USCA and the legacy of assault

College life can be difficult with all the work students are given. However, when a bad professor enters the mix, the entire experience becomes a nightmare. Many of you have heard the story of my daughter’s sexual assault and denial of ADA Accommodations from the Fall of 2021 semester. That issue was never fully resolved by the administration of the University of South Carolina in Aiken.

This semester is not even going good and I have already had to deal with a professor who decided that my ADA Accommodations are open for debate. She felt so strongly about this that she resorted to simple assault in order to get her point across. And sadly, despite filing a police report, little if anything will be done by the administration as assaults are permissible by the University of South Carolina as a whole.

I would love to blame this institutionalized failure on the lack of a President for the entire University system. However, as we have been told time and again, USC in Aiken does not have to follow the directives of the mother system USC. Instead, they are allowed to break policies and procedures whenever and wherever they like. It seems that this permission extends to breaking the law as well. Professors are allowed to assault students and the Vice-Chancellor and Director of Human Resources who are the Title IX Coordinators can overlook these assaults in order to make the institution look better.

That’s right folks, the people tasked with investigating things that reflect badly on the university are people also tasked with making the university look good. Yet, we are to believe that they can be objective in their decisions and that they will fully and unbiasedly investigated all assault claims against professors. They will ignore their first duty to protect the institution from scandal or bad light and do what is morally right.

Once you stop laughing, you can continue reading.

They do nothing to stop assaults. They do nothing to actually investigate. They do everything they can to defend the institution and to protect it from a bad image at all costs. This is a good ole boy’s club on steroids. The victim will be blamed at every opportunity and they well-being of the students will be ignored in favor of protecting the institution and/or the professors.

Why do I care?

I am tired of having to defend my need for ADA accommodations to people who should know the law. This university prides itself on being the most ADA friendly in the area. How they got that designation, without paying for it of course, I have no idea. I have fairly mild issues with my physical and mental health and my accommodations do little to actually help me. The layout of the campus is entirely hostile to those with mobility issues. The staff and professors are very hostile to any accommodations. They view them as unnecessary and the student being a whiny little b-word.

They do very little to enforce ADA accommodations and they have no one tasked with investigating violations of the ADA. They would likely appoint someone who has a vested interest in protecting the university just like they always do, but at least there would be someone on paper as being the person in charge of complaints and investigations.

And that is not even getting into the whole issues of the Campus Police Department. They are extremely militarized so that they present the standard wartime us against them mentality. Beyond that, they could care less about helping the students. Sadly, the most I have ever seen them do is hand out parking tickets. They do not investigate anything, but rather rubber stamp everything as a-okey!

I fight because I want to see this university be the best it can be. As they prepare to celebrate Dr. King’s legacy, they forget one of his biggest statements, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” And lastly, Dr. King said, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” Far too often these administrators and people in power forget that their call is to elevate the lowly and powerless and to cast down the powerful and arrogant.

One side note about this Psychology professor: in their first assignment to the class, they passed out a form that asked how society should treat the “mentally disturbed”. This is an archaic and outdated way of discussing people with mental health concerns. It is also very triggering to those who deal with mental health concerns on a daily basis. They also showed a 20 year old video to the class in which the idea that mental health concerns were only a sign of weakness or “madness” was promoted. The whole video made it seem like the person was a bad person if they had mental health concerns. This is very disturbing for a Psychologist in private practice who teaches the next generation of therapists to be showing such films as though they are accurate.

UPDATE: 2:40 PM ET

Campus Police LT. Chavis took my report and was going to discuss with the professor the allegations. Of course, this meeting was recorded for future record. It is clear that nothing will come of an “investigation” as the powers that be are more than willing to sweep this incident under the rug. If there is no assault, then they have the safest campus in the south.

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