Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!daemon Sender: Fake-Sender: From: wangt@math.toronto.edu Date: Thu, 8 Feb 90 00:47:24 EST Original-To: utchinese Subject: NEWS UTC Message-ID: <90Feb8.004734est.491@spadina.csri.toronto.edu> Newsgroups: ut.chinese Distribution: ut Sender: list-admin@csri.toronto.edu Approved: nobody@csri.toronto.edu =========================NEWS UTC=============== SPECIAL REPORT (1)======== THE MEETING WITH NANCY ADAMSON AND ELIZABETH PATERSON =========== =========== Dear Netter: This is a brief report of the recent meeting with Nancy Adamson, the sexual harrassment officer of UT, and Elizabeth Paterson, the director of ISC at UT about the issue of "sexual harrassment" "among Chinese students". A more detailed report of this meeting will be posted sooner. NEWS UTC ============================================================================ When: Feb.5, 1990, 3:00pm Where: ISC Who: Nancy Adamson, sexual harrassment officer Elizabeth Paterson, director of ISC (organizer of the meeting) Xunhao Jiang, Chair of CSSA (LYH) at UT Anshan Li, representative of CSSA About a dozen of Chinese students ( half of them are female students). What: About a statement on ISC newsletter (Vol.19, No1) made by Ms. Adamson in which Nancy claimed that she saw "a disproportionate amount of peer harrassment among Chinese students". ============================================================================ At the beginning of the meeting, Nancy explained what her original intention of the article was. According to a recorded tape, she said: 1. She received about 4-5 Chinese females who coplained about sexual harrassments during 1988-1989. This number is very high compared with the average of Canadian survey. That was why she said so. 2. She could not identify the nationality of these complaints and harrassers because in all cases no formal complain was filed. So she can not tell whether these persons came from Taiwan, Hongkong or PRC. The harrassers were faculty members, or male students. 3. In most cases, the victims were threatened (by harrassers) of losing their visas if they complained. That scared many victims. 4. She wanted to give helps to Chinese females for protecting them from such threats. She wanted to tell them that it is absolutely OK for victim's visa if she complains. 5. She did not mean that the Chinese male students were harrassers or more dangerous. She just concerned about these victims. She regrets about the "misunderstanding". All the male and female Chinese students were angered by her article and apparently not satisfied by her explaination. We mentioned the following points: 1. In all the cases she mentioned, there were no any evidence to indicate or suggest that among us the rate of peer harrassment was "higher" than other student groups. The statistic data she posted were wrongly manipulated. We could compare the statement here with Mr. Rushton's theory (Prof. Rushton published his theory of racial comparison which was criticized by majority of academic circle). 2. It was uncreditable that a visa male students threated another visa female student by the issue of visa. Rather, it sounded like a faculty member could do so. But the point here was: in all ISC publications, "Chinese students" always refered to the visa students from PRC( otherwise, they used the words like Hongkongness, or Taiwanness). 3. In fact, the Chinese students at UT had a much better records in sexual harrassment and the females and males helped each other in all respects. Even for those who came from Hongkong, they had a good record as well. 4. Even if there were some cases that some Chinese females were harrassed by Chinese, it was absolutely not acceptable to say that the whole ethnic group was bad. 5. It was not a misunderstanding. The information carried by that article blackened the image of Chinese at UT. It hurted our feeling very badly and had provoked a widespread protest. It was nonsense to create new (and many more) victims under the name of protecting female victims. Ms. Paterson asked the students to try to understand Nancy's initiative and called this event was "regretable". She suggested Nancy to draft a "clarification" with her and to post on next ISC newsletter. They promised that no such mistakes would happen again. Nancy and Liz invited Anshan Li to have a look at the clarification once it is ready. Next ISC newsletter should be published in next couple of weeks. Anshan Li is keeping contact with both Liz and Nancy now. If you have any suggestions, please forward to Anshan Li or to this account. ====================== ****************************** =======================