User:Switch 1166057/Failure to Deal With an Unsafe Classroom Environment and Sexual Harassment (JHU 18.2)

This is a detailed account of a situation that had arisen at the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth summer program at the Johns Hopkins site, session two of this summer. This event shows a mishandling of a situation by the administration. This situation revealed flaws with the administration in the way they handled it, and I believe it should not go unnoticed. Note: all quotes are direct quotes with exact wording. I often took out my phone in meetings, during events, and directly after events to record the exact wording that people used.

On Sunday, July 29th, during night class, a student began to inappropriately touch me continuously due to multiple layers of issues that were taking place in class. The touching had escalated from Sunday, and continued to get worse throughout Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Prior to this, this particular student was taking unsolicited photographs of me and my friends, with me typically as the focal point.

This touching began as rubbing of arms and legs non-consensually and escalated to grabbing my leg and pulling me towards him. This happened as he asked me to take a photo with him, which I declined. He was asking my friend to take said photo, as she was calmly explaining that I was clearly uncomfortable with it. Given that I was sitting on the ground and he came to sit uncomfortably close to me, I attempted to move away, which resulted in him grabbing my leg to pull me closer to him fairly aggressively. This occurred on Wednesday night. In addition, multiple areas of my body were grabbed (forearm, lower torso, upper torso) and called “fat”.

I first mentioned the situation to two of my friends, during our Wednesday afternoon break. However, I didn’t fully stress how uncomfortable I was until Wednesday night. That night, I finally expressed the high level of uncomfortability I was feeling to a number of my friends, my RA and her Co-RA. After the ball had gotten rolling with expressing our fear of another student in our class who had displayed violent behavior including shouting at another student, stating that he punched walls as practice for people, and showing violent mood swings, we really opened up about all the things that were going on in class to our RAs when we had gotten back from class, at around 10pm. When I finally mentioned that I was severely uncomfortable with the leaning/touching/grabbing that was occurring, I realized that the other girls had noticed how odd it was as well, and very much agreed that the situation should be dealt with. Later that night, we went into our first set of meetings that lasted until around 1 am. The conversations that were held that night were solely for factual purposes, and we talked to Nick (DRL) first, around 12 AM, then Katie (Academic counselor) and Jackie (Site director) around 1 AM. We were told that these conversations were solely for gathering facts. One important thing to note from this conversation was that Jackie and Katie both asked us to pick the biggest issue and only discuss that. However, every issue we were expressing was contributing to the many layers of issues and were all against the honor code. It was hard to look at someone who is exhibiting serious outbursts of violence, a sexual harasser, and a bully and attempt to choose the worst one. Additionally, at this time another girl, had just been having conversations for openly saying in her hall (prior to this whole situation) “f*ck the admin”. While this was unrelated, we were told that we were going to be having a meeting with Jackie at breakfast Thursday morning about our problem, and so was this student about her situation. When this student brought this up at the 1 AM meeting with Jackie, Jackie said “we will juggle them”. The fact that she would suggest that a meeting about one girl cursing about the administration, and reports of sexual harassment, bullying, and a kid with violent tendencies and outbursts were at a level similar enough that they could be juggled was shocking.

The next day, we were taken to class for an hour, the hour of 10 AM to 11 AM, and told to feel comfortable since Logan, an SRA, was going to sit in on class with us. At this time, we were told that it was possible that both students would be returning to class around lunch time, possibly later. However, “lunch” could have been anywhere from 11:30 to 12:40 given that our class ate lunch at a different time every day. This caused me and my friends to have intense anxiety during this hour. Every time the door to the building opened, I felt like I couldn’t breathe because I wasn’t sure who was walking in. Additionally, we were scared of two people that were taken out of class, yet only had one person put in place to protect us. During break, we expressed our high anxiety to Logan the SRA, and were not given any answers. And he said multiple things that invalidated our experiences. After repeatedly telling us to “stay strong” even though this shouldn’t have been an issue we had to deal with, we were also told to “remember that there were other students at this camp” by Logan. This specific quote really shows the invalidation I was referring to. To my knowledge, the other students at the camp, were not dealing with the same set of problems that we were. In line with this, we were told that either Logan or someone part of administration would be going to class with us on Friday, which did not happen.

