in following up on options for keeping themselves safe through the legal or criminal justice system. Ensuring that job performance evaluations take into account the stress something like this causes, so that people’s careers are penalized for randomly being the victim of a harassment campaign is also very important. It doesn’t sound like any of their current institutions have done much planning or accommodations for the physical safety on campus of the faculty being harassed by someone who is openly and frequently calling for violence against them, either.
posted by eviemath at 6:30 AM on October 26, 2023 [19 favorites]
posted by eviemath at 6:30 AM on October 26, 2023 [19 favorites]
I had an 'academic stalker' for a little while - someone who wanted to "collaborate on research" in a way that made no sense, and which I politely put off while I was finishing my master's degree. And after a while, he started emailing my professors, the IRB that approved my research, and then, my employer (who was not involved with my research!) - which just made me wonder if I was going to come home and find him at my house.
One of the most unsettling things about stuff on the stalking spectrum is that there can be all of this behavior that can appear semi-benign when explained, can be perhaps waved away or diminished, but to the recipient/target, there's a clear pattern of escalation and boundary-breaking that just makes you wonder, what's the next boundary the stalker will break?
posted by entropone at 6:35 AM on October 26, 2023 [24 favorites]
One of the most unsettling things about stuff on the stalking spectrum is that there can be all of this behavior that can appear semi-benign when explained, can be perhaps waved away or diminished, but to the recipient/target, there's a clear pattern of escalation and boundary-breaking that just makes you wonder, what's the next boundary the stalker will break?
posted by entropone at 6:35 AM on October 26, 2023 [24 favorites]
I immediately wondered if it was the same woman banned from Reddit for making increasingly alarming and obsessive posts about her professor. Most of it is gone, but a user copied the text of many deleted posts in the comments. I think that situation happened before the issue in the article though.
Colleges are a perfect storm for mental health issues-- intense pressure, financial issues, substance abuse, young people who may be living on their own for the first time-- and I wonder if the outcomes would have been better with a mechanism for the student to get intensive treatment through the school rather than expulsion/banning. It allowed the school to absolve themselves from liability and tell the prof they were doing something, but did it make the professor safer?
posted by Gable Oak at 6:49 AM on October 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
Colleges are a perfect storm for mental health issues-- intense pressure, financial issues, substance abuse, young people who may be living on their own for the first time-- and I wonder if the outcomes would have been better with a mechanism for the student to get intensive treatment through the school rather than expulsion/banning. It allowed the school to absolve themselves from liability and tell the prof they were doing something, but did it make the professor safer?
posted by Gable Oak at 6:49 AM on October 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
Holding her instead of a shoplifter who actually committed a property crime is likely to arguably be a poor use of police resources
100$ shoplifted is a lot less than the damage being stalked by a racist nutjob causes.
To make this extremely clear, would you rather be paid 100$ and give someone 100$ in goods, or would you rather be paid 100$ and be stalked by a racist nutjob? A mere 100$ (or the value of the shoplifted stuff) makes you (almost entirely) whole for shoplifting, but not for stalking.
Think how big that dollar bill amount has to get before it is even a question.
Crime is a social construct. We pick which anti-social behavior we label as Crime and worthy of physical enforcement by the police. If you steal 1000$ from your employer, it is a Crime and consequences are enforced by violence and the threat of violence. If they short their employees 1000$ in salary, it is treated as a purely Civil matter.
And if someone is a racist nutjob threatening the security of a minority woman...
posted by NotAYakk at 7:10 AM on October 26, 2023 [46 favorites]
100$ shoplifted is a lot less than the damage being stalked by a racist nutjob causes.
To make this extremely clear, would you rather be paid 100$ and give someone 100$ in goods, or would you rather be paid 100$ and be stalked by a racist nutjob? A mere 100$ (or the value of the shoplifted stuff) makes you (almost entirely) whole for shoplifting, but not for stalking.
Think how big that dollar bill amount has to get before it is even a question.
