COLLOQUY

THE QUESTION

RESPONSES

BACKGROUND

Coming into my doctoral program after working full time in the "real world" for eight years I was prepared to be treated as a student, not as a person who was in a position of power. I was not prepared for the amount of emotional and verbal abuse that I received from tenured professors. Being a confident, intelligent and assertive woman was very threatening to many professors. I was to say nothing, be the recipient of verbal abuse, and go along with any thing that was asked of me. Along the way my mental health suffered enormously.

I changed dissertation advisors and learned to cherish the few professors who talked to and treated me as an adult, capable of independent thought and action. As long as professors are allowed to get away with abuse, from screaming fits to asking for sexual favors from their graduate advisees, their students mental health will continue to decline. When I did complain about an abusive advisor to a department chair and others, many acknowledged that they had received similar complaints from other students but their hands were tied or "that's just the way s/he is." There needs to be a systematic way to monitor professors' relationships with their graduate advisees that allows for open communication and complaints being received without the fear of retribution on the part of the student. I only hope, now that I am at a different university, is that I never forget how I was treated and that I strive to break the cycle of abuse perpetuated by graduate advisors with their doctoral students as victims!

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-- P. Spencer, Ph.D., Instructor, Penn State University (posted 10/26, 1:20 p.m., E.S.T.)

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