The first complaint was posted on Instagram on Monday, and that same day the GUET organized an open assembly for Tuesday. Distancins and Aegina explain that some students had already contacted them before the session, “to say that what was narrated in the complaints is still happening today.”

Dozens of new allegations

By now, the GUET has received “dozens” of testimonies that continue to mature. They say there are all kinds of testimonies. Sexist or dismissive comments made in class, and especially in the office, when the teacher was alone with the students, behaviors such as touches, insults, personal sexual and intimate questions... They also claim to be students who have reported sexual assault (one of the former students LARA has spoken to also reported sexual assault). “But we don’t want to categorize them, they are all attacks and we have to denounce them all,” they warn.

According to what they have heard in the open assemblies they have held and read in the written complaints, it seems that in recent years the persecution has not been “so explicit”, but it continues to happen: sexual comments out of place in class, sexists, about the students... “His students say he creates a very violent atmosphere in class.” They say he has continued to “make inappropriate comments and create a violent situation” during the tutorials. The current Rectorate Group of the UPV/EHU has announced on Wednesday that it has received several formal complaints and that it has activated the protocol against gender violence. But, as LUZ has learned, a few years ago, a complaint was filed against the teacher in the UPV and the investigation was carried out, the small change of attitude may have something to do with it.

The conditional rating

Another issue that students have reported is about grades: “Some have explained that it gives a better grade to students who follow the game, who do not make it worse, and that this determines the attitude of some students.”

Finally, they confirm that the comments and rumors about the teacher’s positions were “very widespread” in the university, “many years ago”. They have heard this from the mouths of students from different eras, but they have also been accepted by some teachers. “These are not isolated cases, they follow a pattern,” say GUET members. “How is it possible to stay in the UPV? It’s been under attack for years, and I knew it.”

Open assemblies to collectivize responsibility

“We want to work through an open assembly to put focus and responsibility on all students, because often all the burden is placed on the people who have filed the complaint. But the task for all of us is to make compromises and develop collective tools so that this does not happen again, which is the goal,” explain the members of the GUET. Two assemblies were held last Tuesday and Thursday, and the third will be held this Thursday.

“About 80 people” appeared at Tuesday’s first assembly, the students of the campus in general and of all levels of Hispanic Philology in particular. They “contextualized” the issue and shared their testimonies. On Thursday a second one was held in which, in addition to the students, two professors of Hispanic Philology also appeared. They talked about “what to do” and made a series of decisions: disseminate the denunciations and what is happening – they have put up posters with various statements made by the professor in the classes in the faculty –; continue to collect testimonies; and initiate the collection of signatures between students and teachers.

GUET members have called for a “firm” and collective response to such attitudes. To confront the aggressors, as well as to mobilize the university as an institution. “Experience shows us that when we do we get things done,” they say, thinking about the mobilizations of the Faculty of Pharmacy or the Leioa Campus of the previous academic year. This Thursday, another open assembly will be held at the Faculty of Letters, which will discuss the possibility of convening a mobilization among others.