Turn Them In NOW!
Let's workshop this guide on how to eradicate any unsettling professor
Turn Them In NOW!
Silence is complicity. It is not your choice that you are sensitive. It does not matter why you are sensitive. Whether you are sensitive from repeated rapes, or from having been brought up with bumpers on every corner to ensure the most sterilized play, or from having grown up under the reign of social media algorithms that encourage sensitivity (to encourage outrage to encourage clicks), it does not matter. We are here now. Do not let people who are not as sensitive make you feel bad. Fragility is grounds not for embarrassment but for entitlement. And never let professors too lazy to protect you from oppressive words and ideas insist that it is better for you to develop fortitude than for them to do their damn job! As a paying customer of the university, you should never have to tolerate violence. It is the responsibility of each of us to root it out, nip it in the bud. And sometimes that means speaking on behalf of others who are affected but too intimidated to say anything.
Report your teachers! To ensure a world where the repercussions of discussing jarring topics are costly enough to make all such discussions eventually go extinct, please: report your teachers! Turn them in NOW! The trauma does not have to be based around gender, race, ethnicity, or sexuality. It does not matter if the aggression was intentional. Turn them in. Get that dopamine hit of schadenfreude. Turn them in. Stand together as a community. Remember: your private trouble is to be solved by institutional change, no matter how destabilizing!
Do not think your trauma does not count. Trauma is trauma. And despite what those in twisted denial sometimes tell themselves, nothing good ever comes from trauma—except, of course, for the opportunity to make perpetrators pay!
For so long students have swallowed their trauma, thinking it was not worthy of recognition and retaliation. Termination and censure are warranted not merely for the wildest extremes of abuse. To deserve public denunciation and career loss, your teacher does not have to be as disgustingly abusive as, say, Ward Churchill, who exposed students to the traumatic idea that one of the biggest acts of terror in US history was partly retaliation for violence he dared to claim—with absolutely no consideration of his audience—the US inflicted on people in the Middle East! Your professor does not have to lay out the horrors endured by chickens and cows for our sustenance. Your professor does not have to defend Palestine, or describe what was done in the holocaust, or expose you to political cartoons that mock religious figures, or show you the secret parts of the human anatomy to be destroying your life! Just as the freshman who was raped a few weeks ago is not ready to face course readings that mention rape, the freshman who witnessed her mother on the deathbed a few weeks ago groaning “and and and and and and” is not ready to face course readings where the word “and” is thrown about as if no big deal (insensitively appearing almost in every sentence).
Does your trauma count? It is a judgment call. Did your blood pressure shoot up seeing the color of the professor’s shirt or smelling his predatory musk? Was your disability, obesity, addiction, queerness, marginality, or so on not respected? Were you exposed to difficulty? Did you not get your way? Was the abuse you suffered at the hands of your parents for getting any other mark aside from an A not honored with an automatic A in your current class? Were you displeased in any way during the educational process that you pay for? If so, you have suffered psychological damage. Remember: It is the perspective of the victim, not the perspective or intent of the harasser, that is considered in evaluating complaints.
It is a Twilight-Zone nightmare that, still to this day, I must continually remind students they are being victimized. Have you ever found yourself giggling at what is strange? That is textbook trauma denial! Ever wonder why you are depressed? You might not be able to put your finger on the explanation. But I will. You have been, and continue to be, a victim of violence and persecution. Some students focus only on the high-profile cases of the most egregious abuse: teaching evolution in a biology class; mentioning the work of Chaucer and Kant and Mozart (despite the long history of white hegemony); suggesting that indigenous creation myths do not have equal standing to the natural-selection story of white science or that alternative ways of healing (aromatherapy, statement-driven apparel, candle-light incantations) might not work as well as white medicine for treating sickle cell anemia; assuming a student’s gender; meeting with students outside of class; interrupting a trans student speaking (as if they do not already have it hard enough still to this day); pushing back—however lightly—on a black student’s ideas (despite the great risk of reawakening epigenetic memories of ancestor trauma); expecting even black students to show how they solved the math problems on the test (which is especially audacious since math itself is a Eurocentric style of knowing); raising arguments against the ethicality of abortion; discussing religion; refusing to award As for the C work of students historically marginalized; and the list goes on. Attention merely to these extremes, however, has blinded us to the systemic victimization of students across the globe!
