Doorslam/Disappearance/Denunciation

From our experiences and studies of other investigative processes, we believe that even if a reviewer was confronted by a white male professor who boasted about and detailed his retaliation against "complainants" of harassment and discrimination, and who then physically threatened the reviewer, the review report would not reveal this and would not recommend disciplinary action against that professor nor remedies for any students/complainants. As Marilyn Callahan, Special Advisor to the Vice-President, Academic and Provost on Faculty Women's Issues 1993-94 and co-author of the internal review which reported May 11, 1993 wrote after that summer: "The meat-in-the-sandwich dilemma. How to advise both the administration and women without betraying confidences or strategies of either? This dilemma arose several times during the last year. Depending on how I explained the situation, I could appear either as an apologist or a mole. In individual meetings with women who were at odds with the administration, I was in a position to advise them about how best to approach the situation and then in a position to advise the administration about how best to approach them [the women]."¹⁸

At this time, one individual student in the department of political science did "name names" in alleging sexual harassment. After moving through the "I hear you, Are you sure? Are you sure you want to go through with this?" and distancing stages, the Director of Equity Issues made a finding of harassment on 28 July 1993. This could have been a victory; however, the president, who is the final authority in all equity decisions at the University of Victoria (by provincial legislation and commonly elsewhere), overturned the equity office findings and dismissed the complaint.¹⁹ The "neutrality" of the administration becomes increasingly clouded as the interest in managing harassment as a quiet dead-end equity issue becomes more and more transparent. Despite seeking remedy by filing a complaint, we experience more hostility, more invective. Although the Director of the Equity Office found evidence of harassment, thus validating women's experiences, in the final phase the door still slammed shut.

Whether a formal individual complaint is found valid through the equity office or a collective position validated by an internal review committee, once men have rejected and overturned the findings we are told the matter has been resolved and professional women, previously sympathetic, disappear. Accepting the sexist posturing of legal remedy, equity women left us on the outside and them on the inside. In contrast to an earlier article on being swamped by complaints, the equity office carefully stated on January 28, 1994, that "the increase in complaints shows that people are becoming more aware that there is a process for dealing with these issues."^2o