Welcome to Academia, Expect Cyberbullying

Academic contrapower harassment occurs when those with less perceived power harass someone with more power. Cyberbullying as contrapower occurs when students express varying levels of incivility and bullying through assorted online mediums such as email, online evaluations, or social media sites. This project examines the experiences of three faculty women with different racial/ethnic backgrounds, age differences, years in the academy, and at different levels within their career, and explores the connection between sexism and racism that persist in academic settings. Experiencing varying levels of cyberbullying the authors have found departments, administration, and universities fail to provide training or policies to protect faculty from student bullying behaviors. The concept of hegemonic civility is used to illustrate how the actions of students and inaction of administrators uphold the hegemonic order.

Academic Contrapower Harassment and Student Evaluations: The Gendered Experience of Bullying, Intimidation, and Entitlement

Student evaluations are subjective and oftentimes arbitrary, skewed by stereotypes students have of the professor rather than the actual merit of the instructional style. Yet student evaluations are frequently necessary for promotion and tenure requirements regardless of known gender bias. As such, student evaluations have the potential to foster a culture of academic contrapower harassment (ACPH). A convenience sample of 150 professors and instructors (41.3% male, 56.7%, female, and 2% declined to specify) from two separate liberal arts colleges were surveyed to explore the gendered differences of perceived bullying of professors by students on anonymous student evaluations. Using Pearson’s chi-square test for independence (categorical variables), results support differences in the psychological consequences of student evaluations between male and female faculty but fail to confirm instances of ACPH.