1 vice-principal sacked, another demoted after complaints of sexual harassment

Special panel to look into complaints; staff, students say too little, too late

MUMBAI : Taking note of allegations of harassment by teachers and students, the Rizvi College of Architecture in Bandra on Monday asked one vice-principal to resign and demoted another.

The complaints against the two included sending inappropriate text messages to women students, commenting on their attire and threatening students with low marks for protesting against the messages. Teachers had threatened to resign if the college did not take punitive action against the two.

While the vice-principals were not available for comments, the college management told HT they have set up a grievance committee to probe the complaints. “The management has already taken action against the erring professors. We hope to initiate reformative action soon, based on the report filed by the committee. We won’t accept such behaviour on campus,” said AH Rizvi, president and founder, Rizvi Education Society.

Teachers said it took a long struggle to get the college to punish the professors. “The management has been avoiding any serious discussion on this topic for weeks, even though the issue was highlighted on August 6. It was

only after five of our faculty members submitted their resignation letters last week that the management agreed to take action against the accused,” said one of

the teachers. .

“What’s worse, one of the professors holds the post of vice-principal in-charge, despite not being qualified for it. Both have been known to harass senior staff members on a regular basis,” said another professor.

Apart from repeated complaints to the college principal and management, complaints have also been made to the grievance and women’s development cells of University of Mumbai (MU) and the Council of Architecture (COA).

“As the management kept promising action, students waited. The student who faced a lot of harassment was scared about the stigma, if she took the matter to the police. Sadly, the management took many weeks to come to a decision,” said a member of the students’ council.