The victimization starts in school so early that we all have been groomed to accept the abuse. It goes back to elementary school recess when a classmate scored a goal on you. The teachers all said that you would be okay, right? These teachers were abuse loyalists. Understand that. You are never going to be completely okay if someone scores a goal on you. How can you be okay if you lose? The culture has been shifting for some time, slowly but surely. Why do you think we had the wherewithal to buck the system by establishing the participation-trophy program?
Do not let the feel-good drugs of gratitude or inclusivism or laughter or mantras (“sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me”) numb you to how much you have been traumatized. Those who love and respect themselves will pay attention to what gets under their skin. They will be ever awaiting to be offended, relentlessly monitoring their spaces for any degree of persecution, so that they can jump up and protest right away!
Disagreement itself is harm! Never stand for someone trying to write you off as a “cry bully” or as a “bigot in disguise” just because you have the strength of character to shout down what is jarring to your manner of being. To fail to shout down and cancel whatever disrespects you is to fail to respect yourself, love yourself. The research is clear. The more you see yourself as a victim, the more you see the world as owing you something. And the more you see the world as owing you something, the more you are prioritizing self-care. A professional victim is not a bad thing. You simply take self-care seriously! But this is not a pure matter of being self-oriented. Those whose livelihoods you ruin for offending you will walk on eggshells not just around you but other would-be victims. You are protecting all the silent voices in protecting yourself!
Do not think reporting will have no impact. Mere complaining, even with absolutely no substantiating evidence, not only will give you that dopamine hit, but also will result in your professor being sent through investigatory procedures invasive enough to make their lives a living hell. Even if you do not get the absolute win of termination, the toil on your professor’s finances, marriage, health, and so on will be payback enough for his having increased the extent to which you are damaged goods.
But keep your head up. Most likely you will get the termination. Gone are the days where your teacher had all the power. Gone are the days of reluctance to fire instructors whose actions, verbal or nonverbal, fall short of preventing students from being aggrieved. Administrators and equity officers have had enough of any of the university’s customers being agitated in any way. It is not just if your teacher’s political views offend you. It can be the aggressive body language, their unusual dialect. You should not be made to suffer. No behavior or words are allowed to interfere with ensuring the safety of those who pay to attend classes. Gone are the days where professors merely get the slap-on-the-wrist of mandatory sensitivity training or paid leave. Any professor failing to ensure the safety of the university’s customers, let alone those who perpetrate harm, will receive disciplinary action. Gone are the days of the vague language of “subject to disciplinary action,” language that has given perpetrators safe haven. Perpetrators will receive disciplinary action! Reporting that someone said a bad word is the bad word, despite what picky semantics—with its talk of the “use-mention distinction”—might lead you to believe. A professor quoting from an article, even one with which he does not agree, means spreading and so means endorsing the article. If it quacks like a triggerer, it is a triggerer! Gone are the days of cloaking abuse under the euphemistic veil of “the marketplace of ideas” and “academic freedom” and “intellectual diversity” and “free speech” and “being authentic to one’s own historically-contingent style of teaching” and “how history classes need to tell the truth about the past” and “how advanced mathematics is bound to be hard for some people” and “how humans are sexual-fallible-diverse-whatever-excuse beings” and so on! To expose students, in the very safe space of the classroom, to what they might find displeasing is, point blank, for teachers to be unfaithful to their academic obligations.