The deflection of blame became a recurring theme throughout every meeting I had, whether it was with Nick the DRL, an SRA, or even Jackie and Shawn. Blame of poor decisions was consistently being placed on unnamed, faceless higher-ups that were seemingly unreachable and untouchable. One of the finest examples of this was Jackie and her inverted triangle explanation. She was having a meeting with the girls in my class, and I in our hall at 12 AM on Thursday night after many requests on our part to talk to her and address questions that were being left unanswered. She made a triangle with her hands and told us she was at the top of the site, then inverted the triangle upside-down and explained that everything was happening higher than her, and she is at the bottom of an unreachable triangle of people. The problem I had with this, and the problem that all of the girls were also struggling with, was that we were requesting both answers and actions, and understood that she might not be the one who was going to deliver them. However, we still thought that she would be willing to act as a link to these faceless higher ups, but she did not attempt to do so. Every time we requested an action to be taken, all people deflected the blame off of themselves, and it quickly became a huge frustration that the blame was being put on people that we couldn’t contact. They made no attempt to make us feel like they were defending/standing by us, despite them being the ones physically with us, and the higher ups were merely reading notes and not talking to the people who were being directly affected, us.

Another severe example of deflection was that, for the entire morning, afternoon, and mid evening of Thursday, all decisions were being blamed on a Title Nine coordinator. When asking Katie for a reason why decisions regarding the guys were taking so long, I was told that there was only one person that decides all disciplinary actions taken on all sexual harassment and racism cases, and that only that one person can do anything. The fact that this one person never attempted to contact me or anyone in my hall personally was saddening, because I think that their decision on the student who had sexually harassed me going to the dance would’ve been different if they took the time to talk to us, rather than just reading notes that various staff members had written down. I also requested the phone number/contact information of this person from both Nick the DRL and Cindy the SRA. Cindy had walked away planning on returning with this information and never did, so my RA ended up being the one to look it up and give it to me.

Language choice that continuously did not help the situation was also a portion of the problem. During a one on one with Katie on Thursday, in which she had told me Logan was going to be accompanying us to class that day, she continuously used the quotes “I want you to feel like we believe you” and “I want you to feel like I hear your opinion” which did not help the situation. Feeling like someone hearing my opinion/feeling like someone believes me are not the same as someone actually listening to my opinion and believing me. It was this sort of language that made me feel completely invalidated. On top of this, the constant and seemingly non-stop use of the word “conversation” was ridiculous. Every meeting that was being held was being called a conversation. Apparently, we were only having “conversations” about the situation, and hardly any actions were taken. The excessive use of this word.

The situation with the Final Dance on Thursday night is another mishandling completely. Within my one-on-one with Katie, I was told that a request had been filed for both threatening students to not be at the dance. However, Katie had had a one-on-one with my roommate, in which she had expressed that she hadn’t filed any requests yet for such a thing. There was no time that she would have had between our two meetings to file that request, given that she walked my roommate back to the dorm and I then approached her to have my meeting. When I was told in my no-contact meeting that both boys were currently allowed to be at the dance, I expressed my extreme concern for the situation and told them that I did not think that it was a good idea. Instead of being understanding, Jackie and Lauren (SRA) blamed a higher up power than themselves for the decision and explained that there was nothing that they could do.

Having the student who harassed me at the Final Dance was terrible, to say the least. Before the final dance, we asked Nick to explain what was and wasn’t a distance between us that was allowed and define the radius within which he wasn’t allowed. Nick gave no answers to this question. After asking him multiple times to clarify what the correct distance was, he finally said that “we could run through hypotheticals all night” despite the fact that the student who harassed me was going to the dance and it was not hypothetical. The RAs ended up having to join forces to define the line that couldn’t be crossed. This was not something that the RAs should’ve had to do. Despite the RAs' intense support and protection, it was still an unsafe environment. Having the RAs rally and join forces to protect us was amazing, but it was not supposed to be their job to decide where to draw the lines and how to protect us. These decisions should’ve been made for them. The students of another class were willing to do whatever it takes and banded together to help us in our situation as well because they knew that we were vulnerable at this time. Also, being restricted to only half of the room after doing nothing wrong just because a Title 9 coordinator that I never got the chance to speak with decided that the student who harassed me could go to the dance was unfair.

