It is not new; we have seen hyenas dressed in suits, showing up late to lecture rooms, handing out notes in monotones and acting as if they are the best thing to have happened to university students after Helb and cheap keg dens.
We have witnessed our friends cry in their rooms, shaking relentlessly. We have heard them complain about lecturers threatening to lower their exams marks because they did not, instead, lower their skirts or reciprocate their misguided feelings.
We have watched friends weep because they had to procure an abortion to save face. We have witnessed relationships crumble because a boyfriend is not comfortable with the late phone calls that the over-friendly lecturer makes prodding her about their next coffee date. We have seen schoolmates miss graduation after graduation, simply because they turned down an invite for an out-of-town trip.
They are everywhere.
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Every day, one female student feels closer to deferring or failing because a bespectacled professor with three wives and eighteen children threatened them. The system is set up against them. Because no one would believe a one-time victim with no tangible evidence over a lecturer who has served the university for years. Because they will ask for witnesses. Yes, because they expect you to walk around with cameras and voice recorders, just in case grown men in positions of power and privilege molest and proposition you.
Undoubtedly, some preying lecturers have gotten away with this terrible behaviour because of the lax state of some of our learning institutions. This coupled with the culture of silence on such sensitive issues buries everything. With power comes great responsibility but mostly, it just comes with power. Power to threaten. Power to mess with someone's future. Power to ensure things go one's way.
It is time to break this cyclic culture that has been there longer than corruption.
