UMBC Student Government Association President Collin Sullivan and Vrinda Deshpande have written an email to President Freeman Hrabowski calling for the immediate resignation of Police Chief Paul Dillon. The email was released in the wake of recent reports by media outlets claiming that Dillon, along with other officials, has worked to cover up rape allegations.

The email states, “Following a report from The Baltimore Brew of the litigation against UMBC, the Baltimore County Police Department, and others in the case of mishandling reports of sexual assault, we are appalled and disgusted with the alleged inaction of Officer Dillon and the Campus Police.” It further mentions that, “We live in a society where sexual assault is not only tolerated, but accepted as a cultural norm. In light of the #MeToo movement, we are all too aware of how systemically common it is to silence survivors of sexual assault.”

Recent media coverage has called attention to a case filed by Anna Borkowski and Katelyn Frank. The suit alleges that university officials have actively worked to manipulate statistics and evidence regarding rape complaints when the two women came forward to report their assault. According to a Baltimore Brew article, the lawsuit alleges that Dillon persuaded her to allow the university to handle the case administratively and not to report the rape to the police. The complaint states, “This is functionally impossible as Defendant Dillon was a sworn police officer with various reporting duties.” Dillon has not responded to requests from media outlets for comment.

It is further claimed that both Frank and Borkowski had their cases closed due to intentional misclassification as being “under suspicious circumstances.” The suit claims that despite evidence of rape from a rape kit, Borkowski’s case was “cleared” in less than 24 hours due to there being “exceptional circumstances.” The suit goes on to allege that despite Frank’s rape kit test also yielding a positive result for sexual assault, the evidence was destroyed after 30 days and the case was classified as “suspicious circumstance.”

Other defendants in the lawsuit include state attorney Scott Shellenberger, the Maryland State University System’s Board of Regents and Lisa Dever. The lawsuit claims that Shellenberger had dispatched officers to a survivor’s house to intimidate them against pressing further charges. The complaint states, “This is not a ‘failure to protect’ lawsuit; it is about intentional misconduct designed to cover up justifiable complaints of sexual assault.”

Sullivan and Deshpande’s email calls for immediate action to protect students who come forward, saying that, “These reports deeply contradict our values at UMBC as an inclusive, caring community. Recognizing the faults of our own community members is more than disheartening, but we cannot ignore the implications of these allegations. No student should ever feel silenced, discouraged, or unsafe.” SGA officers have declined to comment beyond their initial statement.

Recently, Gina Maisto-Smith and Leslie Gomez, former child abuse and sex crimes prosecutors, hosted a workshop open to students and faculty about Title IX and Sexual Misconduct Response Training on the UMBC campus. All of this is part of a broader movement spearheaded by #MeToo to enact systemic change regarding the handling of sexual assault and rape. Frank and Borkowski’s case remains open and active.

Correction: A previous version of this article stated that President Hrabowski led the Title IX and Sexual Misconduct Response Training. He, in fact, did not.

Hello UMBC Community,

In light of the recent class action lawsuit brought in part against UMBC due to mishandling of rape reports, The Retriever is reaching out to students who experienced sexual violence on campus. We would like to know your stories, including whether or not you decided to go to UMBC police with your case, and the results of reporting your case.

Sexual harassment, assault and rape are prevalent crimes on university campuses, which is why universities must comply with Title IX law. UMBC claims that “the University responds to reports of sexual harassment, including sexual violence, as part of its efforts to stop the harassment and prevent the recurrence of possible discrimination,” but recent evidence contradicts this statement. Students can find a description of Title IX policies on the Policies and Procedures page of UMBC’s Human Resources page.

Students are able to take this survey anonymously or under a pseudonym, but if you are comfortable we encourage you to share your name. The survey is linked at the bottom of this article, under "Visit Website."

By participating in the linked form, you agree to let The Retriever publish your written work. We reserve the right to correct grammatical mistakes, but content and ideas are left solely to the writer. You will not be compensated if your account is published.

Thank you,

The Retriever

UMBC Information Systems Department

Innovations in NSF Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Research Workforce Development and Education Programs

Dr. Sushil K. Prasad
National Science Foundation

2:00pm Tuesday, 18 September 2018, ITE459, UMBC

The National Science Foundation Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) has growing research and education programs, including programs for early career multidisciplinary faculty such as CAREER and CISE Research Initiation Initiative (CRII). OAC is pleased to announce its newest program, its core research program solicitation (NSF 18-567), with the goals of supporting all aspects of advanced cyberinfrastructure (CI) research that will significantly impact the future capabilities of advanced research CI, as well as the research career paths of computer as well as computational and data-driven scientists and engineers. Through this solicitation, OAC seeks to foster the development of new knowledge in the innovative design, development, and utilization of robust research CI. The OAC core research areas include architectures and middleware for extreme-scale systems, scalable algorithms and applications, including simulation and modeling, and the advanced CI ecosystem, including tools and sociotechnical aspects.