During the final dance, I had received word that the student who harassed me had been accused of touching another girl inappropriately. As one would imagine, I was very angry that, after specifically asking multiple members of administration (Both SRA Cindy and SRA Lauren, Jackie the site director, Katie, and Nick the DRL), the harasser was allowed back at the dance and proceeded to continue the behavior I had warned all these members of administration that he was doing. In this anger, friends of mine and I all had a heated conversation with Logan the SRA in a hallway that separate a room with many kids in it and the room that had the harasser and a few other kids in it and the girls bathroom in between. Honestly, all three of us were yelling, and in my opinion, it was rightfully so. One of my friends was expressing how the way they were handling the situation only amplified and perpetuated rape culture, another of my friends and I were expressing how we told them this would happen and that it did. In this heated conversation, Logan had told us to “trust the system” which only made the entire situation worse. Both my friend and I promptly expressed that this was the same system that let us down in my situation, and that there was no way that we could trust the system after seeing the system allow him back into the dance. After we walked away from this heated conversation, Logan the SRA asked an RA that was nearby during this, if she really thought us yelling was the best way for us to express ourselves at this time. Rightfully, I was notified that she responded “yes”.

Additionally, the No-Contact order was just another example of a mistake. We were told that it would be a disciplinary measure, but based off of the Johns Hopkins website, it explains that the No-Contact order falls under a way to protect the victim, not a way to punish the accused. Moreover, the No-Contact order has been repeatedly violated throughout Thursday night and Friday, during the day and night. A specific quote from the No-Contact order states, “***** and ***** have been directed to refrain from contacting you… through other persons.” [The names blacked out were those of the students harassing and threatening.] That was violated multiple times throughout the day, since the harasser’s closest friend at the site, had been Snapchatting, Instagram messaging, and WeChat-ing me, asking about either the harassers hat or about why I came forward. Each time, I blocked the friend on the particular social media he had reached out on, and each time he found a new social media to use. Additionally, there was a direct violation of the No-contact order on Friday at 12:14 over Facebook Messenger. At this time, I had not been signed out of camp, and to my knowledge he was in the shuttle going to the airport, still in CTY care, at this time as well. To my knowledge, the No-Contact order only stood while we were still in camp, so only four of those (those that are outlined in black are the four being referred to) are actual violations. However, the five that are not outlined in black show that the harasser did not unfollowed by a picture of him and the girl who came forward about his harassment in which he has his arm around her while she is bending away a little and does not have her arm around him. He messages
“This is the picture we took on Wednesday”derstand what he did wrong. It actually shows that he is under the impression that everything is perfectly fine between us. How this is possible is beyond me at this point.

The images originally included here have been removed to preserve anonymity, but they included messages sent to her from the harasser and harassers friends.

The harasser sent her

“Can we still keep in touch? I think we need to solve the trouble by ourselves.” 

and sent to a friend of the victim,

“Cty is closed 
 Could u tell me what happened 
 I m sad 
 What things I did? 
 Although maybe we won’t see each other again 
 But I sincerely hope u can me the reason 
 I don’t think I once hurt [victim] 
 Me and [victim] are so closed friends 
 Why? 
 I m ur friend too I just want the answer 
 Please 
 I really love [victim] very much 
 Is it wrong?” 

The harasser also liked many of the victim's posts on Instagram.

He additionally texted another friend of the victim, saying,

“Well, I have to say that our understanding maybe different 
 But I knew I did something wrong 
 I knew I did something wrong 
 But not that serious 
 I don’t want to explain anymore 
 I wanna tell u that the whole thing is ridiculous 
 I was glad to meet u all” 

followed by a picture of him and the girl who came forward about his harassment in which he has his arm around her while she is bending away a little and does not have her arm around him. He messages
“This is the picture we took on Wednesday”

He also texted yet another friend of the victim, this time after camp (August 5th, 2018) trying to explain himself. This conversation is translated from Mandarin by the friend of the victim.

