Who Reports Mandatory Reporters?

• Published in: Theatre topics 2019-07, Vol.29 (2), p.161-168
• Main Authors: Gerdsen, Jenna, Walker, Jonelle
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Asian Americans; Assaults; Collaboration; College campuses; College students; Colleges & universities; Conferences (Gatherings); Cultural heritage; Employees; Enrollments; Equity; Gossip; Graduate students; Higher education; Independent Study; Labor; Negotiation; Reporting requirements; Research Assistants; School Policy; Self concept; Sex crimes; Sexual harassment; Silence; Teachers; Teaching Methods; Theater
• ISSN: 1054-8378; 1086-3346; 1086-3346
• DOI: 10.1353/tt.2019.0022

Within that context, we attended these policy meetings with a finely tuned radar for the institutions that regulate a veil of silence around abuse and how we are constantly implicated in them. [...]it was in that meeting that we realized that theatre graduate students occupy an especially precarious position in the larger discourse on sexual harassment and assault, one with greater implications for this #MeToo moment. On the public stage, we have recently witnessed how such detrimental crossings and their fallout impact the general public’s awareness about sexual harassment and assault. Since October 2017, through the #MeToo movement, thousands of people have stepped forward to break their silences regarding decades’ worth of sexual abuse and harassment.1 We contend that prior to this moment, there was never any “silence” around sexual harassment in any workplace environment; instead, the discourse on sexual harassment was simply inaudible to the dominant auditors. Through this note we hope to demonstrate the constantly shifting boundaries of our amorphous roles as student/teacher, novice/colleague, assistant/friend, responsible department employee/vulnerable graduate student. Because we must navigate all these roles and the multifaceted power dynamics among various race, gender, and sexual identities while conscious of the importance and precariousness of reputations in academia, it is no wonder that “how close is too close” is not a simple question. [...]university mandatory-reporting policy mandates the breaking of silence in order to avoid legal repercussions—a separate problem. [...]graduate students, and particularly graduate students working on academic theatre productions, are still left to rely upon the unstable strategy of gossip to negotiate the institutions of academe.