Crime is a social construct. We pick which anti-social behavior we label as Crime and worthy of physical enforcement by the police. If you steal 1000$ from your employer, it is a Crime and consequences are enforced by violence and the threat of violence. If they short their employees 1000$ in salary, it is treated as a purely Civil matter.
And if someone is a racist nutjob threatening the security of a minority woman...
posted by NotAYakk at 7:10 AM on October 26, 2023 [46 favorites]
The other thing that makes academics a perfect target for stalking is the sheer amount of access to faculty; contact information is readily available on department websites, often including office location. This makes sense because teaching and research are collaborative, and other academics and students need to be able to contact them, but it does make one much less safe.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 7:16 AM on October 26, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by rabbitrabbit at 7:16 AM on October 26, 2023 [6 favorites]
Holding her instead of a shoplifter who actually committed a property crime is likely to arguably be a poor use of police resources.
Not sure that someone who is an active threat and nuisance to the people around her is definitely who you want running around, rather than the person who potentially couldn't afford food and got caught taking some.
Stalkers cause real harm to real people. Shoplifting is a line item on a business budget.
posted by Dysk at 7:20 AM on October 26, 2023 [14 favorites]
Not sure that someone who is an active threat and nuisance to the people around her is definitely who you want running around, rather than the person who potentially couldn't afford food and got caught taking some.
Stalkers cause real harm to real people. Shoplifting is a line item on a business budget.
posted by Dysk at 7:20 AM on October 26, 2023 [14 favorites]
This is a terrifying story. For me, it is one more instance where social media is unable to police itself, and the congress refuses to make them accountable. What happened to the people in this article should not happen.
posted by bluesky43 at 7:23 AM on October 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by bluesky43 at 7:23 AM on October 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
This happened here in Tucson last year:
Faculty: Repeated Threats Unheeded, Professor Murdered:
University of Arizona professor Thomas Meixner was shot to death in October, allegedly by an ousted student. A new faculty report says multiple departments were repeatedly warned about the student, but university administrators failed to act effectively.
University of Arizona missed chances to stop professor’s fatal shooting on campus, review finds
posted by MrVisible at 7:30 AM on October 26, 2023 [10 favorites]
Faculty: Repeated Threats Unheeded, Professor Murdered:
University of Arizona professor Thomas Meixner was shot to death in October, allegedly by an ousted student. A new faculty report says multiple departments were repeatedly warned about the student, but university administrators failed to act effectively.
University of Arizona missed chances to stop professor’s fatal shooting on campus, review finds
posted by MrVisible at 7:30 AM on October 26, 2023 [10 favorites]
As a college professor, this article scared the hell out of me. In fact, I couldn't keep reading it. But I did scroll to the end only to discover there's no happy ending. One of my fellow professors, an Asian woman, has been dealing with a student who becomes agitated over seemingly minor things in class but hasn't resorted to physical violence yet. I would like to forward this to her but she's already extremely worried and I don't want to make it worse.
posted by tommasz at 7:49 AM on October 26, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by tommasz at 7:49 AM on October 26, 2023 [8 favorites]
Racism is not rational of course but... sociology. Seems an unexpected place to find an aggressive racist.
And let's say, HYPOTHETICALLY, that we know "S" took classes on race, gender, ethnicity, and....Asian American lit. How does one choose that, and then turn around and spew hate for years?
posted by Baethan at 8:13 AM on October 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
And let's say, HYPOTHETICALLY, that we know "S" took classes on race, gender, ethnicity, and....Asian American lit. How does one choose that, and then turn around and spew hate for years?
posted by Baethan at 8:13 AM on October 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
At U Waterloo in late July, a man targeted a gender studies class and stabbed three people. As the hateful rhetoric spews on both sides of the border, this is not a great time to be so findable if you work at a university.
posted by Kitteh at 8:21 AM on October 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by Kitteh at 8:21 AM on October 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
*cheerful* When I was in Texas, the campus carry gun laws prohibited us from banning guns from our offices unless we agreed that any student who "felt unsafe" without their concealed carry could book a meeting with us somewhere they could have the gun for any time at any reason. For this reason, UT Austin academic and advising offices are filled with slightly desperate signs politely requesting that guns not be brought into the office, because then it's not a requirement.
