La di da, news news news

So, this guy I know got a Rhodes' Scholarship. So now I know a Marshall and a Rhodes and all these other prestigious national award winners. When was the last time I won something on the national level? Hm. That would be in high school. Somehow Junior Engineering TEAMS competition and Lincoln-Douglass debate don't quite have the name recognition of a Rhodes scholarship :). Anyway, Will Roper won it and I am really happy for him - I know him only because we TA-ed a math class together and he was definitely as close to a mathematical wizard as I've ever known (though he did confuse a lot of poor freshmen by showing them mathematical puzzles in the tutoring room rather than teaching them to integrate). I find it strangely funny that he got the scholarship though (the people who were there when we did the 'Nique story on him would know the reasons for that). A few years ago, I met an EE professor who was a finalist for the Rhodes who never got it. He, obviously, was a flawless academic, but he also was on the U.S. Olympic team (a fencer). This seems really impressive to me and he didn't get it.

Ok, ok, sexual misconduct story

I am glad to know Maayan has become a faithful reader of my journal. Hiya Maayan! Did you get an invitation to Alex's engagement party? HOW FREAKY IS THAT??? Oh, did you see that the state department is advising against all unnecessary travel to Israel right now? Be careful girl!! Ok, that said, you want to hear the story. Since I am just sitting around, waiting for lab time (is this a re-occuring theme here?), here goes. Its a long one, so sit back, and let the seriousness roll.

So, over the summer we had a girl here, Nikki, who was the daughter of basicall one of the top three corporate executives at Alstom. She was a wild (product of British boarding schools) type, and so when she told us that the staff photographer asked her to pose for pictures (he said, in broken German, that he was an "artiste"), we kind of just laughed. But she was really weirded out by it. Since she told the story a lot of other of the female praktikants said he approached him too. Basically, every woman in the building had taken to avoiding this guy.

Anyway, the staff photographer comes around and takes pictures of everyone on the staff (imagine that), like little headshots, for the wall in each department. Well, he ran into another praktikant from my office in the hallway and said he'd like her to pose for him. She just assumed there was something wrong with her headshot and went down to his studio in the building. (She had been out of the loop on the previous stories about the "artiste"). So, when she went down there, he started showing her pictures he had taken - starting with cows and fields and progressing to apparently very pornographically posed women. And she recognized them as working in the building. She was totally freaked out and ran away as fast as possible. She told us, in our praktikant office right away.

This was two months ago. We all told her she should go say something right then. But she kept saying that she didn't want to cause trouble. And she didn't know if there was anything wrong with it or if it was just a European thing. Basically, she didn't want to say anything. The other girls in the office who had been approached said they didn't want to say anything because they hadn't actually seen the naked-pictures.

Anyway, a few days ago, he approached another girl, and she was telling the story. So, we finally talked the one who had seen the naked pictures into saying something - she went and talked to an American full-time employee, an older, VERY NICE guy who tends to fill a mentor roll for most of the North American praktikants (by his own free will, not really part of any job responsibilities). The American did the right thing and went strait to our division's boss.

So, he had a long talk with the girls who had been approached. Apparently, someone had said something to him about this BEFORE (someone who had been propositioned to pose naked) and he IGNORED them, because the photographer is a family friend and the woman didn't seem that reliable. But now that he had other complaints he had to do something (he said he would sit on it for a day and speak to his wife about it, since he can't possibly imagine what a woman thinks about that sort of thing - something that I think is REALLY reasonable to do).

As for what is going to happen as a result, I don't know, but the thing that bothered me were the observations I made about the way the people behaved.

1. Our boss was completely willing to ignore an allegation of misconduct the first time he heard about it - he didn't even go down and look at this guy's piles of pornography.

2. The guys in our office were completely outraged by this whole thing. They kept saying "This type of behavior is ridiculous, its a clear-cut case. People doing things like this in the workplace is what causes all these unreasonable rules. Something needs to be done about this." I thought this was great! I was encouraged tremendously... Contrast this to the female attitude:

3. The girl that made the allegation kept saying, "Well, I am only a praktikant and the guy has been here for a while... and it isn't really wrong for him to take naked pictures, its just that he keeps them on company property and stuff. It happened a few months ago, so.. I already have a bad relationship with my boss, this is only going to make it worse. I don't even like my job or this company anyway..."

4. Another girl in the office who had been propositioned, but never seen the naked pictures, who works in the lab (where the photographer frequently photographs for company brochures), has been avoiding him whenever he comes into the lab (to the detriment of her work), and she keeps saying "Well, what he's doing is wrong, but he's never actually done anything to me, so I can't say anything." That girl even went into our boss to tell him that she didn't want anything she said to interfere with this guy's job of photographing her lab because it was really needed to provide the appropriate level of support for her team's project (she, of course, didn't say anything about how every time he comes into the lab, all the female employees FLEE).

I tried to explain things to the other female students. I tried to explain that they have the right not to feel uncomfortable where they work and how its important to speak up or our boss would think that it was a single allegation and ignore it like he had done in the past. The men were in COMPLETE agreement. But the women kept making excuses "But, but, but..." They also didn't understand the argument that if they didn't say something there would be future praktikants that found themselves in REALLY awkward positions. It was horribly frustrating. So we'll see what happens.