OAC also introduced a CyberTraining program (NSF 18-516) for education and training aimed to fully prepare scientific workforce for nation’s research enterprise to innovate and utilize high performance computing resources, tools and methods. The community response in its two rounds of competition have exceeded expectations. OAC also has programs for research training of undergraduate students (REU sites).

I will introduce these and share some of the recent awards. I will also touch on other OAC opportunities in cyberinfrastructure including those on high performance computing (HPC) hardware, software, data, networking and security, and on NSF’s ten big ideas, including Harnessing the Data Revolution.

Sushil K. Prasad is a Program Director at National Science Foundation in its Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) in the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate leading its emerging research and education programs such as CAREER, CRII, Expeditions, CyberTraining, and the most-recently introduced OAC-Core research. He is an ACM Distinguished Scientist and a Professor of Computer Science at Georgia State University. He is the director of Distributed and Mobile Systems Lab carrying out research in Parallel, Distributed, and Data Intensive Computing and Systems. He has been twice-elected chair of IEEE-CS Technical Committee on Parallel Processing (TCPP), and leads the NSF-supported TCPP Curriculum Initiative on Parallel and Distributed Computing for undergraduate education.

The post talk: NSF Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Research Workforce Development and Education Programs appeared first on Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.

Updated on Sept. 15, 2018 at 9:48 p.m. to include information about the student protest.
Updated on Sept. 16, 2018 at 9:36 a.m. to correct information regarding the hosts of the Title IX Misconduct Seminar. The article previously erroneously stated that President Freeman Hrabowski hosted the seminar. This has been updated to reflect that the seminar was hosted by Gina Maisto-Smith and Leslie Gomez. Additionally, the article previously claimed that opinions writer Nate Stewart was leading the student protest, this has been changed to reflect that the protest is led by a student coalition.

Two women have filed a federal class-action lawsuit against the Maryland State University System, the state’s attorney offices and the police department that alleged the intentional covering up of sexual assault on the UMBC campus.

On Sept. 12, Courthouse News reported that plaintiffs Anna Borkowski and Katelyn Frank have alleged that the police, state attorney Scott Shellenberger, Lisa Dever, the Board of Regents for the public university system and UMBC have worked to hinder sexual assault investigations. This was purportedly done by intimidating survivors, “unfounding” rape cases, destroying rape kits and intentionally misclassifying rape allegations in order to avoid reporting them to both the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report system and the university’s Clery Act crime statistic.

In particular, Baltimore County’s state attorney Scott Shellenberger was accused of sending police to a survivor’s house to threaten her if she pressed further charges. In a BaltimoreBrew article, Shellenberger denied seeing the complaint and added, “I would not comment on it even if I had.”

Much of the complaint focuses on the deliberate manipulation of classification and statistical data to present a reduced rate of rape cases. One of the alleged methods of manipulation was the misclassification of rape complaints as “suspicious circumstances” or “suspicious conditions.” This, according to the complaint, is because “suspicious circumstances” and “suspicious conditions” are not categories in the FBI’s UCR system and do not need to be disclosed in the federally required Clery Act report.

Between 2015 and 2017, 42 cases of rape have been categorized as happening under “suspicious circumstances.” While county officials have pledged reform, Frank and Borkowski have claimed that the original inquiry was too narrow and that police and public officials have merely shifted their methods in concealing abuse.

The lawsuit states that Frank was lured into a dorm room, drugged and raped during her first week of freshman year. She woke up bleeding in the bathroom. This was reported to a university official, who then summoned Paul Dillon, Chief of the University of Maryland Baltimore County Police Department. Dillon persuaded Frank to have the administration handle the allegation and not to report the rape to police. The lawsuit notes, “This is functionally impossible, as Defendant Dillon was a sworn police officer with various reporting duties.”

Frank ended up submitting to a rape kit examination four days afterward, which found evidence of her rape. Without her knowledge, however, the kit was destroyed after 30 days because of the way that the report was classified. The lawsuit states, “No one told Ms. Frank that the evidence she had endured a painful and intrusive examination to collect would be destroyed before the administrative process could finish.”