I find it really comforting up in Minnesota to not have to walk past those signs and remember how helpless I felt about the laws that inspired them anymore. Especially when there was a campus violence event in which a student died--pure miracle that the student who went violent had a knife rather than a gun--that I taught through a year later, in 2017.
I have been teaching since 2012 and I have spent nearly all my career in the serene knowledge that if a student decides to target me with violence, there is jack fucking shit I can do about it to keep myself safe, and very few people who would care. It certainly lends a particular sort of perspective to grade disputes, I can tell you that.
posted by sciatrix at 8:43 AM on October 26, 2023 [21 favorites]
I find it really comforting up in Minnesota to not have to walk past those signs and remember how helpless I felt about the laws that inspired them anymore. Especially when there was a campus violence event in which a student died--pure miracle that the student who went violent had a knife rather than a gun--that I taught through a year later, in 2017.
I have been teaching since 2012 and I have spent nearly all my career in the serene knowledge that if a student decides to target me with violence, there is jack fucking shit I can do about it to keep myself safe, and very few people who would care. It certainly lends a particular sort of perspective to grade disputes, I can tell you that.
posted by sciatrix at 8:43 AM on October 26, 2023 [21 favorites]
Racism is not rational of course but... sociology. Seems an unexpected place to find an aggressive racist.
Not... really. The sociology department in the uni I work for is widely known (on campus, at least) for being steeped in sexism. And anthro had to deal with this person (warning: GRAPHIC and HORRIBLE death threats, including against children).
I teach in a graduate-professional program for a set of fairly low-paid and low-social-status service professions. You wouldn't think such a program would attract scary people... but my colleagues and I definitely have scary-student stories, and when I read apps for admission I definitely have an internal this-could-be-a-scary-person rubric. It's only come into play extremely rarely, but I wouldn't want to do without it.
I'm really grateful to recommenders who tip me off sotto voce that an applicant is potentially scary. Again, super-uncommon, but it's a signal I take extremely seriously.
posted by humbug at 9:29 AM on October 26, 2023 [10 favorites]
Not... really. The sociology department in the uni I work for is widely known (on campus, at least) for being steeped in sexism. And anthro had to deal with this person (warning: GRAPHIC and HORRIBLE death threats, including against children).
I teach in a graduate-professional program for a set of fairly low-paid and low-social-status service professions. You wouldn't think such a program would attract scary people... but my colleagues and I definitely have scary-student stories, and when I read apps for admission I definitely have an internal this-could-be-a-scary-person rubric. It's only come into play extremely rarely, but I wouldn't want to do without it.
I'm really grateful to recommenders who tip me off sotto voce that an applicant is potentially scary. Again, super-uncommon, but it's a signal I take extremely seriously.
posted by humbug at 9:29 AM on October 26, 2023 [10 favorites]
It's bizarre how slowly the sorts of authorities who handle public order are to respond to anything which is on the Internet.
If this "S" person was harassing some local cop or their spouse or child to the same extent, "S" might have disappeared by now. But as it's a bunch of online Asian academics, it's just a big shrug to the cops.
But you would think some national agency could do something. They have jurisdiction. There's plenty of evidence. Ban her from the internet -- all of it.
posted by pracowity at 9:41 AM on October 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
If this "S" person was harassing some local cop or their spouse or child to the same extent, "S" might have disappeared by now. But as it's a bunch of online Asian academics, it's just a big shrug to the cops.
But you would think some national agency could do something. They have jurisdiction. There's plenty of evidence. Ban her from the internet -- all of it.
posted by pracowity at 9:41 AM on October 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
(tommasz, please document the heck out of the interactions your colleague has with the student you mention, let your colleague know that you have their back if anything does escalate, and suggest that they also document all interactions (even if not off) with the student to the extent possible. It’s very helpful to have a paper trail of interactions that ping your “something’s not right here” sense if things do escalate, but most people second-guess themselves and don’t start keeping records until the situation has escalated sufficiently that starting to keep records is difficult due to the mental cost of accumulated stress around the situation.)
posted by eviemath at 9:53 AM on October 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by eviemath at 9:53 AM on October 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
At U Waterloo in late July, a man targeted a gender studies class and stabbed three people. As the hateful rhetoric spews on both sides of the border, this is not a great time to be so findable if you work at a university.
