rphilos
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rphilos reacted to a post in a topic:
What do you do while proctoring an exam?
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rphilos reacted to a post in a topic:
What do you do while proctoring an exam?
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rphilos reacted to a post in a topic:
Time blocking
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rheya19 reacted to a post in a topic:
sexual harassment?
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LilAstro reacted to a post in a topic:
Low GRE score
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guest56436 reacted to a post in a topic:
GPA and GRE
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The programs you're aiming for generally recruit people from the top 1%, if not the top 0.1 or 0.01%, of academic ability. Even if it were possible for you to be admitted, would you really feel good about being in an environment where your peers will be much more academic? It sounds like you would be a valuable member of a lab as a technician. You don't need a PhD to be a technician.
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It's a difficult call. Your GRE scores are obviously in the right range for top philosophy programs, including MIT. For anyone but a logician there would be no reason to think about retaking. Some logic programs might expect Q a few points higher. I get the impression that the Group in Logic and Methodology of Science at Berkeley, for example, cares about your math-related GRE scores. But I would think that your results are good enough for admissions committees to take your application seriously. If your other credentials demonstrate your competence in math and logic, will retaking the test and doing a little better really make a difference? Maybe it would be worth retaking the test only if it's not going to take time away from other activities that would help your chances of admission. If you do take it again you can be relaxed, knowing that even if you mess up you have perfectly fine backup scores.
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rphilos reacted to a post in a topic:
How do YOU prefer to take course/lecture notes?
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rphilos reacted to a post in a topic:
SAGE making videos: Real or Fake email?
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rphilos reacted to a post in a topic:
If I feel like the quality of education and students in my program is poor, should I leave?
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rphilos reacted to a post in a topic:
POIs Googling you
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rphilos reacted to a post in a topic:
Postdocs and undergraduate legacy for your kids
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kingspeech reacted to a post in a topic:
sexual harassment?
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kingspeech reacted to a post in a topic:
sexual harassment?
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kingspeech reacted to a post in a topic:
sexual harassment?
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kingspeech reacted to a post in a topic:
sexual harassment?
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kingspeech reacted to a post in a topic:
sexual harassment?
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jarrodthomas reacted to a post in a topic:
sexual harassment?
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NotAlice reacted to a post in a topic:
sexual harassment?
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If discussion aimed at getting at the truth bothers you, why are you studying for a PhD? Almost everyone I know (including myself) is partnered with a classmate. Fortunately, no sexual harassment policy is so insane as to say that a classmate merely asking another out could be harassment.
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I think this is an unfair comment about me, since I specifically said that you are justified in making a complaint against the person who harassed you. I even suggested that you tell his wife what happened, which would probably be worse for him than a Title IX complaint.
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rphilos reacted to a post in a topic:
sexual harassment?
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Is "mental gymnastics" just your way of describing "rational thought." If there's something wrong with my arguments, quote what I wrote and explain why it's wrong.
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I have already said that you are justified in making a complaint, based on the information you revealed. But I'm disturbed that you put scare quotes around the word "unfairly" to describe the false accusations made against the USC football player. In that case, a neighbor who didn't know the facts made a complaint, the girlfriend told Title IX officers that she was not abused, and the boyfriend was punished anyway. Now the supposed victim in that case hired a lawyer to defend her boyfriend. If you struggle to see the "unfairness" of that, and the damage that can result from false accusations, that is a problem.
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Guilty as charged. It's very sad that you and some others on this forum don't care much about morality, and are unable to follow my arguments. I thought this was supposed to be a message board for scholars.
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Good comeback. I guess you won the argument.
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A large percentage of people are not capable of learning social norms well enough to always avoid inadvertently making others uncomfortable. This article talks about a professor (on the autism spectrum) who was driven to suicide by the pain of continually offending his colleagues: http://quillette.com/2017/07/18/neurodiversity-case-free-speech/ You keep saying that reports to a Title IX office aren't "accusations." I'm not sure what you mean. American Heritage Dictionary defines "accusation" as "A charge of wrongdoing that is made against a person or other party." The only reason to submit a report to a Title IX office is to inform them of some sort of wrongdoing. You say a Title IX investigation is "is not a disciplinary process." I guess an "investigation" is not a "disciplinary process" per se, but Title IX investigations can lead to serious, formal punishments. And, as a matter of fact, there are countless examples of Title IX committees committing travesties of justice (I gave one example above where Title IX officers expelled a USC student from the football team for abusing his girlfriend while the girlfriend kept protesting that he was innocent).
