Students feel unsafe due to homophobia
Dorian Ghosh likes to end their day by taking a walk around the University of Canterbury’s (UC) campus in the evening.
But after being the target of homophobic and transphobic abuse, Ghosh no longer feels safe.
Constantly looking over their shoulder to make sure no-one is following them, Ghosh is tired of feeling unsafe and wants to raise awareness of the ongoing harassment.
Ghosh, who is transgender, moved to New Zealand from India in 2020.
They felt unsafe being ‘‘queer’’ in India and thought things would be different in New Zealand.
‘‘I felt safe because I come from a country that is very, very unsafe for queer people, but now that I have got used to it, I can see the things that still need to change,’’ they said.
It was not long after Ghosh started studying that a UC student was called ‘‘gay’’ and beaten up in early 2020 for wearing a pink sweatshirt outside the university’s bar.
The assault left the student with concussion, a black eye and a ‘‘screwed up’’ jaw after he was verbally abused and punched in the face.
Ghosh said things had improved since that incident but felt there was still a long way to go.
‘‘No-one else has been physically hurt. I know that’s a low bar, but that’s definitely an improvement.’’
The university has been taking steps to identify and help resolve these issues, including the employment of a fulltime rainbow adviser. Ari Nicholson, who has been in the role for three years, said they had not been made aware of Ghosh’s experience.
‘‘When it comes up we do address it. I’m hoping that it’s an isolated incident and that we can help that student to have a better experience,’’ Nicholson said.
But the problem, Ghosh says, lies with some of the students.
‘‘Some of them hold quite bigoted views about what it means to be queer
and what it means to be transgender,’’ they said.
Ghosh has experienced harassment both on and off campus, especially online from fellow students on the students’ association’s Facebook noticeboard page, and says it has exacerbated their mental health difficulties.
‘‘These people already have a lot of gender dysphoria – it’s already a sore spot,
getting made worse.’’
Ghosh is not alone in facing this type of harassment.
Nelson Pinder was walking on Maidstone Rd last Friday with friends when he was harassed twice by people driving by.
Pinder was upset by the experience and wrote on the students’ association noticeboard page.
‘‘I never get upset at idiots shouting idiocy, it just adds up to a feeling of not being safe. From my first weeks of uni I’ve known that expressing queerness comes with the implicit threat of violence,’’ he wrote.
Pinder said his personal experience had been that the homophobic harassment had been worse in the past 12 months.
‘‘It’s really ramped up this year and I’m not really sure why, but that might just be my experience.’’
Nicholson said they hadn’t seen an increase in homophobia and harassment at the university.
‘‘At the university we have work to do, in society we have work to do but having a role like mine in place means we can actually start to do it.’’
Students’ Association president Pierce Crowley said they took all incidents extremely seriously and were made aware of Pinder’s experience last week. ‘‘Having experienced similar abuse myself while downtown, I was particularly impacted by the testimony of the student in question. The UCSA are committed to ensure campus is a safe place for all.’’