Tiny nitpick, it was the end of June, because I'll never forget that absolutely fucking awful week, which led to me submitting my resignation a week later. Out of academia for good, no regrets.
Sadly, I loved working there, and felt infinitely more accepted than I did at JBP's UofT, but there are some things academia does not handle well.
Now I am an anonymous bureaucrat sandwiched delightfully in a giant hierarchy where nobody needs to know my name.
posted by avocet at 10:01 AM on October 26, 2023 [16 favorites]
Tiny nitpick, it was the end of June, because I'll never forget that absolutely fucking awful week, which led to me submitting my resignation a week later. Out of academia for good, no regrets.
Sadly, I loved working there, and felt infinitely more accepted than I did at JBP's UofT, but there are some things academia does not handle well.
Now I am an anonymous bureaucrat sandwiched delightfully in a giant hierarchy where nobody needs to know my name.
posted by avocet at 10:01 AM on October 26, 2023 [16 favorites]
Gah, I knew it was late June but my brain typed late July. My apologies.
posted by Kitteh at 10:02 AM on October 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Kitteh at 10:02 AM on October 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
Racism is not rational of course but... sociology. Seems an unexpected place to find an aggressive racist.
My guess here is that sociology is a handy prerequisite towards a family counselor certification, often a one year program after a bachelors degree, and which is a field crowded with religious sponsors and viewpoints.
posted by Brian B. at 10:23 AM on October 26, 2023 [7 favorites]
My guess here is that sociology is a handy prerequisite towards a family counselor certification, often a one year program after a bachelors degree, and which is a field crowded with religious sponsors and viewpoints.
posted by Brian B. at 10:23 AM on October 26, 2023 [7 favorites]
What boggles my mind is where do people find the time to act like this? This has got to be the equivalent of a full time job and the organizational/time management skills could make one successful if one ratcheted down the crazy hatefulness and funneled that into a career/business. If you’re clever to come up with “cuckernut”, you could be doing something creative instead of being a dipshit.
posted by dr_dank at 10:35 AM on October 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by dr_dank at 10:35 AM on October 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
At Waterloo, the accused had just graduated weeks before.
posted by avocet at 10:39 AM on October 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by avocet at 10:39 AM on October 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
And yeah, the guy who terrorized our anthro department had been kicked out.
posted by humbug at 11:08 AM on October 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by humbug at 11:08 AM on October 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
It's bizarre how slowly the sorts of authorities who handle public order are to respond to anything which is on the Internet.
I think this just became a socially acceptable response for people in power a few decades ago and then they just stuck with it when convenient. The Supreme Court still pleads ignorance to anything involving the internet.
posted by smelendez at 11:31 AM on October 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
I think this just became a socially acceptable response for people in power a few decades ago and then they just stuck with it when convenient. The Supreme Court still pleads ignorance to anything involving the internet.
posted by smelendez at 11:31 AM on October 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
Binghamton Religion Professor Richard Antoun Killed,
BINGHAMTON, N.Y. (CBS/AP) Those who lived and studied with Abdulsalam al-Zahrani, the Saudi student who, police say, killed religion professor Richard T. Antoun, say he was confrontational and even threatened one roommate with a knife.
Souleyman Sukho said Saturday that the graduate student, accused of fatally stabbing Antoun, a Binghamton University anthropology professor, came at him with a blade during the three weeks they shared an apartment with a third student, Luis Pena. Just three weeks after their landlord rented a spare room to the 46-year-old Saudi national, al-Zahrani was charged with murder in the death of 77-year-old Antoun. The professor was stabbed in his campus office Friday, and the weapon was later recovered, authorities said.
posted by bluesky43 at 12:01 PM on October 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
BINGHAMTON, N.Y. (CBS/AP) Those who lived and studied with Abdulsalam al-Zahrani, the Saudi student who, police say, killed religion professor Richard T. Antoun, say he was confrontational and even threatened one roommate with a knife.