After public officials cleared the suspect of wrongdoing months later, Frank re-reported, but her case was absent from university records due to its classification as a “suspicious condition.” Dillon has not responded to messages from BaltimoreBrew.

Borkowski’s case featured a similar outcome. According to the lawsuit, the Towson University junior was plied with alcohol and sexually assaulted along with a friend by three members of the UMBC baseball team after the both of them had passed out.

Similarly to Frank, she submitted a rape kit and found evidence of sexual assault. The lawsuit states that police did not act quickly in regards to obtaining evidence, stating, “Other than visiting the building where the rapes occurred, BCPD performed no investigation,” and that “BCPD did not subpoena the surveillance tapes from the bar or the apartment building.”

The lawsuit states that Borkowski’s case was inexplicably closed in less than 24 hours, the report also being “cleared” due to “exceptional circumstances.” The lawsuit further mentions that later interviews that the police conducted with suspects indicated that said suspects admitted to having sex with the women while incapacitated but said that they “did not know what the issue was.”

Gina Maisto-Smith and Leslie Gomez led this year’s annual Title IX/Sexual Misconduct Seminar on Sept. 14, which focuses on handling sexual misconducts in a caring and effective manner. Frank and Borkowksi’s case against the Board of Regents of the University of Maryland remains open for the time being. Posters were found around Academic Row on bulletins calling to “Fire Paul Dillon” and “Fire Erick Kim,” one of UMBC’s Title IX investigators. The posters also read “UMBC protects rapists.” A protest led by a student coalition will be held on Monday, Sept. 17 from 12-1 p.m. in the Breezeway.

A group of 125 UMBC faculty, staff, and students gathered today for UMBC’s annual Title IX/Sexual Misconduct Seminar, focused on caring and effective response to sexual misconduct.

“There is nothing more important here than a climate and culture that focus on respect for all people,” said UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski at the start of the full-day workshop. “Some people think this is the work of a few, but it is all of our responsibility.”

Faculty, staff, and students from across UMBC joined in the workshop, including representatives from Residential Life, Athletics, the Women’s Center, university administration, UMBC programs at the Universities at Shady Grove, and many other offices and groups.

To lead the seminar, UMBC welcomed Gina Maisto-Smith and Leslie Gomez, former child abuse and sex crimes prosecutors who are now chair and vice chair of the Cozen O’Connor’s Institutional Response Group. Their practice focuses on response to sexual and gender-based harassment and violence, child abuse, and other forms of harassment and discrimination.

Maisto-Smith and Gomez’s interactive talk reviewed requirements under Title IX, the Clery Act, the Violence Against Women Act, and updates on current federal policy and guidance. Gomez also emphasized, “The law alone isn’t enough.” She noted that values-based organizations like UMBC focus on “care for community,” as well as law, policy, and guidance available.

In addition to legal requirements, the speakers helped participating faculty, staff, and students better understand how to remove barriers to reporting, treat all community members fairly, and quickly and sensitively connect community members to support resources. At every level of response, Gomez noted, “Language is very important.”

While each annual seminar includes many similar components, such as a review of law, policy, and best practices, each one also has a unique focus. This year’s training follows a 2017 fall seminar for university leaders that focused on neurobiological responses to trauma, to support trauma-informed care.

A common thread in each annual training, said Provost Philip Rous, is that “coordination and collaboration” are essential for effective response to sexual misconduct — working together to fulfill UMBC’s commitment to providing a safe, supportive learning community.

As President Hrabowski said to the group at the start of the day, “Thank you for being here this morning. We know it is because you care.”

by Amy Bhatt, 
Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies, UMBC

The Indian Supreme Court has legalized homosexuality, overturning a 157-year ban on consensual gay sex.

In a nearly 500-page unanimous decision issued on Sept. 6, India’s highest court affirmed that “whenever the constitutional courts come across a situation of transgression or dereliction in the sphere of fundamental rights which are also the basic human rights of a section, howsoever small part of the society, then it is for the constitutional courts to ensure that constitutional morality prevails over social morality.”

Gay rights advocates worldwide celebrated the legal victory, which came after nearly a decade of contentious court battles against a British colonial law criminalizing homosexual acts.

“Our court, our justice system, really believes in the rights of the people,” said Kalyani Subramanyam, program director for the Naz Foundation, the primary petitioner in the court case, which could open the door to gay marriage.

And the ruling is more than a human rights win. It is also a restoration of ancient Indian sexual norms.

India, homosexuality and the ‘third gender’

In that way, India’s ruling differs from recent court decisions legalizing gay marriage in Colombia, Taiwan and Germany – though for LGBTQ Indians, the impacts may be similarly life-changing.

