Raya Sarkar's list of alleged sexual harassers comes back to haunt Chennai's Asian College of Journalism

The snowball started rolling in October 2017, after law student Raya Sarkar launched her 'Hall of Shame' list where students anonymously named teachers they felt had sexually harassed them.

Sadanand Menon, the then-professor of arts and culture at Chennai's Asian College of Journalism (ACJ), was openly accused of sexual harassment for the first time.

Later in January 2018, a former student of ACJ penned a detailed account of her experience of sexual harassment on The News Minute, describing her "emotional repercussions" from the incident.

"One of the people on that list was a mentor of mine, someone I respected deeply until the day I came to acknowledge that he had once, at the time that I was working with him, sexually harassed me," wrote the accuser in her piece.

She clarified here that the incident had happened a few years earlier.

She also, however, never mentioned ACJ or Menon anywhere in her article...but people aware of the list and other former/fellow students of ACJ followed the bread crumbs.

This former student's account went on to open a can of worms. More and more people -- students of ACJ and other institutes Menon was associated with -- became vocal about being sexually harassed by Menon.

Eventually, the former student lodged a formal sexual harassment complaint with ACJ's Internal Complaints Committee (ICC). She claimed that Menon had made untoward sexual advances on her while she was working for him as an intern on a project.

The case, however, hit a dead end with the ICC, as the student claims, refused to take action against Menon for the following reasons: one, the alleged sexual harassment happened when she was no longer a student at ACJ; and two, it did not happen within the college premises.

At the time of this complaint, Menon was still teaching at ACJ.

After the former student's complaint, a group of ACJ students from the 2017-18 batch reached out to the ICC with a fresh complaint demanding "a more robust policy against sexual harassment".

This was followed by a meeting between the student body and the ICC board. Here, the students say, the "attitude of some members towards the allegations against Menon were very troublesome".

Then, this Tuesday, dismayed by the outcome of the meeting, the students put out a public statement to talk about the sexual harassment case against Menon at large.

"We have decided to come forward with this public statement after months of back and forth with the administration. We have been disheartened by their attitude, which lacks empathy and shows little understanding of the complexities of sexual harassment. A liberal, progressive institution such as ACJ, which trains journalists to be discerning, sensitive, and to speak truth to power, should listen when they themselves are being spoken to" said the release on blogging website Medium.

"We deeply regret the nature of this meeting, but given the hostility of the committee and their staunch refusal to engage with us, calling attempts at dialogue by students 'a war against the college', we feel it was the only way to raise the above points," it said.

The release further claims that after the meeting, on March 28, they received a letter from the ICC "dismissing the complaints against Sadanand Menon as defamatory". It is also said to have accused the students of making "shockingly wild allegations" and "character assassination".

Also read: Women at Nike said 'Me Too' to drive out male harassers