{"id":36,"date":"2017-08-24T21:00:10","date_gmt":"2017-08-25T01:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/awm\/?p=36"},"modified":"2017-09-06T21:41:01","modified_gmt":"2017-09-07T01:41:01","slug":"a-note-about-sexual-harassment-megumi-asada-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/awm\/alumni-posts\/a-note-about-sexual-harassment-megumi-asada-17\/","title":{"rendered":"A Note About Sexual Harassment – Megumi Asada ’17"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The following letter was\u00a0written by Megumi Asada ’17 and distributed to all math\/stat majors who graduated in 2017 during senior week. They wrote this letter to remind students of the sexual harassment that goes on in the math community that no one talks about.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dear Math & Stat Majors in the Class of ’17,<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some of you are about to graduate\u00a0completely ignorant of how toxic Williams students, particularly math students,\u00a0have been towards me and many others here. Some of you might go on to careers in math, in academia, or other roles of leadership and that frightens me. It frightens me that you’ll leave here never having learned about some of the discrimination that your peers face on a regular basis.<\/p>\n

A classmate\u00a0in the math department\u00a0<\/strong>once told me that I should contact him if I ever became homeless and\u00a0ended up in sex work<\/strong>. I’m not making that up. This also wasn’t the most egregious of comments I received from him. Some were even more humiliating.\u00a0<\/strong>I’ve received sexual comments from multiple math students in Bronfman and Paresky, in crowded rooms<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>in the middle of the day. I was worried about speaking out for a while because I was worried that some of you would make excuses for my harassers or try to assassinate my character. I’ve even been too embarrassed to tell most of my friends about some of these comments. Quite frankly, I don’t care anymore. If you don’t believe me, that’s on you.<\/p>\n

For those of you who are shocked, I have many,\u00a0many\u00a0<\/em>other stories I’d be glad to share. I could honestly go on all day. If you’ve not heard any critical experiences of our department directly from students of color, from femme students, you have been shielded by a veil of positivity and ignorance<\/strong>. I’m not saying it’s wrong to have enjoyed your time here, but I hope it worries you that\u00a0there are gaping holes in your perspective, in what you have seen and heard.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll probably be sexually harassed again.<\/strong> Actually, if I continue in math,\u00a0I\u00a0know it will happen again<\/strong>. That’s something I’ve had to think about constantly when considering where to study, who to study with, and what I want to do with my future. There’s really nothing I can do about it. But there’s something you can do. If your friends start talking about other people\u00a0in sexual or predatory ways,\u00a0call them out on it.\u00a0<\/strong>Yeah, it’s kind of awkward doing that. But I promise you that it’s 1,000 times more awkward to be asked for your measurements in the student center at dinnertime. You can also\u00a0stop blaming people (mainly POCs)\u00a0<\/strong>for what you might consider to be divisive rhetoric. It’s not our rhetoric that’s divisive; it’s the reality that is. This reality makes it harder for many of us to fully thrive in math communities. I hope that wherever you end up you actively combat actions that belittle and ostracize gender and racial minorities. Otherwise you will be a passive player to the harm done around you.<\/p>\n

I hope this letter starts some much-needed conversations.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Megumi Asada ’17<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following letter was\u00a0written by Megumi Asada ’17 and distributed to all math\/stat majors who graduated in 2017 during senior week. They wrote this letter to remind students of the sexual harassment that goes on in the math community that … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1064,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alumni-posts"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/awm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/awm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/awm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/awm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1064"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/awm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/awm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":197,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/awm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions\/197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/awm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/awm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/awm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}