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Sexism exists everywhere, but it can be especially rampant in environments where women and nonbinary people are underrepresented. This places academia, and particularly a STEM-dominated institution like MIT, in a prime position for sexism to manifest at all levels.

We can see this issue reflected in MIT’s results from a 2019 survey conducted by the Association of American Universities (AAU). At MIT, 47% of female graduate students - nearly double the rate of male graduate students - and 62% of TGQN (transgender, genderqueer, and/or non-conforming) graduate students have experienced sexual harassment since entering graduate school. Out of those graduate women who have faced sexual harassment, 35% of them were harassed by a faculty member, 83% never reported to an office or program about it, and 58% reported suffering negative personal consequences from that harassment. While the magnitudes alone are troubling, we find that the situation is worse at MIT than at other peer institutions in some aspects. For example, the survey discovered that graduate students at MIT are more than three times as likely to suffer sexual harassment at the hands of their advisor, compared to the national average. These statistics show there is a massive problem on our campus.

Sexism manifests in many different ways, from seemingly small, everyday behaviors to systemic forms of exclusion and marginalization. It can look like a graduate student who always comments on a female colleague’s appearance in a way that is inappropriate and obviously targeted, or judgement of a woman’s values based on how she chooses to express herself outwardly. Sexism is a professor who refuses to learn and use someone’s preferred pronouns, or unknowingly assigns more non-research lab tasks to their female students than to their male students. Sexism is also deep, structural barriers as well.

Even if you aren’t directly targeted by harassment, abuse, or discrimination, it will still have a negative effect on you and your colleagues by creating a more hostile working environment and by depriving us all of the full potential of our colleagues who are targeted. There is no place for chauvinism, harassment, or discrimination of any kind in our insititute. It is in our hands to fight against these issues in ourselves and our colleagues until we have created a new culture at MIT which reflects the potential of so many brilliant minds coming together, with respect and dignity for all.

As in society generally, racism at MIT takes many different forms, and it is exacerbated by power imbalances, particularly the severe power imbalance between advisor/PI/professor and advisee/graduate researcher/student. Extensive institute and departmental surveys emphasize that experiences for URM students at MIT are alarming. The 2018 MIT Climate Survey showed that URM graduate students reported bias/discrimination as a source of stress at rates three times higher than non-URMs. Similarly, the 2019 Graduate Enrolled Student Survey claimed that URM students reported cost-of-living, self-confidence, and social-isolation as barriers to their academic progress at nearly twice the rate of non-URMs. URM students also did not feel as if they were part of the climate at MIT and believed they needed to work harder than their peers to be perceived as legitimate at twice the rate of non-URMs.

We can find additional examples of racism from the BGSA Petition to Support Black Lives at MIT, some of which are listed below.

• “Department staff told students during orientation to immediately call the police on anyone walking in the building who ‘didn’t look like they were students’”

• “As a GRA, I've had to call for medical transports for students and the cops show up (armed) every time and make unfounded accusations and verbally abuse students in the name of ‘collecting facts’”

• “MITPD would always establish a secure perimeter around MIT property during Cambridge Carnival, which made me feel like I couldn't be Carribean and affiliated with the Institute at the same time.”

• “My friend knocked on his neighbor's door in a graduate dorm. She called the police on him. The police refused to believe he was a student and made him exit the building and questioned him.”

Our campaign has set out an ambitious set of demands to tackle issues of sexism and racism at MIT. However, that is not the end of our fight and we recognize that students face other forms of margnalization, harassment, and discrimination which are not directly or extensively addressed in our current demands. The campaign aims to fight most directly on the issues of racism and sexism at this time and to do so not in a manner which provides for narrow or temporary solutions, but which instead seeks the root cause of these issues and aims to address them. We are working to build a framework for community engagement, accountability, and student empowerment which will lay the groundwork for future campaigns which will focus on other forms of oppression on our campus.