"And I really can't agree with the fact you said I forced [victim] to take a picture. You weren't there, and you only said she involuntarily took a picture with me for your agenda. 
 Most of the pictures between she and I are taken when one of the people ask to have it taken, I would never do such things [Taking pictures without consent] in front of everybody. 
 I grew up in China so there is a possibility that there its a difference in culture, so I can accept the mistakes that I made [It might be worthy to note that the friend of the victim who received these messages also lives in China and does not agree that there were cultural differences that would have led to this kind of harassment] 
 But I want to emphasize that a lot of the things between us are consensual 
 Last Wednesday night I bought a coke, [victim] said she wanted some, I let her drink straight from the bottle, so I can do the same to her drinks 
 I want to emphasize that the double-sidedness is what you guys and CTY staff did not understand 
 Maybe the investigation started on Thursday, the staff believed that in the three weeks I did touch her but all the pictures I showed them there were many where her hand was on my shoulder 
 It's like we both did the same thing, and naturally, neither of us will be comfortable 
 You said I hugged [victim] but she asked me to hug her at the dance [first dance], Don't make bad examples and jump to decisions. The hug after the dance [first dance] was pre-planned. </br

Then, after that, the harasser sent inappropriate and manipulative messages to another friend of the victim. (August 8th, 2018)
He sent a picture of his arm with multiple bloody cuts on it

"This is my punishment 
 Is it enough [crying emoji] 
 
I don't want to explain more 
 Only 1:the things I did were wrong! 2:I'm very sorry about what I did 3:I love all of u in [class] especially for [victim] 4:I want ur forgiveness and give me a chance to change 
 5: 
Can we be friends again?"

After a few hours, with some other texts in between, he sent,

"I went to hospital it's fine. because I cannot express my feelings and I had nothing to do and very very upset about the things I did . I hate myself because I hurt [victim] [crying emoji] 
 These [referring to cuts] will be recovered in two weeks 
 I hate the things I did. [victim] is the first girl I hugged.so obviously that I didn't want to hurt her .but I did 
 I hate myself"

A close friend of the harasser also texted multiple times, saying, among other things,

“Do u regret complaining to the RAs about [harasser] 
 Cuz he is really sad now” 
 and "Why is [violent student] in the Nurse, [harasser] and [additional student] distressed and rumors all over the place abt [harasser]” 
 The girl responded with “Can’t discuss” 
 and the friend continued, saying, “Like [harasser] is so depressed that he doesn’t let me in his room and His roommate is in my room 
 And he needs his cap back”

Another problem with how the No-Contact order was handled was when they took two other girls in my class out of the dance. At that time, we were very scared to be apart due to the situation at hand and expressed that we did not want to be separated. In fact, our RA was told that we could go with them to receive these No-Contact orders, given that they all had the same information the rest of us were given. However, after begging the administration members not to separate us in an environment that just did not feel safe, they did anyway. I do not understand why this had to be done separately if we were all receiving the same order. These environments were so stressful and scary based on how decisions panned out, the separation only added to our anxiety at the time.

Additionally, the liking of my Instagram posts, a No-Contact order violation, was taken more seriously than the initial claims of sexual harassment.

After requesting a conversation with the highest up people I could speak with, I had a conversation with Shawn and Jackie at around 12:15 pm on Friday. In this conversation, I expressed my concern with what the contacting after camp was going to consist of, since Jackie had told me the night prior at 12 am that there was going to be contacting after camp. I was then told by Shawn that it is unlikely that I will be contacted after camp, even though the investigation will continue. Then, I expressed a point that was made the night prior again, which was that I was never asked any follow up questions after they talked to the student who had harassed me and had no clarifying conversations afterwards. The fact that there were no clarifying questions asked, even though I expressed on multiple occasions that I was more than willing to have those sorts of conversations, shows how the investigation did not follow the correct process. As outlined on the John Hopkins University website, I should’ve been talked to after the harasser was talked to, and then eye witnesses should’ve been talked to afterwards. When I expressed this, I was told that the investigation had branched off in multiple directions and that was why I hadn’t been spoken to again, but on Friday I was told that I would be unlikely to be spoken to again. There is no possible way that I left every single stone unturned when giving my reports. Another excuse for not having clarifying conversations that I was given by Shawn was that I already had them. However, most conversations since then that I had with Jackie were requested by me, and no questions were asked to me.