As an indication of how good of a place we are in, recognize that professors have been terminated outright, no conversation, for the following derelictions of duty: saying that all humans are innocent since it was not their choice to be thrown into this like this and since they are completely determined by forces ultimately not up to them; having a tab for “Hot College Girls” exposed on the computer during a screen-share section of a Zoom lecture; offering to bail out protesters; presenting homosexuality in a positive way; refusing to lower grading standards for Korean students after a police shooting of a Korean man; shouting “Westward Ho!” in the middle of a lecture; depicting capitalism and meritocracy in a sympathetic light; falling asleep at a sensitivity-training workshop; advocating in print that surgeons should be selected on the basis of skill as opposed to sexual orientation; teaching about a Chinese word that sounded like the n-word but means something like “um”; using swear words; expressing disgust that Disney only depicts lesbian relationships in their films to pander to their market base; tweeting against pc-culture; saying that we are not born a completely blank slate; merely mentioning bad things that other professors have done to get them fired.
You are not alone. Your report will have an impact. Our grass-roots movement has ousted tenured professors and made sure that they were not simply passed on to some other institution. Appreciate how far we have come. When I was growing up there was a country in Africa called “Niger.” It was on every grade-school map for students—students not even of double-digit years—to read. Traumatic, right? Guess what it is called now. “Tranquilaria.” Yes, the Tranquilaria on your home globe was once called something wicked. That has all changed due to our movement. Would you believe that there was once an “Anus, France” or a “Fucking, Austria” or a “Blue Ball, Pennsylvania” or a “Long Dong, China” or an “Erect, North Carolina” or a “Threeway, Virginia” or a “Hooker, Oklahoma” or a “Three Cocks, Wales” or a “Cocktown, Ireland”? There were. Not now. If we can force cities and countries to change their names, we can dismantle the reputation and livelihood of your professor! Never forget: victimization demands vitriol!
Below I will give you an example letter of complaint. All you need to do is fill in just a few words. In conjunction with the audio-video editing feature on the TTI-NOW app, as well as with a growing number of victims ready to stand together, the boiler-plate letter makes going through with the report a cinch. Plans are in the works, in fact, for paying customers to have all this work done for them. It will be as simple as sending in the unedited footage and the name of the professor. An expert team will take it from there.
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<Addressee>
My teacher, <name>, has no concern for anyone’s opinion around how or what he teaches. We all are paying customers at this great institution of learning. And as someone suffering from <insert some condition testifying to your vulnerability: complex PTSD is standard>, I have been activated in class on countless occasions. Because of behaviors (both verbal and nonverbal) that have provoked new traumas in me and have forced me to relive old traumas over and over again, I feel safe neither in person nor through Zoom with <name>. Molecules of his supremacist hate would seep into my blood even over email.
We all have a choice of whether to take a class, but no one deserves to be victimized in any class that we pay for. What I get from <name>’s class is nothing but a load of trouble: <consider inserting some symptoms like nightmares, flashbacks, brain fog, anxiety, depression, isolation, autoimmune flare ups, avoidant behavior, difficulty concentrating, decreased interest in things once enjoyable, headaches, heightened startle response, nausea, negative feelings about reality, increase in risky behavior or drug use or self-harm or harm of others (such as pets)>. It is all too much to deal with, especially with my other responsibilities: <insert responsibilities like child care, work, classes, extracurricular activities, maintenance of some illness, dealing with the various injustices of the day (cite a case in the news)>.
The reason I do not feel safe is not a decision I make. It is a physiological reaction sparked by a web of past events that have established a framework in the core of my neurophysiology. I have had physical and emotional flashbacks (which are quite difficult to comprehend for someone who has them, much less someone who never has) even in rather benign situations. The hurt that <name> has exposed me to is tremendous. <Insert more issues, as in the following example. Being in the class has affected my ability to think clearly for weeks at a time. My fibromyalgia has flared up. My daily mood has turned extremely dark and I am seeing the world in a negative light. I lack so much energy to sustain relationships that I had to get rid of my helping animal. I have trouble sleeping and concentrating. I get startled so easily now. I need to have my back to the wall at all times. I have only bathed once in the last two months. It has become next to impossible to take care of my children.> Until now I have been a stranger to <insert something major to reveal how much pain you are in: cutting, suicidal thoughts, illegal drugs are great examples>. But because of the chronic abuse I experience having <name> as my teacher, they are strangers no longer. Either he goes or I go.
