Rabat – Women have been long subjected to sexual harassment whether in the street, workplace, or university campuses. The recent scandal at Morocco’s National School of Business and Management (ENCG) in Oujda provoked outrage among students and activists who broke their silence to denounce the “dirty” activities of professors.
Sexual harassment against female university students is now stirring a heated debate on social media platforms as the problem has come to light again. A former student at ENCG Oujda exposed a professor who initiated sexual discussions and made explicit proposals.
The perpetrator is reported to have blackmailed the student, threatening to ruin her academic year if she didn’t agree to give him “an oral-sex session.”
An under-reported reality
This is not the first time report of professors making such moves on their female students, but nobody knows exactly how prevalent sexual demands are in schools as most victims fail to report the harassment over fears of social shaming. Moroccan universities have also been accused of failing to adequately respond to accusations of sexual assault on their campuses.
A former ENCG student spoke anonymously to Morocco World News about a sit-in organized by ENCG students in Tangier in 2014. The protest sought to break the taboo, denouncing injustice regarding exam grades as well as shedding light on sexual harassment cases that prevailed at the school.
“Back then, many female students gathered in a sit-in and each of them spoke about her experience. They played voice notes aloud of professors who were harassing them. However, they couldn’t seek justice since the recordings were obtained illegally which might backfire on the victims,” she said.
Amid the 2014 protests at ENCG Tangier, a Facebook page titled “Say Stop to Contempt, Let’s Impose our Demands – ENCGT,” shared a testimony of former student Mariam B. who stressed, “The administration confirmed the existence of abuses but claimed to be unable to do anything.”
As she has also encountered harassment from a Marketing professor, Mariam said that she voice-recorded his moves on her but “The voice recordings I had made are unfortunately not admissible evidence in Moroccan law (according to several lawyers I consulted).”
She noted, “I was terribly disappointed when I was told that [the recordings] had no value to a judge and that the accused in question could sue me for charges without evidence, damaging his reputation.”
Mohammed Semlali, former President of UNESCO Tangier Club, showed support to female students at ENCG Tangier, stressing that he admired their courage to speak up.
2017 was another year that witnessed an alarming rise in the number of sexual assault allegations and related miscondut in Moroccan universities.
A ‘sex for grade’ epidemic
That year, Abdelmalek Saadi University in Tetouan and Cadi Ayyad University in Marrakech were the two main fronts of female students’ under-reported and barely investigated fight against what appears to “sex for grades” epidemic in many higher learning instutions across Morocco.
Most recently, reports that five professors at the Hassan I University in Settat were implicated in exploiting female students in exchange for good grades seem to have awakened many Moroccans to a bleak reality most female students have long known. Namely that sexual predation and the unabashed abuse of vulnerable students for grades has long been a key feature of life on many Moroccan campuses.
The five professors were charged with assault, violence, harassment, and incitement to corruption.
Earlier this year, accusations of mismanagement of sexual harassment cases made the rounds at Al-Akhawayn University in Ifrane (AUI), when the administration fired a homosexual teacher for allegedly inappropriate behavior after intimate pictures of the professor were leaked to both students and staff.
AUI students were angered over the insufficient resources AUI has committed to supporting victims of sexual assaults while on campus.
According to Article 503 – 1 of Morocco’s Penal Code, “Anyone who, by abusing the authority conferring on him, harasses others by using orders, threats, coercion or any other means, with the aim of obtaining favors of a sexual nature, shall be guilty of sexual harassment.”
Sexual harassment is subject to a prison sentence ranging from one to two years and a fine of MAD 5,000 ($538) to MAD 50,000 ($5,386).
But the problem, women’s rights activists have maintained for years, is that some legal loopholes (like the disqualification of irrefutable evidence obtained illegally) and the insufficient implementation of the existing laws, are far from the much-needed adequate response to what many female students and activists are quick to characterize as a rampant culture of undeterred toxic masculinity.