Souleyman Sukho said Saturday that the graduate student, accused of fatally stabbing Antoun, a Binghamton University anthropology professor, came at him with a blade during the three weeks they shared an apartment with a third student, Luis Pena. Just three weeks after their landlord rented a spare room to the 46-year-old Saudi national, al-Zahrani was charged with murder in the death of 77-year-old Antoun. The professor was stabbed in his campus office Friday, and the weapon was later recovered, authorities said.
posted by bluesky43 at 12:01 PM on October 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
Putting aside obvious mental illness or political motives, I do wonder how much of this increase in abuse stems from the "higher education-as-a-consumer product" paradigm.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 12:15 PM on October 26, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 12:15 PM on October 26, 2023 [8 favorites]
Early on in the story S. accuses three of her real profs of harrassment, including "using students in the class to follow her around and look at her papers." It's kind of weird that the paranoid and delusional aspect of this report is glossed over in the story, in favor of quoting all the other garbage the person spews.
I teach at a college, and I'm certainly sympathetic to the profs in the story. This kind of situation would be horrible and I'm lucky that I mostly haven't experienced it yet. BUT it's odd to me that there is a person out there who is clearly mentally ill, yet the whole discussion is about protecting others from her, and not about why you can't get someone like this referred to social services. SCTU knows exactly who she is, and probably also who her parents are, and it's very apparent she's not well, sooo why isn't there some effort to get her the help she needs.
(And of course I concede that there may very well have been such an effort undertaken, and it's confidential. Some discussion of the mental health angle should be in here somewhere, though, and it just isn't, and that worries me.
To me that's half the story, and the effect on these profs is the other half.)
posted by anhedonic at 12:25 PM on October 26, 2023 [9 favorites]
I teach at a college, and I'm certainly sympathetic to the profs in the story. This kind of situation would be horrible and I'm lucky that I mostly haven't experienced it yet. BUT it's odd to me that there is a person out there who is clearly mentally ill, yet the whole discussion is about protecting others from her, and not about why you can't get someone like this referred to social services. SCTU knows exactly who she is, and probably also who her parents are, and it's very apparent she's not well, sooo why isn't there some effort to get her the help she needs.
(And of course I concede that there may very well have been such an effort undertaken, and it's confidential. Some discussion of the mental health angle should be in here somewhere, though, and it just isn't, and that worries me.
To me that's half the story, and the effect on these profs is the other half.)
posted by anhedonic at 12:25 PM on October 26, 2023 [9 favorites]
My shop has a "student of concern" reporting system that I avail myself of (sigh) at least once a semester these days.
The concern can be just about anything too big or hot-potato for an instructor to want to handle alone, and the reporting form asks for narrative, not ticky boxes, for the most part -- there is a ticky box for whether I believe the student is a threat to themself or others, which I assume is a prioritization signal. Nor am I expected to diagnose what's going on -- just describe it.
I trust the system because every time I've interacted with it, a Real Human Being answers, and those answers make clear that those human beings are skilled, well-intentioned, compassionate, and commonsensical. They're out to support me, the student, my OTHER students, and campus at large.
That said, of course it's not a perfect system, especially if people don't know to use it. So (with my diversity committee chair hat on) I've invited one of the Real Human Beings to visit our department for a brown-bag.
It's hard to imagine a campus without something like this, honestly. Early detection and intervention should be worth a lot.
posted by humbug at 12:41 PM on October 26, 2023 [9 favorites]
The concern can be just about anything too big or hot-potato for an instructor to want to handle alone, and the reporting form asks for narrative, not ticky boxes, for the most part -- there is a ticky box for whether I believe the student is a threat to themself or others, which I assume is a prioritization signal. Nor am I expected to diagnose what's going on -- just describe it.
