{"id":7116,"date":"2017-11-27T07:08:55","date_gmt":"2017-11-27T07:08:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7116"},"modified":"2017-11-27T07:09:05","modified_gmt":"2017-11-27T07:09:05","slug":"27-n-remember-to-press-record-if-the-inquisition-comes-calling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2017\/11\/27\/27-n-remember-to-press-record-if-the-inquisition-comes-calling\/","title":{"rendered":"Remember to press 'record' if the Inquisition comes calling"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>That's the lesson the admirable Lindsay\u00a0Shepherd teaches us despite her ordeal at\u00a0Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada. \u00a0She's a teaching assistant (and grad student) who was taking a first-year communication studies class on pronouns. \u00a0In doing this, she used a short clip from\u00a0a TVOntario debate (with the\u00a0University of Toronto's \u00a0Jordan Peterson and others) to illustrate how controversial grammar can be \u2013 especially pronouns. \u00a0Someone complained and\u00a0Shepherd was reprimanded for violating the University's Gendered and Sexual Violence policy. \u00a0In a meeting with three university officials (two academics; one of whom was her supervisor) and the institution's acting manager of Gendered Violence Prevention and Support [<em>sic<\/em>]. \u00a0 Shepherd was accused, amongst other things, of creating a toxic and problematic environment that constituted violence against transgendered students. \u00a0She was also told that she had broken the Canadian law.<\/p>\n<p>You can listen to the whole encounter <a href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/tristin-john-hopper\/recording-of-meeting-between-lindsay-shepherd-and-wilfrid-laurier-university-professors\">here<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0It is as fine an example of institutional bullying as you could hope never to come across and might be used in years to come in supervisor training classes. \u00a0In the encounter I thought it was Shepherd who sounded like the academic as it was she, rather than her inquisitors, who was intent on upholding the values of a university education. \u00a0All in all, I thought she was just trying to make a class on pronouns a bit more interesting.<\/p>\n<p>Some good may (or not) come of it. \u00a0The university has had to apologise for the way Shepherd was treated, and her supervisor has issued an astonishing\u00a0letter of abject grovel. \u00a0It's\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wlu.ca\/news\/spotlights\/2017\/nov\/open-letter-to-my-ta-lindsay-shepherd.html\">here<\/a>. \u00a0 However, the\u00a0post of Gendered Violence Prevention and Support still exists.<\/p>\n<p>The moral here is to press record on your phone when if you are to be bullied because none of this would be out in the open if that hadn't been done, and the\u00a0acting manager of Gendered Violence Prevention and Support [GVPS] would have emerged further empowered. \u00a0This GVPS role reminds me of the armed NKVD units that were embedded in the Red Army doing WWII to ensure that the troops always faced the right direction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That's the lesson the admirable Lindsay\u00a0Shepherd teaches us despite her ordeal at\u00a0Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada. \u00a0She's a teaching assistant (and grad student) who was taking a first-year communication studies class on pronouns. \u00a0In doing this, she used a short...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}