Inside the geographic nightmare: experiences of a TITLE IX complainant

Keywords: harassment, TITLE IX civil rights, subversion, gaslighting, restorative justice
Session Type: Virtual Poster Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 09:40 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 57

Abstract

The prevalence of harassment - not only sexual, but gender-based - within geography is well known, not only through academic work and AAG awareness but also via public exposes including those at Florida and BYU.  In these cases, the usual patterns of criminal conduct are furthered by a nexus of intentional civil rights violations in complaint handling that cover up, evade consequence and delay restitution and always result in further, unnecessary victimizations until legal or regulatory enforcement actions occur and/or media exposure renders the situation untenable.

Building on Mansfield et al. (2019), Kelsky (2017) I evaluate the efficacy of various civil rights protections, in a situation of great power differentials and enormous ongoing toxicity. I no longer work in academic geography - my "voluntary transfer" to a different college was performed for performative reasons of "workplace safety" and only after a two and half year living nightmare, but actually to forestall either a major class-action TITLE IX suit against the university and/or an OCR Directed Investigation.  The "experience" of civil rights violation began with the terrorizing criminal harassment of my family in our home in the middle of the night and degenerated into ongoing multi-year nightmare involving numerous civil rights violations that included this despicable and profoundly damaging criminality being validated as "work" by executive officers.

I hope these experiences may inform other victims and assist them in defending their civil rights in similar situations of profound personal risk and systemic institutional noncompliance.