The Academic Association of Coimbra establishes an office to receive complaints of harassment

The Academic Association of Coimbra (AAC) will set up a Complaints Office, a communication channel with various forms of contact that will allow the student community to identify situations of harassment or discrimination, as announced this Friday.

The AAC office will allow students to report instances of harassment or discrimination at the academy via a direct mobile phone number, using a form on the official website of the Associação Académica de Coimbra, or a face-to-face service office, it said Friday. honestly the president of this institution, Joao Caseiro, at a press conference.

In response to a question from Lusa, the student leader said that the mobile phone number and form will be released in due course, as well as office hours.

“We know that harassment is an ongoing problem, and recognizing that this is a sensitive issue, we have decided to include new mechanisms to formalize a clear structure in which AAC is a vehicle for reporting these types of issues,” he said. emphasized.

According to João Caseiro, the AAC also intends, with the help of this office, to develop a database based on reports of complaints submitted, which may eventually show a pattern in some of the organic divisions of the University of Coimbra.

“Victims should be free to report. We want to be a safe place to communicate,” the AAC president emphasized.

According to the person in charge, the AAC will refer cases it receives to entities it deems appropriate, with the intent to partner with external organizations such as law firms or victim support associations that provide legal support to the complaint or complaint, if any. the will of the victim.

Asked why the AAC created a complaints portal when one already exists at the University of Coimbra, João Caseiro explained that “there may be some concerns” on the part of victims to file a complaint on a portal operated by the same institution.

“In addition to being independent, the AAC will be able to transfer it to other organizations outside of the academy, and this is one of the great advantages of this office,” he stressed.

João Caseiro believes that the government should respond more structurally to the problem of harassment, guaranteeing a completely independent treatment of institutions to which complaints are filed.

“It should be something independent of universities and polytechnics and centrally implemented by the government, with a plan to fight harassment in organizations and not just in academia,” he defended.

Allegations of sexual harassment made by three former researchers from the Center for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra against two professors, Boaventura Sousa Santos and Bruno Sena Martins, were made public this week and denied all allegations.

Last year, the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon opened a whistleblowing channel that received 50 complaints in just 11 days, and the Lisbon Academic Association conducted an investigation that found that about 20% of the respondents were victims or witnesses. harassment cases.