Report sex-for-grade harassments to us, UNICAL VC tells students

Florence Obi, the vice-chancellor of the University of Calabar (UNICAL), has charged students to report cases of lecturers soliciting sex-for-grades to the university authorities.

Obi spoke on Monday in an interview with NAN in Calabar.

The VC stated that her administration would not tolerate harassment for the sake of upgrading students’ assessments in exams.

She urged the students of the institution to be bold enough to report such cases with a view to making sure that those who are found guilty are punished.

“For us as management, we are sensitising the students about sex for grades. Let them be bold to talk about it, they own their body, nobody has right over their body,” the VC said.

“Nobody has the right to tell them that if I don’t have your body you can’t attend lectures or you will fail my course.

“We have a centre for gender development and I can tell you that the students themselves have been doing the awareness on campus because of the sensitisation we have given to them.

“During the orientation programme for freshers, I told the newly admitted students to speak out whenever they encounter such demands from lecturers.”

She charged the students to be smart and have the evidence of such threats from lecturers that would be used to investigate such reports accordingly.

“Parents can’t afford to send their children to school for some lecturers to start harassing them and spoiling their future because today, we have students who are 14 and 15 years in school,” she added.

“Some of these lecturers are old enough to be the grandparent of these children they harass; so the fight against sex for grades must be fought holistically.

“Some of these men who are doing these things are so protective of their own children back home, yet they want to truncate the future of someone else’s daughter.”