Additionally, prior to the dance on Thursday night, I had explicitly asked Nick the DRL to talk to all of us about how we would like our parents addressed. We were told we would have that conversation after they made amendments to the No-Contact document. No amendments that I was contacted about were made and that conversation was not had. I did not want them notified, and they did that anyway without permission. Not allowing me to choose how I wanted the situation handled ended up making the situation much worse.

On moving day, many things that I had previously been told were once again contradicted. For example, my hall-mates and I were told that neither the violent and threatening student nor the student who had sexually harassed me would ever be in AMR I again, however when I walked into the main office in AMR I and saw the student who had harassed me, it was clear I had been misinformed. Additionally, I was cleared to go down to the main office whenever I was ready to have a conversation with Jackie and Shawn around 12 pm. Upon walking into the main office, I approached the first RA I saw to let me know where Jackie was. Since the room was fairly crowded, she was pointed out to me and I saw her talking to another student. I began to approach her, and then looked over to my right only to see the student who had harassed me in the very same room. I had been cleared to go down and was not at all aware that he would be there. Needless to say, I left immediately. In addition to being misinformed about his whereabouts, I was also informed (when my friend was waiting for her 11:30 shuttle) that the harasser would not be transported to the airport in a shuttle with other students, and that he would be leaving on the next shuttle that was happening 15 minutes later. However, he was on a shuttle with a significant number of other students. Logistics should not be an excuse. If he is a threat to the safety of himself and/or other people, he should be treated that way.

There are multiple reasons why all of this even began. While I have been placing the blame on administrators just blaming those that are higher than them and an extreme lack of communication, there were other, more ground level problems that led to this situation getting extremely out of hand. For example, the instructor of our class, referred to as Lan, was flat out sleeping on the ground and sleeping three different times over the course of Wednesday, once during afternoon class, once during night class, and once while we were waiting to leave the observatory Wednesday night. This coupled with the habit of leaving various kids outside during break on accident and our instructor’s lack of fluency in English caused many of these situations to escalate from what they would’ve been. This neglect also led to my friend being targeted and bullied in class, as well as smaller outbursts of the violent and threatening student being overlooked.

These accounts of what happened regarding the 18.2 Baltimore administration are more serious than other Hall of Shame entries, but the more people who know what happened, the better. Many students wrote or had their parents call the CTY main office to complain about these events. Spreading information on what happened so that the administration knows this is not okay and will not be taken silently is critical. We, as a community, need to hold the CTY administration accountable for this event and do everything we can to ensure it never happens again.

Hey, it's the person who wrote everything in Italics above. So, there has been a lot since that was written (it has now been 6 months) and I'd like to update you all on further steps I took. After everything in Italics above was written, I sent it to many higher-ups at CTY that work throughout the year. This resulted in me having a phone call with a higher-up. This phone call, in my mind, was meant to help the administrators understand what went wrong and improve for next summer and for any further issues in the future. However, the phone call became a way for the administrators to defend themselves and say nothing was handled incorrectly. I took this with great offense as I managed to write a 10 page summary detailing all of the issues that occurred, and even if the administrators had no issue with the way they handled the harassment, I expected them to at least be upset with their own employees breaking their own rules (such as DRL telling us punishments that were meant to be kept secret, etc). So, as one could imagine, I was a little hurt when I realized CTY had no interest in working with me to make things better there and took the easy way out. I still plan on returning to CTY for my nevermore year, however I can not return to the JHU site as it will bring up too many bad memories, despite all the good ones.