MANILA, Philippines — The Commission on Higher Education said it wants to push for information dissemination and strengthened institutions as a solution to allegations of sexual harassment by school faculty going viral once more on social media.
This comes in the wake of the Senate panel on women, children, family relations, and gender equality's scheduling of a formal investigation into allegations of sexual harassment raised by students against teachers and staff of various schools.
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In an interview with Philstar.com, CHED executive director Cindy Jaro said that the commission would be launching "educational resources pertaining to ethics" that include modules on sexual harassment.
"It's an educational material, but our intention is to integrate the topic to be taught in our programs [under ethics in our general education courses]," she said in a phone call.
Jaro added that the CHED requires its accredited higher education institutions to create formal bodies to hear and handle cases of sexual harassment on campus.
"We have to integrate that into the systems already, the protection of students from sexual abuse. The action against this should come from the higher education institutions, and there should be a system in place for the prevention of sexual abuse," she said in mixed Filipino and English.
Allegations of sexual, verbal, and emotional abuse at the Philippine High School for the Arts, a government-run boarding school came to light in a VICE World News report which claimed that a "culture of sexual abuse thrived for decades" at the state-owned institution.
Predators in schools not a new issue
Pre-pandemic, students of a number of high schools and universities demanded their schools to investigate allegations of sexual abuse as the hashtag #DoBetter went viral on social media.
And just days into the re-opening of face-to-face classes, the Department of Education said it was investigating six Cavite teachers for allegations of sexually harassing their own students.
Jaro said that the lines are blurred with the power dynamics present in teacher-student relationships, which points to the need to keep students aware of when boundaries are being crossed.
"It is possible that students still have that thinking. They might still be processing it and thinking that their professors are just helping them, maybe they're just being caring. So we have to inform them, what does sexual harassment really look like? When does it become harassment? They need to know when it's wrong," she said in mixed Filipino and English.
Schools often tend to lean on their official reporting mechanisms to try to resolve the matter within the institution.
At the Senate Committee on Basic Education's first organizational meeting last week, Josue Greg Zuniega, director of the Philippine High School for the Arts urged students to come forward as he lamented that the cases had to go viral in social media first.
"Karamihan sa social media lang po nagkukuwento, ineencourage namin sila para lumapit, para magkaroon tayo ng tamang proseso para pakinggan namin ito. Unfortunately ang nangyari po dito ay naging trial by media na. So para maging malinis ang ating proseso ay idaan natin sana sa tamang paraan, sa tamang forum," he said.
(Most of them are just telling their stories on social media. We encourage them to come forward so that we can have a proper process for us to listen to it. Unfortunately, what happened here has become a trial by the media. So for our process to be clean, let's go through it in the right way, in the right forum.)
How often does this actually happen? Jaro said that of the 2,200 higher education institutions, the CHED only received reports of ten sexual abuse cases that were formally filed with the schools and disclosed to the government.
But advocates say it's telling of the spaces available that students feel the need to come forward with their stories on social media instead of going through the formal mechanisms.
Time's Up Ateneo, one of the groups formed in the wake of the #MeToo protests to push back against harassers in the academe says that until our systems decide they can be more humane, survivors of sexual harassment in schools will still face pushback from the institutions that are supposed to protect them.
"Sa tingin ko, these have been happening as frequently as we don’t want it to be. Parang, it’s been happening everywhere, all the time, pero ngayon lang siya naaaddress because we have a few people in government trying to openly talk about these issues," Martina Herras of Time's Up Ateneo told Philstar.com.
"I think it just means that the systems have failed the students they claim to protect. When victims look for alternatives for their justice, especially when the institution tries to block them from coming out, it just means that the protocols they had in place to handle these cases were not enough."
Jaro also reminded higher education institutions that under the Safe Spaces Act, school heads are held liable in cases where reported sexual harassment complaints are not acted upon.
Data privacy card used to silence victims from coming forward
But what about the data privacy implications that schools like the PHSA have brought up when investigating cases of sexual harassment involving faculty?
"If that is happening I don't know what is the purpose, but it's more on protection of the information being divulged and for the protection of the people concerned especially the victims," Jaro said in mixed Filipino and English.
"It should not be taken against that person the victim, if they want to disclose what he knows that's his prerogative. I don't see any rule that we are directing the confidentiality of information. I think that’s in the system of the higher education institution."
In a separate interview with Philstar.com, professor Teresa Paula de Luna of the UP Diliman Office of Anti-Sexual Harassment highlighted the importance of having safe spaces for victims of sexual abuse to come forward.
"It's very difficult to study or work in a scenario where your abuser is just around the corner. You cease to function well if you don't have that safe space," she said in a Zoom interview.
"If you don't have in place rules and regulations then it's really difficult to get the trust of students, and students will be hesitant to come forward."
But she also pointed out that another problem in tackling sexual abuse in the academe is teachers who are fired from their posts but go on to teach in other schools.
"Professors get away with a notification or a stamp on their whatever release papers if they were convicted or found guilty because they leave [school immediately.] That's a problem in the system. Perhaps schools could have a network wherein they could vet the people who they will employ," she said.
At the Senate Committee on Basic Education's first organizational meeting last week, Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian said the solution to ending the longstanding culture of sexual abuse is putting predator professors behind bars.
"It didn’t just happen overnight. It’s a culture, meaning it’s been happening for a very, very long time, and it produced a generation of abused students, so it means that it’s not only one student or two," he said.
"We cannot just leave it open and just being investigated, then the culture will not break. The only way we can break the culture is someone will be responsible, and someone will be put in jail if need be."