It is also worth noting that there is significant overlap between different forms of marginalization across different dimensions of identity. For example, a disproportionate number of URM students are also first generation or low income (FGLI) students; as a result, our demand to introduce fee waivers for URM applicants which are not means-tested would support some FGLI applicants who may currently fall through the cracks. While this is certainly not a replacement for advocacy which is fully centered on FGLI students, it does demonstrate how these demands make progress towards addressing other forms of marginalization. In a similar vein, our demands to strengthen or introduce new institutional sites of student advocacy, such as department-level DEI officers, are not inherently limited to combating racism and sexism, and they can be utilized as points of leverage in future student advocacy efforts.

We hope to work with any and all dedicated student advocates who want to improve our campus. Please reach out to us if you would like to speak about how we can work together to fight for the issues that you care about. Your perspective is incredibly important to us, especially if you feel that we have left it out of our discussion so far.

While harassment and discrimination may not have directly impacted you, it likely has affected the lives of your colleagues; it has prevented many people from ever even becoming your colleagues. The extra burden of harassment and discrimination detracts from mental and physical health, which can have severe ripple effects on career and educational achievement. It also causes feelings of betrayal, which can lead to targets of harassment and discrimination withdrawing from their work in order to protect themselves.

These issues ultimately affect everyone. As is stated in the NASEM Report, “the cumulative effect of sexual harassment is significant damage to research integrity and a costly loss of talent in academic science, engineering, and medicine. Women faculty in science, engineering, and medicine who experience sexual harassment report three common professional outcomes: stepping down from leadership opportunities to avoid the perpetrator, leaving their institution, and leaving their field altogether.” From our experience, we know this is true for racism and other forms of exclusionary chauvinism and discrimination. This loss in talent prevents academia from being a true meritocracy. As an institution, we believe in a collaborative scientific endeavour in which we support each other to reach new achievements together. We cannot thrive in an environment where individuals and groups are undercut by prejudice and it is the duty of all of us to welcome all into science equally.

Harassment and discrimination serve as additional barriers into a field that disproportionately affect racial, national, sexual, and gender minorities. We should all strive to create an academic environment in which truly anyone can succeed, regardless of their background, the prejudice of those around them, and, perhaps most importantly, the structural impediments that face marginalized groups today. If we want to achieve a diverse and inclusive environment, we need to actively work to break down these barriers.

Additionally, our own structures must value equity for us to justify our work. We cannot expect the research enterprise of MIT to truly make progress on reducing global suffering and inequity if our practices consistently fail to address the abuses of power and hostility on our own campus. Our university must ensure that our work is produced in an environment which is consistent with our values and our stated goals, or those goals will be lost. We all believe in making a better world, but change must start at home.

2 in 5 MIT graduate will experience sexual harassment or violence, according to the 2019 AAU survey. (This refers to sexual harassment from anyone on campus, including classmates, advisors, and staff.) While this rate is close to the national average, MIT advising stands out as particularly bad. stands out as a particularly poor environment for suffering sexual harassment at the hands of an advisor. Graduate sudents report that they suffer from sexual harassment at the hands of their advisor at a rate 3x higher compared to the national average. This type of harassment and discrimination across power imbalance is even more damaging and support a toxic culture, as described below (“What about student-to-student problems?”).

The current offices at MIT, previously the Title IX and Bias Response office and now the Institute Discrimination and Harassment Response office (IDHR) are stretched far too thin. This isn't their fault. It has to do with university's priorities.

Title IX is a federal law against discrimination on the basis of sex from educational activities or related activities receiving federal funding, encompassing essentially all of higher education in the United States. Historically, introducing Title IX (T9) offices on campus was a critical step in the right direction for addressing gender harassment and discrimination on campus. While we welcome their efforts, the evidence shows that these offices are just not enough. Many universities' efforts, according to the NASEM report, have focused on 'symbolic compliance with current law and avoiding liability, and not on preventing sexual harassment.

The National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) is a national collective of research academies in the United States. In November 2018, NASEM released a consensus study report, “Sexual Harassment of Women: Climate, Culture, and Consequences in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine” under the oversight of the Committee of Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine (CWSEM). The findings were not groundbreaking. Much of what the report contained was already widely acknowledged and documented elsewhere.

