How public mobilisation helped two sexual harassment whistleblowers get back to college

Two whitlesblower students — one education giant — one-year long campaign 

And what a victory! 

Last year in November, two students at Symbiosis Law School – Hyderabad (SLS-H) were thrown out the college campus for two (among many other of their rebellious acts) reasons — calling out a professor for sexual harassment and demanding more efficient Internal Complaints Committee (ICC). 

A year later, they are back! Let us take you through how (in)conveniently Symbiosis allowed the two students on the campus again

Pt. 1: Signature petition

Jhatkaa.org started a campaign asking the college to start an ICC investigation into the case and take the students back with immediate effect. 

Pt. 2: Member Email/Call to Symbiosis 

Member calls to M.S. Shejul, Registrar, SLS and Dr Vidya Yeradevkar, Principal Director, SLS is done telling members to ask for an update 

Pt.3: A bunch of letters to

• MS Shejul, Registrar, Symbiosis International (asking him to take the students back on campus) 
• Maneka Gandhi, Minister of Women and Child Development (asking her to intervene in the case) 
• Rekha Sharma, Chairperson of the National Commission for Women (NCW) 
• Dhirendra Pal Singh, Chairperson of University Grants Commission (UGC) 
• Prakash Javdekar, Minister of Human Resource and Development (MHRD)

 

Not-so-polite Twitter storms

Everybody’s favourite — Artivism 

Supremely talented and brave illustrator Sharath Ravishankar depicted Snigdha’s and Apoorva’s journey with a comic strip…

…and it turned heads 

…and got the media mobilisation to spread the word. 

 

Here’s what we got: 

It’s a VICTORY!