I trust the system because every time I've interacted with it, a Real Human Being answers, and those answers make clear that those human beings are skilled, well-intentioned, compassionate, and commonsensical. They're out to support me, the student, my OTHER students, and campus at large.
That said, of course it's not a perfect system, especially if people don't know to use it. So (with my diversity committee chair hat on) I've invited one of the Real Human Beings to visit our department for a brown-bag.
It's hard to imagine a campus without something like this, honestly. Early detection and intervention should be worth a lot.
posted by humbug at 12:41 PM on October 26, 2023 [9 favorites]
eviemath She elevated the issue to her department chair on my suggestion and that's all I know of at this point. I can only hope it's being handled properly.
posted by tommasz at 12:55 PM on October 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by tommasz at 12:55 PM on October 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
BUT it's odd to me that there is a person out there who is clearly mentally ill, yet the whole discussion is about protecting others from her, and not about why you can't get someone like this referred to social services.
My guess is that she does not want to seek treatment and that she is more interested in her vendetta. The question of what to do with someone who is mentally ill but is not interested in treatment is a complicated one, and it is not necessarily always true that the best thing is for authorities to forcibly institutionalize someone, especially someone who has not yet been violent. The question of when you intervene and when you allow someone to retain agency over their own life is a complex one, and it's not always obvious what the best action is.
All of that also assumes that she is mentally ill in some diagnosable way and that her harassing behavior actually derives from that mental illness. It might, or it might not, but certainly people who are not initially mentally ill get drawn into stalking or harassment behavior all the time. The question of what qualifies as mental illness, if the person exhibiting the behavior is clear that they are not interested in treatment, is also a difficult and thorny one with relatively little in the way of funding and quite a lot of potential for abuse in its own right. It is not clear to me that blaming this person's behavior on abstract mental illness is more humane or more compassionate for anyone involved.
posted by sciatrix at 1:39 PM on October 26, 2023 [13 favorites]
My guess is that she does not want to seek treatment and that she is more interested in her vendetta. The question of what to do with someone who is mentally ill but is not interested in treatment is a complicated one, and it is not necessarily always true that the best thing is for authorities to forcibly institutionalize someone, especially someone who has not yet been violent. The question of when you intervene and when you allow someone to retain agency over their own life is a complex one, and it's not always obvious what the best action is.
All of that also assumes that she is mentally ill in some diagnosable way and that her harassing behavior actually derives from that mental illness. It might, or it might not, but certainly people who are not initially mentally ill get drawn into stalking or harassment behavior all the time. The question of what qualifies as mental illness, if the person exhibiting the behavior is clear that they are not interested in treatment, is also a difficult and thorny one with relatively little in the way of funding and quite a lot of potential for abuse in its own right. It is not clear to me that blaming this person's behavior on abstract mental illness is more humane or more compassionate for anyone involved.
posted by sciatrix at 1:39 PM on October 26, 2023 [13 favorites]
I'd add to that that instructors have a limited repertoire of responses to students -- even in much less fraught circumstances than this.
I've had students ghost on my class. (Pandemic phenomenon. This basically never happened before 2020.) When I email them about it (as soon as I notice), they swear up and down they're gonna catch up, honest!
They don't. Ghosts routinely fail my courses. And I can't stop this. I can't administratively drop them from the course (would if I could, it'd save them a helluva lot of wasted tuition). I can't force them to re-engage. Fundamentally I can't make them do the damn work! I can only restate in email that they're on the road to an F, and/or put them in the student-of-concern system.
A lot also depends on the structure of misconduct policies at the institution. If S were a student at my uni... believe it or not, there would be no way to level non-academic misconduct charges purely on the basis of S's speech. Hate speech? Not in the policy (we, uh, had this one tested not very long ago). Threats? Not in the policy.
So yeah. There's a lot of friction around interventions.
posted by humbug at 4:35 PM on October 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
I've had students ghost on my class. (Pandemic phenomenon. This basically never happened before 2020.) When I email them about it (as soon as I notice), they swear up and down they're gonna catch up, honest!
