Instead of Punishment, Accused Dal Dentistry Students Get 'Private Tutoring,' Say Critics

Dalhousie University's decision to provide separate classes to a group of male dentistry students accused of posting offensive Facebook remarks about female classmates sets a bad precedent, says a blogger following the issue.

Lucia Lorenzi, a University of British Columbia English doctoral student whose Rabble.ca blog The Body Politic has tracked the Dalhousie story, says she understands why the university chose to separate the accused students -- in theory.

"The women in the class certainly have the right to not be in classes with the men in the group who were saying sexually violent things about them," said Lorenzi.

"However I think it sets a bit of a dangerous precedent that the punishment for intimidating, threatening, or making fun of classmates -- stuff that would normally go against a student code of conduct -- is to basically have private tutoring."

Last Friday Jan. 9, Dalhousie University announced it would provide separate classes, conducted online, for 13 male, fourth-year dental students accused of posting misogynistic remarks about their colleagues.

The scandal broke last December when news of a Facebook group, called "Class of DDS 2015 Gentlemen" came to light. The page featured posts with offensive comments about women, including the phrase "hate fuck" and references to drugging and sexually assaulting women.

Dalhousie's Friday announcement came four days after the Dalhousie administration publicized its Dec. 22 decision to suspend the 13 students from clinical practice, but not from regular academic classes, which they will now attend at a different time and place than their peers.

Dalhousie said the suspension was "necessary to ensure a safe and supportive environment for patients and classmates who participate in the clinics," and to allow the Faculty of Dentistry Academic Standards Class Committee, comprised of fourth-year dentistry course directors, currently investigating the Facebook posts, "to consider the matter from the perspective of professionalism requirements.

"No student can receive a DDS degree from Dalhousie without meeting academic requirements, which includes professional standards," the statement read.

Burden on faculty

Lorenzi said adding extra classes to accommodate the male students puts a burden on faculty members who might be uncomfortable teaching the students. The Tyee contacted Dalhousie for comment but the university was not able to meet our deadline.

Tracy Porteous, executive director of the Ending Violence Association of B.C., also questioned Dalhousie's decision to provide separate instruction to the accused male students. Separate classes are "better than nothing," she said, however Dalhousie's reaction is typical of societal reactions to women's safety and security.

"If those students were planning [an] act where they were going to be terrorizing the leadership of the university in some way, I wonder if the response would be the same," said Porteous.

"Here's a group of men who are planning on not just sexually harassing their female [co-]students, but they're actually talking about raping women under sedation," she said, noting that incidents of sexual assaults by dentists have occurred in Canada before.

Restorative justice 'inappropriate response': Porteous

In addition to its internal investigation, Dalhousie has hired University of Ottawa professor and research chair Constance Backhouse to conduct an external investigation into the Faculty of Dentistry's environment, a move Lorenzi says she's "heartened" by.

"I think it's really important to have an accountability process that's not just in-house," she said. "To have people from the outside who can help take a more objective view."

Scott Anderson, an assistant professor of philosophy at UBC whose focus includes sexual harassment, says media coverage of the issue indicates there's a larger problem within Dalhousie's Faculty of Dentistry.

"There are a number of complaints on the parts of women in the faculty for which this seems like this was the icing on the cake," Anderson said, "in that they were being treated badly or they felt there was a privilege for the old boys club." He added it's possible others within the Faculty of Dentistry previously made similar misogynistic comments without being caught.

But because the Facebook posts were part of a private group not facilitated by Dalhousie, he said it's unclear how the university should resolve this.

"It would be good to find a way in which those who have been harmed by this and the academic community more generally can be satisfied that the people who have engaged in this behaviour have in fact recanted and understand the seriousness of what they've said," he said.

"How you go about doing that? I don't know the details. But I think that would be the ideal outcome."

Neither Porteous nor Lorenzi believe restorative justice, the method Dalhousie has chosen to deploy so far, is the answer unless every woman harmed wants to participate. Last week four female Dalhousie dentistry students wrote an open letter to Dalhousie's president Richard Florizone saying they would not participate in the restorative justice process, despite feeling pressured by the university to do so.

"A restorative-type resolution is not really an appropriate response to threats of rape," said Porteous. "It would be something that would come down the road, after the admission of guilt on behalf of the offenders, and only after them taking responsibility, issuing they are deeply sorry."