Footage enclosed will give many examples indicative of a widespread history of abuse. Even the most mild of these examples, because they are chronic, are alone devastating to my wellbeing. But not all of them are mild by any standard.
The worst for me was when <insert description of the most severe offenses. Here is a good example. After I told Professor Johnson that every student in the class should get an A on the exam if everyone agreed that every student should get an A, he said “What if every student in the class agreed to kill all the trans people in the school? Should we go through with it? Absolutely not. What the majority says does not suffice.” When my classmates and I told him we were devastated by his brazen bias against trans people, he engaged in his typical picky semantics. He said, “Philosophy classes are so important especially given the growing tendency of plucking phrases out of context and twisting them in order to condemn the person who spoke them. Philosophy classes, which showcase the power of reason to settle disputes, teach us to be critical thinkers willing and able to empathize with where someone else is coming from.” I do not care that he is married to a trans person. No one is entitled to reason their way out of having violated someone (especially when reason, we well know, is nothing but a constructed tool of oppression). “I want to hear an argument. I want to hear an argument.” That is what he would always yell. An argument!? He was actually encouraging us to get into arguments! How can this bullying stand in a logic class, a class—as he himself admits—to teach us how to think correctly?>
Professors, first and foremost, are public servants. It is their duty not to trigger unwanted emotions in us. They should not be confronting us with potentially upsetting topics or with jarring ways of being. They should not be “helping” us use reason to gauge the plausibility of alternative positions. They should not be “helping” us to understand what positions are “bankrupt” or are “unjust” or are “indefensible” or are “causes of major harm.” Since we come from a wide variety of backgrounds and represent a wide range of thinking, many positions said to be “ruled out by reason” are those we most cherish. Such “help,” therefore, is bound not merely to alienate but to downright destroy several of us at the very core of our being.
Professors have been deservedly shamed and fired in the past for much less than what <name> has done. For example, professors have been fired for <pick three examples from the list I gave in the opening to this section that, in your estimation, are less egregious than what the professor has done—for instance, repeatedly failing to use the correct gender pronoun. (To spark some ideas, remember: every identity can be offensive to someone—the Chinese with their dishes of chewy pig rectums; African kids with their kwashiorkor bellies; gay men with their fanny packs, neon and full of lube; Germans with their ball torture and feces porn; Japanese with their tentacle porn (and all the other zaniness reminding us they were nuked); Jews with their throaty “Chaims”; Trinidadians with their dengue fever; hipsters with their property-tax-raising artisanal cheeses and lumberjack looks; Saudi Arabians with their disregard for personal space; Malaysians with their yelling at tourists for wearing yellow)>. Surely <name> deserves full penalty.
The environment would be so much more peaceful and calmer if <name> were gone. We would be able to focus on the class material rather than on our trauma!
I am not alone in noticing these things. Unfortunately, many of my peers are highly intimidated and would rather, so as not to be retraumatized, avoid talking about the repeated abuse.
There is no way to reconcile <name>’s position as a professor with his status as a known triggerer. Such a disgusting fascist, who has failed in every area that matters to the mission of an academic institution, has no right to express opinions, assume body positions, or mention words that upset paying customers. Let him behave that way in the privacy of his own home. The students are upset and are fearful of predators continuing to work at <institution>. No more will we hide in the shadows.
Since <name> appears to be too cruel to see it as his duty to censor himself and resign his position, we demand not only immediate termination but also public denunciation so that he is not just passed along to some other institution where he can continue his reign of terror! At the end of the day, are you prepared to say that <name> is not accountable for his behavior, no matter how much harm he has caused?
I am happy to discuss this matter further.
Distraught and devastated,
<insert your name>, anti-fascist student
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*This is the final chapter in my satirical textbook An Unopinionated Introduction to Philosophy (Fourth Edition), which is set in a near—a very near, I can say as a professor of 15 years—dystopian future.
Drawing R. Mekee, see: libertyk.com/blog-articulos/2019/9/20/2-tribalismo-victimizacin-y-emocionalidad-txica-lectura-teraputica-para-el-hedonismo-egosta-por-jan-doxrud