What stood out was that such an authoritative body as NASEM was putting forth proof of the pervasiveness of sexual and gender harassment and discrimination in academia, in addition to the clear and dramatic negative impacts that this has on the climate of academia and especially the personal health and professional impacts on women and minorities working within it. The American Association of Universities (AAU) 2019 survey on Sexual Assault and Misconduct, taken by 33 colleges and universities, clearly shows the prevalence and persistence of harassment at MIT, in addition to the unique degree of abuse involving institutionalized power imbalance.

At MIT, the T9 office has now merged with HR to form the Institute Discrimination and Harassment Response office (IDHR), an office with a similar mission and mode of operation to T9. These offices are undeniably filled with people who care very deeply for the mission of combating violence, harassment, and discrimination, and we are grateful for their dedication. We believe that they are structurally limited by the processes that they work within and the limited resources that they receive for this mission. It is our goal to raise up the work they are already doing and ensure that the administration treats their mission at MIT to reduce harassment and discrimination as the top priority that it should be.

Simply put, institutional betrayal occurs when an institution or those who most prominently represent it break trust with its community members. MIT leadership has unfortunately broken the community's trust too many times, leaving a broad sense of betrayal and a lot of work to do if they hope to rebuild that trust.

In recent decades, our understanding of traumatic experience and their impact on people has been shifting and expanding to encompass many unfortunately common experiences, such as childhood abuse and systematic failures of our shared insitutitions. One factor which has gained greater recognition is the role that institutions play in response to traumatic experiences and the impact that a failed response can have on individuals. Institutional betrayal encompasses both abuse by people who represent the institution themselves, such as priests in the church or football coaches at Big Ten schools, and the failure of the institution to respond to these abuses adequately.

Abuse in a trusting relationship, such as an advising relationship between a student and their advisor, can lead to more severe negative consequences for the target. Not only must a student face abuse across a power imbalance, but this sense of betrayal is known to amplify the negative outcomes for mental and physical health. Further, if that student then goes to the administration to report this and is instead told that they shouldn’t report this for some reason, that is a second betrayal which can compound the betrayal and trauma for the target. MIT is an institution on a hill, calling on higher values and goals, naming itself a home and community for its members. MIT has created an environment which fosters a sense of trust for all community members in its language. However, its practice has made it clear to many of us that we are not valued equally at the institute and abusers further up the ladder can abuse those below them. Beyond these individual cases, there is a widespread sense that the MIT leadership has lost the trust of the community. Indeed, many of us feel that recent decisions have betrayed our trust that the administration will act in our best interests and have failed to live up to our shared values.

We call on MIT to live up to this high standard that their rhetoric sets because we know that a different MIT is possible and, for many of us, it is necessary.

If you are looking just to talk to someone about your experience, the office of Violence Prevention and Response (VPR) is one of the most popular resources on campus among students and they will always do their best to help you or anyone that you might be concerned about. You can also call their hotline at (617) 253-2300 if you want to talk to someone.

MIT Mental Health and Counseling is also an invaluable resource on campus that we encourage people to reach out to. You can contact them to get therapy on campus if available or get a referral off campus. As of September 2020, we now have 52 free off-campus therapy sessions a year on the Extended Student Health Insurance which we encourage all students to take advantage of if you would like to start to talk with a mental health professional about your experience.

The Institute Discrimination and Harassment Response office (IDHR) is a new office which has replaced the functions of the Title IX office. You have the option to either informally or formally report, and you can specify the type of disciplinary action you are seeking for your case. If you would like to speak with someone about reporting an incident of misconduct, harassment, or discrimination, then contact this office to learn more about the next steps.

If you would like to speak with one of your peers, many departments have REFS, who are trained resources that make themselves available for peer counseling. They can be an invaluable resource and should be able to speak with you and refer you to professional resources on campus if you would like.

You can always reach out to the campaign if you want to learn more about any of these resources or would like to talk about your experience. Email us at rise4mit@gmail.com.