Curious George goes to university
Sometimes academic life is a little confusing:
Vancouver Island University is at the centre of a human rights complaint alleging that female staff were not protected from a student who brought a diaper-related sexual fetish to the B.C. school.
Who brought a WHAT?
A 105-page complaint filed by the Nanaimo school’s former director, Human Rights and Respectful Workplace, Katrin Roth, said the man’s behaviour was treated as a disability when it should have been dealt with as a potential threat to female staff.
…
CBC is not identifying the man who was involved in the complaint. He responded to a request for comment saying he was unable to speak about the matter for legal reasons.
“I will say I am special needs and 3, so I am not in my 40s,” he wrote to CBC. “Like the university I do not agree with Ms. Roth’s characterization of events.”
He’s 3…yet he is or was enrolled at a university, and he’s responding in writing to a request from the CBC. Why would a university accept a 3-year-old as a student?
The student in his 40s asked to be treated as an infant, demanding children’s books be read to him, speaking in a baby voice, wearing a soother, and even submitting a selfie of himself in a diaper to one instructor, said Roth. She believes that as soon as the university knew the student had what it terms an “atypical sexual drive that he may impose on non-consenting individuals” staff needed warning.
Ok, enough with the jokes. That is both ludicrous and disgusting. People don’t get to “demand” to be treated as infants or cars or ocelots or plates of toast. People don’t get to impose their fantasies on the rest of the world. Imagine whatever you like on your own time in your own space, but leave the rest of us out of it. Fantasies are not reality, and they are not human rights, either. A sizable body of people has decided they are, lately, but they’re wrong. There’s no such thing as a human right to have one’s fantasies humored. People can decide to humor adult fantasies if they feel like being generous about it, but that generosity can’t be ossified into an obligation.
Roth believes the student had presented himself to at least three other staff members demanding inappropriate treatment.
The former Alberta crown prosecutor is amending the original complaint that she said was deemed too broad — and has filed a second separate complaint after losing her job in 2017.
She said she became concerned after a man who said he needed to wear diapers due to a disability complained to her office. Over the years she said the student threatened to file Human Rights Complaints if his special needs were not considered, including his desire to be handled by female staff only.
In the document she said he presented himself to female staff at different campuses — in several cases asking them to change his soiled diapers. Eventually he came to Roth complaining of discrimination.
“He’s unfortunately obsessed with the fecal matter,” said Roth.
As she investigated his complaint she pushed for a sexual violence risk assessment — as the man who came to her claiming a disability seemed to have a sexual fetish he was subjecting others to, the document reveals.
Ya think?
English professor and chair of VIU’s women’s studies program Janis Ledwell-Hunt describes the man who was her student in spring of 2015 as somebody who left her fearful.
He was one of only a handful of in-person students in the small intensive course. But his “odd” and incessant emails disturbed her, the document says.
Then he handed in an essay with a selfie of himself in a diaper with a baby bottle and a soiled diaper. When she refused to accept it he became belligerent and she turned to VIU authorities for protection, says the complaint.
“He’d show up in a Curious George outfit with a soother around his neck,” said Ledwell-Hunt.
“He was involving me into his fantasy life. Into his fantasy play.”
What I’m saying. Have your fantasy life, knock yourself out, but don’t force it on other people.
I had to check the link to make sure it wasn’t The Onion.
*Blinks*
When did supposedly respected academic institutions become so gullible and shit faced ridiculous? Back in my day, behaviour like that would have had you out of the Uni in an period of time slightly shorter than a very short period of time indeed.
If I’d known it was possible to get away with shit like this I would have demanded to be treated like a Nobel Prize winner and be granted an honorary doctorate – makes more sense frankly.
Rob, one thing that has infected universities is the business model. Students are no longer learners, they are customers. Faculty have much less freedom, because there is the threat of lawsuits. (How many lawsuits there actually are, I don’t know, but to hear our training sessions, you would think it was something like 90% of the students. I know it’s not nearly that high, but our school uses this threat to hold a Sword of Damocles over our head and get us to kowtow to every student whim for fear we will be sued otherwise). The goal of our schools is retention and completion rates, and by god, they aren’t going to kick people out just for being “a bit different”. On top of that, there is the truly legitimate goals of ADA and Title IX, which are being abused (by students? by administrators? I don’t actually know) to generate a whole boatload of nonsense.
