Vice Chancellor (VC) of the University of Calabar, Prof Florence Obi, has diaclosed some of the measures taken to address the incidence of sexual harassment and sexeploitation in the law faculty of the institution.
This followed the saga of Dean of Faculty of Law, Prof Cyril Ndifon who was suspended after some law students embarked on a protest, accusing him of sexually harassing them.
Speaking during an interview with Channels Television, on Saturday, August 26, Prof. Obi said that the management of the school carried out a “clean sweep” of the law faculty, ensuring that all the principal officers at the faculty are women.
The VC also said that they’l had put in place measures to curtail cases of sexual harassment between lecturers and students of the institution.
According to her: “We have put up measures to see that, going forward, such occurrences are curtailed. You can’t completely eradicate sexual harassment in schools because it happens everywhere, every country. It does happen but the impunity, the serial abuse, the way and manner in which this is done, is where it becomes a problem.
“In my university, we have put up so many measures that we know, going forward, nobody in the Faculty of Law will hold students to ransom and make any female student so vulnerable to having amoral relationship.
“We have put about seven committees in place. There is a committee to assign students to supervisors, because there are accusations that the suspended dean took all female students to supervise and that made them vulnerable to his advances. Now, there is a committee to handle that.
“There is a committee to look at mobilisation to law school which students alleged in their protest letter to us that they (staff) use that as an intimidation, as a way to getting some of them to succumb, that if they don’t accept, that they may not be mobilised to law school. We have set up a committee to do that.
“There is a result vetting committee. We have also made a clean sweep in the faculty where we have the acting dean, for now, a woman; the sub dean, a woman; the faculty officer, a woman; we want to see that the students are protected.”
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