They don't. Ghosts routinely fail my courses. And I can't stop this. I can't administratively drop them from the course (would if I could, it'd save them a helluva lot of wasted tuition). I can't force them to re-engage. Fundamentally I can't make them do the damn work! I can only restate in email that they're on the road to an F, and/or put them in the student-of-concern system.
A lot also depends on the structure of misconduct policies at the institution. If S were a student at my uni... believe it or not, there would be no way to level non-academic misconduct charges purely on the basis of S's speech. Hate speech? Not in the policy (we, uh, had this one tested not very long ago). Threats? Not in the policy.
So yeah. There's a lot of friction around interventions.
posted by humbug at 4:35 PM on October 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
What a nightmare. My uni just had a professor assassinated by a student a few weeks ago.
posted by 3.2.3 at 4:48 PM on October 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by 3.2.3 at 4:48 PM on October 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
Working at a school gets you stalkers, for sure. I know enough people having to use aliases online due to that. But S is fucking terrifying.
My office gets stalkers, but not as much. It probably helps that now we're across the way from The Office You Report Those People To, and if someone comes in and starts up with harassing, they are politely escorted across the hall, have their records flagged, etc. That said, I note that I got told I have to do bomb threat training tomorrow....yay.
A friend of mine has acquired a stalker at her non-school job, and it sounds like they are actually taking it seriously, firing the guy as a client, etc., but I warned her that she probably has to anonymize herself online at least. He sounds like the typical jerk guy who rages at women for not fucking him, yaaaaaaaay.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:33 PM on October 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
My office gets stalkers, but not as much. It probably helps that now we're across the way from The Office You Report Those People To, and if someone comes in and starts up with harassing, they are politely escorted across the hall, have their records flagged, etc. That said, I note that I got told I have to do bomb threat training tomorrow....yay.
A friend of mine has acquired a stalker at her non-school job, and it sounds like they are actually taking it seriously, firing the guy as a client, etc., but I warned her that she probably has to anonymize herself online at least. He sounds like the typical jerk guy who rages at women for not fucking him, yaaaaaaaay.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:33 PM on October 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
One of my fellow professors, an Asian woman, has been dealing with a student who becomes agitated over seemingly minor things in class but hasn't resorted to physical violence yet. I would like to forward this to her but she's already extremely worried and I don't want to make it worse.
Forward it to the dean of her college and whatever University admins you can think of as being relevant. They are the ones who need to understand the problem and the levels of support they should provide.
posted by srboisvert at 5:00 AM on October 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
Forward it to the dean of her college and whatever University admins you can think of as being relevant. They are the ones who need to understand the problem and the levels of support they should provide.
posted by srboisvert at 5:00 AM on October 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
In Georgia, concealed carry is legal in class unless there are dual enrolled high school students in a class. It is up to the student with a gun to contact the registrar and find out if there are high school students in their classes. I'm not allowed to say a word about students carrying a gun in my class.
I have had completely terrifying students in my classes screaming at me about how evolution and climate change are lies. I have had a former student who often turned up outside of my office first thing in the morning or at the end of the day when I was likely to be alone on the hallway. We have had several scary racist incidents on our campus that has no majority ethnicity. Because environmental science teaching is a small world, I knew Tom Meixner. I'm so fucking tired of being scared.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:04 PM on October 27, 2023 [14 favorites]
I have had completely terrifying students in my classes screaming at me about how evolution and climate change are lies. I have had a former student who often turned up outside of my office first thing in the morning or at the end of the day when I was likely to be alone on the hallway. We have had several scary racist incidents on our campus that has no majority ethnicity. Because environmental science teaching is a small world, I knew Tom Meixner. I'm so fucking tired of being scared.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:04 PM on October 27, 2023 [14 favorites]
It is not clear to me that blaming this person's behavior on abstract mental illness is more humane or more compassionate for anyone involved.
