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Students Rights – Policies in American Schools – No Discrimination, Sexual Harassment

One of our readers recently expressed concerns about harassment in our Q A Forum, let me explain you some of the rights and policies in US schools and how they protects students.

What are Students Rights in Schools ?  What are these Student Policies ?  

 To prevent abuse of power by university staff/ officials/professors, federal laws in America have laid down some policies that protect students from all kinds of abuse.  For instance, there are many a cases where a student can be discriminated based on color, age, sex,  orientation. To prevent such discrimination there are Non-Discrimination Policies. Similarly, there are instances, where students are sexually harassed for various reasons, to prevent such acts, there are Sexual Harassment Policies. There are many of these policies formulated by Universities to protect student rights and  freedom make sure they are treated equally in all walks of University life.   In my experience, many of the international students may not be aware of such policies and at times undergo some of these…The key take away is, your student rights / policies does not vary by your origin…they are same if you are an American student or international student.  Universities give utmost priority for student well being. I have been part of many student councils that University has to protect students and it was amazing to know the protection that student gets from all of the abuses.

Where to find these Student Policies ?   Whom to Approach ? 

Typically, all the student policies will be listed in your Student handbook. Remember, the first day of orientation, you might have received a big handbook with lot of stuff, that should have all of these. If you did not get one of these, then you can check out all these on your University website.  You can check out student life / student services websites for such information. For instance it would look like this:  UHCL Student Policies .  Also, you can walk down to Student Union, you would see many of these flyers or offices.

If you are not sure about all of these, approach Dean of Students or someone in student life office or student services office.  They will help you.  Dean of students ( not the academic Dean) role is to protect students.  Any offense is punishable by federal law, so you do not have to take any of the abuse of power by any university official.

Did you undergo any abuse by anyone ?  Any experiences ?

 Image Credit : http://theteendoc.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/stop-no-more-abuse1.jpg 

   

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1 Comment

  1. Sadly, this scenario plays out every day in offices, in hospitals, universities and in stores around the world. Recent statistics on sexual harassment at workplace shows that 79% of the victims are women and 21% are men.

    You can check this research on this link:
    http://www.franknicholas.com/sexual-harassment-lawyer-research/

    Reply

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