This is what my Classmate told me

Here I am. It’s been a week since I last wrote. Kind of writer’s block. So, as I was browsing today, an article caught my eyes. Discriminations that girls face every day. I am not going write paragraphs on the problems I face as a girl. But rather I would tell you a story, a true incident, that I and my friends faced in college.

My best friend, one day, came to my dorm room. I was busy jabbering useless stuff to her when I noticed that she wasn’t herself. Something was bothering her, very badly. She rocked herself back and forth sitting on my bed. I asked her what was wrong. She just shook her head, meaning to say no. I insisted and persisted.

After fifteen minutes of pressurizing her to say, she launched into the story. We both were in the same batch but different sections. So, we had different professors for one subject alone and he was the reason for her restlessness. She was an extra brilliant student, the one in your class who never opens the book till the day before the exam and sleeps off by 10 pm that day and manages to scrap top marks in class.

So, most of the professors had a liking for her and moreover, she never creates any problem in class, except that she is perpetually sleepy in class. So, this professor too developed a liking for her and started passing on the assignments and sample question papers to her to distribute in class.

One fine day, he told her that he will mail her some question papers and to take print out when she goes home during the weekend. She went home and opened her mail to a bunch of emails from him. No sign of question papers, but about his life story and how he wanted her to become his ‘special friend’.

He had one special friend in his graduation who became his wife and mother of his kid. He had another one in the previous college he taught. All this was mentioned in the emails he had sent. The most shocking thing was he had written that he had marked three girls in her class to be his special friend in which one was her ‘friend’.

I was shocked hearing all this and came to know that all this have been happening for quite a long time. The only thing in my mind was how to tackle him and who were the other two unsuspecting girls. We started trying to find out the other girls, especially the one who was our friend as it was the only clue we had. I gave her courage to go to class the next day and then, we got to find out who the friend was.

That day in class, he came and stood near my bestie (lets name her A) and told her ‘Oh! This is your friend (let’s name her B)’ acknowledging our dorm mate sitting next to her and continued repeating the word ‘friend’. A came and informed me about B and we decided to tell it to B. In the following emails from him, we came to know that stopped pursuing the third girl as her mobile was unreachable and emails were bouncing back.

So, it was back to A and B. He had warned to decide between the two of them and to let him know and he won’t leave them alone unless he got one of them. We cautiously called B to my room that weekend and told her the entire story. She was one of the non-existent girls in our class, the one who never talks to guys and concentrates only on studying. At first, she thought the whole thing was cooked up by us.

Seeing our graves faces, she accepted the thing to be truth and then she realized why the professor had asked her to meet him in the staffroom the following Monday. She was scared and started stressing out. We started thinking of what needs to be done. Staying in a hostel, we, three 19-year-olds, didn’t have a clue of whom to turn to.

We contemplated on telling to our class tutors at first. But he and the tutors being in the same department, we thought what if they didn’t believe us and in the worst case, tell us it happens to girls in college. So we decided to inform an outsider, our Maths professor. The next day, we gathered courage and started searching for her. As we see in movies, where ever we went, we seem to land in front of that professor, with malice in his eyes.

We tracked down our Mathematics professor in the library. I requested her to come out and said that we needed to talk something not related to academics. With a lot of stuttering, stammering and encouragement from the professor, we managed to tell her how the emails started coming, how we found out the two other girls he had marked, all about the emails and stupid stuff he had written in the emails.

In turned out that she was a member of the secret women empowerment cell in our college. She soothed down the fears of A and B and told them not to give him any clue that neither she or me knows about what he was doing. During the next two days, she called both A and B out of class during his hours and took the hard copy of the all the emails he had sent. They both were taken to the head of the cell and were asked to explain the entire story.

He had written many disgusting things in the emails. Then came the real hurdle. Our chairman nor principal was ready to take any action against him as he was highly qualified and it would help them to start the post graduation wing with his help. On further investigation by the women’s cell, it became clear he was a serial offender and he was terminated from the previous colleges he taught, for similar cases. He was hired in our college without any background check.

At last, the members of the cell informed our department teachers and all together asked the principal and chairman decided to take an action. All of them congregated in the conference room and started questioning him. As expected he denied and then all the proofs against him was laid out. He had no choice but to confess. He was asked for forced resignation.

But before leaving, he gave very bad internal marks to all students in the class. This really pissed of the students, who didn’t know the reason behind it. But somehow the story got leaked and then, the most shocking thing happened to me. One of my friends walked up to me. He was really angry and asked why I had to orchestrate all this and kick the professor out of college before the internal marks were out.

Dear friend, seriously? This is how you react to all that had happened to your classmates, your friends?

Friends, this happens in many colleges. If you know someone facing this, help them to get out of it. If you are the one facing it, seek help. Never let such professors escape.