Sex for Grades: Our educational institutions should be a safe place for learning – Feminist Group
Pepper Dem Ministries, a feminist group has waded into the on-going discussion on the BBC Africa Eye’s ‘Sex for Grades’ documentary.
The ‘Sex for Grades’ documentary reveals how allegations of sexual harassment by lecturers have hovered over tertiary institutions in West Africa.
Two of the lecturers who were implicated in the documentary are Head of Political Science Department at the University of Ghana, Prof. Ranford Gyampo and Dr. Paul Kwame Butakor, a lecturer at the College of Education.
Excerpts of the one-hour documentary show the two lecturers in compromising situations with undercover journalists who had posed as students of the University of Ghana.
In a statement,the feminist group called for the suspension of the implicated lecturers, pending investigations and urge all remaining institutions yet to take decisive action to follow suit.
“We would like to urge all affected institutions in this scandal to approach these revelations with the utmost urgency and special attention it deserves to guarantee all students a safe and conducive learning environment free from all threats of such harassment,” the statement said.
According to them, educational institutions should be a safe place for learning and all have a role to play in various capacities to ensure this outcome.
“We would also like to urge the media to carefully consider the ways they contribute to the framing of the issue to avoid creating platforms that inadvertently become damage control machinery for the implicated as opposed to putting the spotlight on the core matters and helping to demand accountability and proactiveness from the applicable institutions who have contended with such impropriety for several years.”
Read full statement below
PDM STATEMENT ON BBC AFRICA EYE SEX FOR GRADES EXPOSÉ
We have watched the disturbing documentary shared by BBC Africa Eye exposing various lecturers in Ghana and Nigeria engaging in nauseating and unethical behaviours targeting would be students. While we are highly disturbed by the revelations made in the feature, we at PDM are not surprised by them in the slightest.
Over the past two years, much of our online advocacy has centred on sexual harassment and abuse primarily targeting women. We have even lectured on this very issue at one of the leading universities in Ghana and actively sought to shed light on the broader problems within patriarchal systems that entrench these behaviours.
The exposé by the BBC along with the mass reactions from the many past and current students of the affected institutions as well as others have offered a timely and tragic confirmation of a crisis plaguing our institutions of higher learning. We can no longer as societies that seek to protect our citizenry and guarantee them a life devoid of abuse and harassment of any kind, continue to stay silent and sweep these issues under the rug. We applaud all courageous survivors of these predatory behaviours for coming out and speaking up against these abuses.
We would like to urge all affected institutions in this scandal to approach these revelations with the utmost urgency and special attention it deserves to guarantee all students a safe and conducive learning environment free from all threats of such harassment. We are encouraged by those institutions that have already taken necessary measures aimed at resolving this issue by suspending implicated lecturers pending investigations and urge all remaining institutions yet to take decisive action to follow suit.
We would also like to urge the media to carefully consider the ways they contribute to the framing of the issue to avoid creating platforms that inadvertently become damage control machinery for the implicated as opposed to putting the spotlight on the core matters and helping to demand accountability and proactiveness from the applicable institutions who have contended with such impropriety for several years.
Finally, we urge all and sundry to be circumspect in their discussion of the topic. We often observe victim blaming at the heart of conversations on such issues. The shame does not belong to the victims and survivors. It must squarely be placed at the feet of the perpetrators of the bad behaviour. In such student-lecturer dynamics, the burden of responsibility rests purely with the lecturer who is an authority figure with significant power. Even if students initiate such inappropriate relationships, it is the responsibility of the lecturers to put a stop to it as is ethical and expected in the professional discharge of their duties as educators.
Our educational institutions should be a safe place for learning and we all have a role to play in our various capacities to ensure this outcome.
Thank you.