Part of this is driven by the “accountability” movement. There is nothing wrong with accountability and demonstrating that what you do is working, but they interpret that as numbers of degrees awarded and number of students who stay in the program and finish. When the day comes that they couple this with no child left behind at the college level, we will really be in trouble, because the goal of student completion and ever increasing numbers of awards may not always be compatible with the goal of maintaining the highest possible standards and assuring that students actually learn what they are supposed to learn. I can assure you that the goals are totally incompatible at our school, and I really don’t think we’re anything special. More students start college than will be able to finish, and some of the reasons behind their not finishing is simply that college is harder than they thought it would be, and they can’t quite cut it. The only way to keep those students in is to lower standards. We also get a lot of pressure to do the same because of students who work, because tough schedules are one of the other reasons they drop.
Of course, one of the main reasons they don’t succeed is because the tuition is too high, and this is something that many of us would like to do something about, but the candidates in the last election who were concerned about this were not elected. (Though Sanders is still in the Senate, and I presume he could do more there than as President, I am sure our current POTUS would never sign any free or reduced price college, because he almost certainly believes success is to be reserved for the rich).
Claims to be three years old.
On the one hand, he… claims to be three years old.
On the other, he can write essays, use a camera, send email, threaten legal reprisals, and scare adults. The female ones, anyway… which suggests to me that he might just be your garden variety entitled arsehole.
So he is chronologically and physically 40 something, and intellectually adult. Perhaps he meant to say he is emotionally three? That I could accept.
P.S.
We would be in all kinds of strife for pointing out ‘claiming to be X does not make you X’ if he had also claimed to be female, so thank fuck for that I guess.
To the CBC’s credit, it was having none of this “I’m three” nonsense:
I think iknklast sums up quite well the contribution of the “consumer model of universities” to the problem here. I would add that, one of the reasons I had trouble believing this at first is that I’d never heard of Vancouver Island University. Apparently it’s only been a university since 2008, and does not grant PhDs. I will go out on a limb and suggest that it is probably not among the more prestigious institutions, and therefore is much more in the mode of “we need to keep every student we get” than “hey, there’s plenty more on the wait list, no need to keep anyone who can’t handle it.”
Yeah I had a feeling it was a university the way Trump “University” was a university.
Just to clarify for out-of-towners commenting here: VIU is a ‘real’ institution. They are a member of BCCAT, and as such offers courses that are transferable to other post secondary institutions in B.C. They are a teaching university (as opposed to a research university), which is a recognized designation in B.C., and decidedly not like Trump U… they may not be an ‘ancient’ (150ish yo) institution like UBC but they’re also not offering fraudulent credentials. They were a college (founded 1969), then a university-college, and now are a recognized teaching university.
This isn’t some fly-by-night operation we’re talking about, it is indeed a public University.
ibbica @ 7 – thank you for making that clarification. Speaking more in line with Ms. Benson’s backyard, the University of Washington campuses at Tacoma and Bothell are fairly young campuses, do not offer PhD degrees, yet are well regarded. Let’s not cast aspersions on the rigor of the institution, let’s cast aspersions on the actions of administrators in this instance. Fetish = “special needs” = license to sexually harass?
By “administrators”, I mean the ones who obliviously let this person run rampant and all they will say is, “…we do not agree with Ms. Roth’s characterization of the events.”
From the excerpts, at least, it looks as if this person presented himself as someone ‘with a disability that requires him to wear a diaper’. OK, fine–there are some disabilities and chronic illnesses that require that, and it shouldn’t be something people are shamed for or kept from accessing services for. But, clearly, this person knowingly misrepresented himself and his situation, and it seems to have taken the university administration a little too long to catch it.
@ 7 and 8 – very fair point. My smartass comparison was just rude. I apologize.