To me, this point contains two core points:
*Why are we assuming this individual is mentally ill because they're virulently bigoted? I think that happens because it's "easier" to see them as such - the idea of someone being a bigot and in control of their faculties is scary to a lot of people. Thus the assumption that of course this person must be mentally ill, even though the only evidence to that is their bigotry.
*Even if this behavior is caused by mental illness, that doesn't negate the harm. Beyond the question of the individual's mental state, there's the reality that their behavior is causing genuine harm, and of a type our society likes to pretend doesn't exist - which makes it that much harder to address, as the response tends to be "can't you just, you know, ignore them?"
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:45 AM on October 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
To me, this point contains two core points:
*Why are we assuming this individual is mentally ill because they're virulently bigoted? I think that happens because it's "easier" to see them as such - the idea of someone being a bigot and in control of their faculties is scary to a lot of people. Thus the assumption that of course this person must be mentally ill, even though the only evidence to that is their bigotry.
*Even if this behavior is caused by mental illness, that doesn't negate the harm. Beyond the question of the individual's mental state, there's the reality that their behavior is causing genuine harm, and of a type our society likes to pretend doesn't exist - which makes it that much harder to address, as the response tends to be "can't you just, you know, ignore them?"
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:45 AM on October 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
It does, plus a third core point: if this person really is mentally ill, we have to think about what best practices for helping people who are mentally ill but do not want treatment look like. As with all disabilities, those best practices rarely involve capturing the problematic person and bundling them off to a mental institution out of sight and out of mind, where fuck only knows what will happen to them.
This is why our laws focus on acceptable and unacceptable behaviors rather than acceptable and unacceptable mental states. One of those things is a lot easier to accurately and reliably observe than the other!
On top of that, the tendency to attribute violent and potentially violent unusual behavior to mental illness serves to continue to stigmatize and pathologize people who are mentally ill, which contributes to coercive policies that are often traumatic and abusive in their own right. Most mentally ill people are not violent, including this kind of fixation violence of stalking. By any reasonable definition of mental illness, I'm mentally ill--indeed, judging by the number of people over here with depression or anxiety or autism or ADHD or PTSD or cPTSD, so are many of you.
Do you think that's the locus of this problem? Does "mental illness" lead inexorably to stalking? I argue that this is a problem of behavior, not directly a problem of mental health.
posted by sciatrix at 3:18 PM on October 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
This is why our laws focus on acceptable and unacceptable behaviors rather than acceptable and unacceptable mental states. One of those things is a lot easier to accurately and reliably observe than the other!
On top of that, the tendency to attribute violent and potentially violent unusual behavior to mental illness serves to continue to stigmatize and pathologize people who are mentally ill, which contributes to coercive policies that are often traumatic and abusive in their own right. Most mentally ill people are not violent, including this kind of fixation violence of stalking. By any reasonable definition of mental illness, I'm mentally ill--indeed, judging by the number of people over here with depression or anxiety or autism or ADHD or PTSD or cPTSD, so are many of you.
Do you think that's the locus of this problem? Does "mental illness" lead inexorably to stalking? I argue that this is a problem of behavior, not directly a problem of mental health.
posted by sciatrix at 3:18 PM on October 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
Why are we assuming this individual is mentally ill because they're virulently bigoted?
We're not. We're assuming that they are mentally ill because they have fixated on a particular small group of people who they believe have actively pursued and ruined their life.
The virulently bigoted part is a complete sideshow. If they showed this level of fixation based on paranoia for this long on anyone then mental illness would be a very reasonable suspicion.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 4:47 PM on October 30, 2023
We're not. We're assuming that they are mentally ill because they have fixated on a particular small group of people who they believe have actively pursued and ruined their life.
The virulently bigoted part is a complete sideshow. If they showed this level of fixation based on paranoia for this long on anyone then mental illness would be a very reasonable suspicion.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 4:47 PM on October 30, 2023
« Older Clutter Block #4: Fantasy Stuff For My Fantasy... | You may touch the artifacts Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
I wish I had a solution for this. Instead of just makes me personally and societally worried.
posted by Hactar at 2:11 AM on October 26, 2023 [6 favorites]