Sexual and gender minorities in India are regularly harassed, assaulted and jailed.

Yet many gender researchers who study India – myself included – argue that India’s religious and cultural heritage has long been more accommodating to multiple gender and sexual expressions than Western societies.

According to scholars Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai’s groundbreaking 2000 essay collection on same-sex love in India, Hindus embraced a range of thinking on gender and sexuality as far back as the Vedic period, around 4000 B.C.

Hinduism’s first sacred texts tell stories of same-sex love and gender-morphing figures. The Hindu deity Shiva is sometimes worshipped as a multi-gendered figure composed of Shiva and his wife Parvati together, in what’s known as his Ardhanarishvara form.

Hindu texts from around 1500 B.C. likewise show that the “third gender” – individuals sometimes called “hijras,” who do not fit into the categories of man or woman – were integrated into India’s political and social life.

In the Kama Sutra, India’s famed erotic guidebook, the character Svairini is described as as a liberated woman who lives either alone or in union with another woman.

“Male-male attraction” is also “one of the themes of pre-colonial Urdu poetry” writes Vanita in her book about Indian Islamic literature from the 18th and 19th centuries.

India’s Khajuraho temples, built in Madhaya Pradesh state between 950 and 1050, even include depictions of homosexual orgies and fellatio, among other erotic sculptures and scenes.

Some scholars of Islam, India’s second-largest religion, also find acceptance of gender fluidity in the Koran, which says that Allah “shapes you in the wombs as He pleases.”

Indeed, in India’s 16th-century Mughal courts, hijras and eunuchs often held positions of high esteem as advisers or emissaries between men and women.

The British preferred the binary

India’s fluid gender and sexual norms did not fit into Britain’s strict Victorian conceptions of appropriate sexual behavior.

As the British empire grew more powerful in the Indian subcontinent in the early 19th century, so did their ideas about culture, society and law. Viewing local notions of sexuality as barbaric, British officials imposed Western, Judeo-Christian sexual norms on colonial subjects.

Before the British, homosexuality was not illegal in India.

But by 1861 the British had consolidated their rule over India and were enforcing Section 377 of their penal code, which could punish those who committed sodomy or other homosexual acts with life in prison.

When India gained its independence in 1947, this statute remained, becoming Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code.

Britain’s anti-gay colonial legacy

India was not the only British colony where formerly acceptable sexual behaviors and identities became criminalized.

Section 377, or a similar statute, was imposed in 42 former colonies, including Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Nepal, which was never formally colonized by Great Britain, also adopted anti-sodomy laws based on India’s British-influenced penal code.

In 2007, the Nepali government became the first in South Asia to re-recognize a third gender category. Today, Nepal’s Constitution specifically protects LGBTQ people from discrimination and abuse.

Neighboring Pakistan, like former British colonies Bhutan, Uganda and Singapore, still criminalizes homosexuality under Section 377. This “unnatural offense” is punishable with up to 10 years in prison.

But in 2018, Pakistan, a Muslim-majority country, passed the historic Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, allowing Pakistanis to choose their gender on government documents and prohibits discrimination in employment and public accommodations on the basis of gender identity.

The future of gay rights in India

Despite India’s legalization of gay sex, the path toward full acceptance of LGBTQ rights is complicated.

For more than a decade, India’s right-wing Hindu nationalists – who espouse a fundamentalist interpretation of Hinduism called Hindutva – have worked to portray homosexuality as a reprehensible Western import.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist elected in 2014, is himself a follower of Hindutva.

In July, as India’s Supreme Court was preparing to hear arguments on the gay sex ban, Subramanian Swamy, a high-ranking member of Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, retorted that homosexuality “is not a normal thing.”

It’s “against Hindutva,” he said.

After the ruling against Section 377, an armed Hindu nationalist group called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh declared that “same-sex marriages and relations are not in consonance with nature.”

Traditionally,“ read the Sept. 8 public statement, “Indian society has not supported such relations.”

Historic evidence says otherwise.

“India’s pre-colonial sexual history is important,” Chaitanya Lakkimsetti, a Texas A&M professor who has studied the fight to end Section 377, told me.

Yet, she reflects, “This is not just about hearkening back in time.”

For Lakkimsetti, the legal victory shows that “the Indian constitution is a living document that protects minorities.” In legalizing gay sex, then, the Supreme Court is not just recognizing India’s rich past – it’s also “looking forward.”

* * * * *

Amy Bhatt, Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Header photo by Pablo Heimplatz on Unsplash