The Director, Centre for Gender Research, Advocacy and Documentation (CEGRAD), University of Cape Coast, Professor Eunice Fay Amissah has assured fresh students of the university’s commitment to providing safe environment for their academic journey.
She said UCC is a sexual harassment free campusand the well-being, safety and dignity of every student, most especially the freshmen are paramount to CEGRAD-UCC and by extension the University.
Speaking at a day workshop organized by the Centre in collaboration with the POS Foundation for first year students, Prof. Amissah indicated that the university will promote an environment where everyone feels safe, respected and empowered to learn without fear of harassment and discrimination.
According to her, Sexual harassment remains a serious problem in many institutions and it is a collective responsibility to create a culture that ensures that inappropriate behaviors are not tolerated within the university campus.
She told the freshmen “the workshop is designed to equip you with knowledge, with the resources that you need and practical strategies that you can have that will help you to recognize, to prevent and also to respond to sexual harassment when you are faced with them.”
At the workshop, university policies, sexual harassment, reporting mechanisms and support systems to protect students on the university campus were discussed.
The freshmen were also taught how can be active bystanders and allies in promoting a safe space within the university community.
“Remember your voice matters, your safety is not negotiable. Together we can build a campus culture and uphold mutual respect, consent and accountability,” Prof. Fay Amissah told the freshmen.
Centre for Gender Research, Advocacy and Documentation (CEGRAD), UCC in collaboration with POS Foundation held workshop on the theme: Safe Spaces: Preventing Sexual Harassment on campus.
At the workshop, Prof. Amissah urged the students to report every issue of victimization or any form of harassment to CEGRAD for immediate action.
She emphasized that CEGRAD will first take the report and forward the reported cases to the sexual harassment committee which sits and educates on the cases.
“We know that we live in an environment where the issue of power dynamic is very high and many students are afraid to report cases because of victimization or because of retaliation” She said, and added “When they come and they report and the case is taken up, if the perpetrator goes ahead to victimize or blame or even retaliate, it’s also another offense and that they should come back and report and then a case will be made again.”
Meanwhile, the Founder of POS Foundation, Jonathan Osei Owusu cautioned individuals engaging in sexual harassment to refrain from such act stressing that no one has control over the body of others.
He said the workshop was to introduce the freshmen to the University’s sexual harassment policy to enable the students to live by the policy and become corporate of any sexual harassment act.
Mr. Owusu emphasized that their aim is to review five universities’ sexual harassment policies to improve effectiveness, create awareness, and establish better reporting systems to protect students who report harassment by lecturers or other authorities.
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Source: Eric Sekyi/ATLFMNEWS
