As many of you have probably experienced firsthand, I get asked about my co-op by friends and family, especially the one I had abroad last fall term. Most people ask about my travels and what it was like living in a country under political strain. They talk about how scared they were for me and I assure them that it was lots of fun and I never felt uncomfortable. This is a total lie.
Last September, I was nervously in line to board a plane with other students from my school who would be my coworkers for the next term. It wasn’t my favourite job, which cannot totally be blamed on the job duties, but more so on what happened near the end of the term.
It always seems like any other day until something happens. We were sitting in our office and discussing some criticism from our supervisor when one student made a generalization about how little we all worked. I took offense. I had created and formatted most of our presentations, but I knew they would disagree. So instead of pointing out the work I had done, I asked that student to not say “we” when talking about how much work “we” did, because that person didn’t know how hard the rest of us were working. Then they snapped. They stood up and turned to me, yelling at me from across the table. Screaming hurtful things about my family, upbringing, and pretty much anything else that they thought would hurt me. I tried everything that I could do to stay calm and not show that I was hurting. My face felt like my blood was boiling underneath my skin, my heart felt like it was about to beat out of my body, and my hands were shaking, but no one noticed. Later, one of the three other students that was present said that he was impressed with how I acted. I let the screaming student continue because I was using everything, all my self-control, to keep a calm exterior. Then the student who had been screaming at me paused, and I asked if they were finished. They responded with more insults, maybe because they hadn’t visibly broke me yet. They then started on the student next to me, and how she followed what I did. I couldn’t let them continue, and interrupted, saying: “Leave [Student] out of this; if you are going to be rude to me, focus on me”. “Rude!” I gave them fuel to continue for another round. When they finished their tirade, two of the other students left. They abandoned me.
It wasn’t unusual for this co-worker to say outrageous things about the rest of us, but this was simply the climax and the last straw. I sat there for maybe three minutes and drafted an email to my co-op advisor. Then I could feel my walls about to come down and got up to “fill my water bottle”. I got to the end of the hall before tears started to pour out. I ended up in the meeting room on an intercontinental phone call with my mother. After having her calm me down and agree that what just happened was crazy and amazingly inappropriate for a work place, I then more calmly but still sobbing went to my supervisor, who allowed me to have the day off and basically said “[shrug] these things happen.” Wow. I emailed my co-op supervisor writing to officially report this.
The next day, everyone acted like nothing had happened—and this was how they acted for the rest of the term. I was stunned. My advisor wrote back to me and to my attacker. My advisor and I spoke many times, and they assured me they would take action. At the same time, however, they also said there wasn’t much to be done, which shocked me: I had witnesses, after all. One student representing the university verbally harassed another student to the point where the student who had been attacked (me) felt uncomfortable about where they lived, worked, and everywhere else in this foreign country…and there was nothing to be done about that?
Luckily for me, it was near the end of the term, but that meant it was hard for my advisor to do anything that would take a long time, so we paused and continued the discussion the next term, after the holiday. On April 10th ,2016 I was informed that my case was moved to the Dean of the faculty of the student about whom I had lodged the complaint. That Dean has yet to get back to me.
I have had to seek counselling for this incident; even now when I walk around campus, I don’t feel comfortable. When I see someone who looks similar, or talks similarly, or uses some of the phrases the student screamed at me, I am triggered. As I am writing this, I have tears streaming down my face.
I am emotional about this. I am not broken. I am none of the things I was called, but I am still affected. I have gone over the events many times, looking for what I could have done differently to prevent this person from verbally attacking me or to get a resolution that would censure this student for their inappropriate and hurtful actions. The University has done nothing to hold this student accountable for his unconscionable behaviour toward me and the other student, but I would not have done anything differently, I stood up for myself and for someone else that was on the receiving end of their diatribe. Sometimes it is really hard to fake it when people ask about that co-op term, but I learned in an interview when they ask if you have had issues with coworkers and how you handled it, employers don’t want the whole ten-minute-long truth.
When I spoke with my advisor, she asked what outcome I wanted from this. My answer was that I wanted this sort of thing be less likely to happen again for anyone working with the student. I don’t know exactly how that would work, but I never want anyone to have to feel the way this student’s actions made me feel. I can’t describe the feelings during the incident, or even now retelling it. My advisor said at one point that because it wasn’t physical harassment it was unlikely anything would be done about it. I think that this is awful, and I know a lot of people wouldn’t report it, but I am glad I did, and I hope if anything similar happens to you that you will recognize it as harassment and report it to try to prevent it from happening to others.
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