Kudos again to those who speak up about mistreatment, and kudos to those who speak up difficulties experienced with reporting.

I think that such stories can inform growth. I feel like any institution is good at handling one-and-done mistreatment reports. The issue is when things don’t resolve, and the situation festers.

From the reporter’s perspective, they not only perceive the initial harm, but then additional harm when they do not feel that adequate measures were taken. From an administrative perspective, I imagine, the situation can rear its head at inopportune moments, which can be taxing.

In my opinion, no matter the institution, how to best deal with this kind of time-evolving report situation is still an open question. That’s OK—it is only fairly recently that there have been reporting systems in place at all—thankfully, there are—much less systems that can deal with complex, time-evolving (stochastic process) situations. 

Throughout all of this, though, in my opinion, certain values can steer us.  For example, reporters must have the right to be protected and given adequate accommodations to complete their degree (and find career opportunities after).

Ensuring this occurs smoothly is non-trivial. To learn how to achieve it, I believe that we should listen to the stories of those who have been through the reporting process, and to support their continued presence in the university, to inform how to best deal with such situations as they advance.

There is a pearl in every difficult experience (for example, difficult experiences can lead to advocacy). I hope we can take full advantage of these pearls to develop systems that are robust to complex reporting situations.