POSTED BY MARTIN KICH

In a June 28 article for the Associated Press, Eva Vergara has reported:

After a long day of work, Sofia Brito fell asleep on a chair in an office at Chile’s Constitutional Court. She says she awoke abruptly to find her mentor, the court’s president, atop her and caressing her hair.

 After agonizing conversations with friends, the 24-year-old law student overcame her fear and filed a sexual harassment complaint with officials at the University of Chile against her professor, Carlos Carmona, one of the country’s most prominent legal scholars.

 Nearly eight months later, a ruling came down: The university suspended Carmona— who has not spoken publicly about the case—for three months on grounds of “lack of integrity,” saying that its sexual harassment rules only covered relationships among employees, not teachers and students.

 The result outraged Brito’s fellow students and soon women across the country, awakening a Chilean version of the “Me Too” movement in the U.S. and elsewhere. Within hours after learning of the ruling on April 27, protesting female students occupied the university’s law school and within days, other women took over buildings at universities across the country to demand stricter rules and stronger punishment for sexual harassment.

 At least one takeover promoted by sexual harassment, at the Austral University in southern Chile, began before the Brito case, though it had attracted less attention. Students there ended an eight- week occupation this month after administrators created an anti-discrimination organization.

Three full universities and 27 school departments have been paralyzed by the demonstrators, and some remain closed.

 The movement quickly expanded as well into demands for greater education about women’s rights throughout the school system and for greater representation of women in administration.

 Now many are calling for conservative President Sebastian Pinera to remove two of his Cabinet officials. Education Minister Gerardo Varela is accused of minimizing the protesters’ complaints . . .

 Pinera recently ordered officials to speed up a study on reforming or creating protocols for handling sexual harassment cases at universities. Of 60 universities in the country, only seven until now have had procedures in place to deal with such complaints—and those include the University of Chile, whose rules the protesters say are incomplete. . . .

Eva Vergara’s complete article is available at: apnews.com/ee645a043fd74497ace6c88f65e5eefe/A-‘Me-Too’-movement-shakes-Chilean-universities.