Serious Business

Alright, boys and girls, here's an important departure from the usual. Y'all know I'm not the most serious person in the world, but I just had a chat with my law professor and I think this is worth sharing.

Most of you guys know I had a hard time during undergrad. Let me rephrase that: most of y'all know I had multiple hard times in undergrad. It was one thing after another, every semester, every day, every hour. I can only really recall one or two periods of college when I wasn't miserable 75% of the time because of an unexpected death, problems with my advisers, my family going batcrap crazy, my roommate trying to kill me with her pet hair, mold in my apartment; you name it, I dealt with it. But there is one thing--one incident in particular that, so many years later, still really sets me off.

Have you ever been harassed?

I'm not talking, "Johnny asked me out yesterday; as if I'd ever go out with him ew." That isn't harassment. That's slightly annoying, a little bit funny, and really unfortunate if you're Johnny, but it's not harassment. I'm talking "to trouble, torment, or confuse by continual, persistent attacks, questions, etc." Because for a period of time, I was.

I won't go into details. Most of y'all probably already know them. If you don't, shoot me a message and we'll talk. The point is, I filed a complaint and got told, "He's just being immature." I insisted that some higher ups be spoken to, was promised something would happen, and then I never ever heard anything about it again.

And the next year when I returned to campus, one of the first things I saw was that absolutely nothing had been done.

And according to my law professor, whom I spoke with today about the situation and what maybe could have been done since we were discussing anti-harassment laws in class, if something had happened to me I could have sued the university for gross negligence and a boatload of other fancy law terms that I won't bother naming.

I will definitely be mentioning this in the letter I'm writing to President Barker explaining to him why I will never ever ever donate one red cent to Clemson University. EVER. And he'll be damn lucky if in the future I even admit that's where I went to college.

I guess my point is if someone is bothering you, or hurting you, or generally making you uncomfortable, find a way to document it.

And if it doesn't stop, you go get yourself a lawyer.