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telkanuru, can you please provide evidence that I caricatured TakeruK? TakeruK said that you "should not have to justify or...determine whether or not the action they are complaining" about fits the definition of sexual harassment. They say: "If anyone feels that something is amiss, they should make a report/complaint" and "the Title IX coordinator decides that the report/information is actionable." TakeruK explicitly says that you should make a complaint even when you were offended by someone who "just doesn't know the social norms," which in practice means disproportionately reporting people who are on the autism spectrum or are for some reason socially impaired.
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I said that accusations of sexual harassment should be justified. TakeruK objected. I explained why I think it is morally wrong to make unjustified accusations. Multiple people (e.g., @NoirFemme) down-voted my posts saying that we should be careful about making accusations potentially based on false information or innocent misunderstandings. The vast majority of the people commenting on this thread said that the behavior described by OP in her original post was a clear-cut case of sexual harassment, even though the facts given in the original post did not support that verdict. Making false accusations is itself a horrendous, socially destructive thing to do. What I am trying to "accomplish" with my back and forth with TakeruK is to encourage people to rethink their immoral position that false accusations aren't a big deal.
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I never said anything about a possible victim of sexual harassment having to "confront" her harasser. I merely said that "You should only make accusations if you are justified in doing so," and that feeling "uncomfortable" is not, per se, a justification. Suppose a woman turns down an unattractive classmate for a date, he never makes advances toward her again, but she feels awkward and "uncomfortable" being in the same room with him. I wouldn't deny her feeling, but she would not be justified in filing a complaint. Filing a complaint and letting the Title IX office sort out whether wrongdoing occurred would itself be very wrong. As to whether or not Title IX investigations are technically "criminal charges," this is an irrelevant semantic issue. Title IX investigations can lead to criminal charges and all sorts of other serious penalties, such as being expelled or loosing your job. Some people do engage in sexual harassment, and bad things ought to happen to them. But unjustified reports/charges made to the Title IX office lead bad things to happen to good people. Look at this story: A neighbor witnessed a USC football player and his girlfriend roughhousing, misinterpreted it as assault, and reported it to the university. USC's Title IX office expelled the man from the football team, even though his girlfriend repeatedly told the Title IX investigators that she had not been abused. Now the girlfriend hired a lawyer to try to compel the Title IX office to accept the fact that she wasn't abused, and make them stop punishing her boyfriend. This is what happens when you take all accusations at face value without asking for justification.
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Based on the details that OP has now revealed, I agree that she was sexually harassed. However, your suggestion that you should "not have to justify" charges (related to sexual harassment or anything else) before making them because the justice system will conduct an investigation is grossly immoral. If someone feels uncomfortable because they were asked out by someone they're not interested in, or if they misinterpret an off-color joke, it would be seriously wrong to make any sort of complaint against that person, even if they are eventually vindicated. Merely being accused of sexual harassment is a traumatic and stigmatizing experience. You should only make accusations if you are justified in doing so. (In OP's case she is justified.) In my description of what constitutes sexual harassment, I mentioned "persistent unwanted advances" as one kind of sexual harassment. I said sexual harassment could also involve "an explicit or implicit threat, inappropriate touching, or something along those lines," which could all be "single occurrence."
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orange turtle - Thanks for context. That is worse than what you originally described. It seems like he's guilty of propositioning you in a crude and inappropriate way. Is it possible that he's on the autistic spectrum or otherwise impaired at reading social situations? Still, so far he's only made one unambiguous advance, and you told him no. If he does something similar again, then I think it would count as "persistent" unwanted advances and it would be bona fide sexual harassment. Maybe you could tell his wife what happened...I'm sure she would make sure it doesn't happen again.
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It's very disturbing how almost all the commenters here are saying that this was definitely sexual harassment. I'm not saying it wasn't. But based on the description of the events given by OP, it's far from clear that it was. Both men and women sometimes receive romantic/sexual overtures that they do not reciprocate. It does not become "sexual harassment" merely by virtue of the fact that the person who does the propositioning is employed by the same university where you happen to be a student. Sexual harassment involves persistent unwanted advances, an explicit or implicit threat, inappropriate touching, or something along those lines. OP doesn't mention anything like. It's suspicious that OP's advisor--who presumably knows the facts better than any of us--told her that it wasn't harassment. Now OP asks if she should try to ruin this man's life by having him labeled/punished as a sexual harasser. All we've been told is that a man propositioned a woman and she turned him down. If that's the whole story, then OP's advisor was right.