City college profs educate themselves on sexuality to help students

CHENNAI: While family and friends are solaces for many students to share their problems, some turn to their professors to open up to. Now, some city professors are educating themselves so that they can provide a comfortable space for their students to speaking about their struggles, mental health issues, and sexuality.

Speaking to DT Next, professors shared how they educate themselves in providing a comfortable environment to students. The professor also insisted that both schools and higher education institutions should do better in addressing sensitive subjects including sexuality.

A professor of a Women’s Arts college in Chennai said, “Once during a mentoring session at the college, a student opened up about her sexuality. Frankly, I had minimum knowledge about it and could not even respond appropriately. This pushed me to do some reading to improve my knowledge on the topic.” Subsequently, the professor also approached psychologists and fellow professors to discuss sensible ways to handle this. “The lack of knowledge in accommodating such sensitive topics shows how ill-equipped as an institution we can be. Hence, I urged for a training/mentoring session for college professors at the department, but saw no response,” added the professor.

She says, during the different mentoring sessions so far, she had three students open up about their sexuality and the trauma that comes along with it. In fact, in one case, a former student contacted me, seeking advice about her sexuality.

“While interacting with all these students, I found that they get no emotional support from their family or friends. As students open up to professors in such cases, institutions should be equipped to do more,” she said. Meanwhile, a professor at Anna University insisted on the need for such training for faculties, as, in most cases, the senior professors have a conservative attitude to such topics and exhibit rude behaviour to some students. And, she says, some students have opened up about their sexuality to them, but they could barely help the students.

“Besides needing training for professors, it is necessary to make the counsellors at the institutions more active. For the entire Anna University, there is only one counsellor, barely addressing these issues,” the faculty added.