'AITA for secretly recording my professor making remarks about women and getting him fired?'
"AITA for secretly recording my professor making sexist remarks and getting him fired?"
I (26M) am in my final year of university, and I had a professor, Dr. R, who always made weird, borderline inappropriate comments. At first, I thought he was just old-fashioned, but over time, I realized he was blatantly s#xist. It started subtly, he would call on male students more often and dismiss female students' answers as "lucky guesses."
But as the semester went on, his comments became worse. He once said in class, "Women just aren’t as naturally gifted in logic-based subjects," and another time, when a girl asked a question, he laughed and said, "If female students spent less time worrying about their looks and more time studying, maybe they’d get better grades."
Whenever we had a difficult topic, he’d smirk and say, "This might be a little hard for the girls, but don’t worry, just smile at your lab partners, and they’ll help you out." Then one day, he completely crossed the line. A girl in my class wore a tank top because it was hot outside, nothing inappropriate, just normal summer wear.
He paused the lecture and said, "Wow, dressing like that for extra credit? Bold strategy." Some people laughed awkwardly, but the girl looked mortified. She barely spoke for the rest of the class. That was when I decided to start recording. Over the next few weeks, I captured multiple instances of him making gross comments.
The worst was when he joked that women should focus on "easier" fields because STEM was "too stressful for them." That one really pissed me off because there were girls in the class working their a$$es off, and he was acting like they didn’t belong there.
I compiled everything and submitted it anonymously to the university’s disciplinary committee. They launched an investigation, and within a month, Dr. R was fired. Now, some of my classmates, mostly the guys, are pissed at me.
They say I "ruined a man’s career over a few jokes" and that I should have just ignored him. But a lot of the female students have thanked me, saying they’ve been uncomfortable in his class for years. So, AITA for recording my professor and getting him fired?
The internet had a lot of thoughts about the situation.
Apprehensive_Gur_551 wrote:
NTA. He got himself fired
With you submitting anonymously, how did people know it was you?
OP responded:
My best friend was cursing the person who got him fired in front of me. I told him it was me, and he told this to everyone around.
Tough_Tangerine7278 wrote:
Nah that dude got himself fired. Good riddance too. Thank you for cleaning out the trash on behalf of humans everywhere.
Imagine being so arrogant that you don’t know your students have video phones at all times. Lawd hammercy.
legallychallenged123 wrote:
Oh, f him and everyone that is blaming you. He got himself fired. That behavior should not be tolerated in any form. I wonder if the men would feel differently if he spent half the time talking about how much easier men had it - not because they are smarter.
But, because people assume they should be in the STEM field. “Now, men, you are probably a bunch of morons…”. This seriously pisses me off. Nobody should be defending that BS.
Proofreader476 wrote:
He ruined his own career by his own stupidity. Maybe the "men" who are pissed at you are concerned about their grades, as your professor was probably giving them more leeway than the women. You did the right thing. I am old enough to be your Mom and I would be incredibly proud of you. NTA.
Bloggingfly wrote:
Good for you. That took guts. Those guys complaining are probably the same ones who laughed along with him.
jenzebel728 wrote:
NTA. I'm a woman who majored in biochem. I had a professor just like this. It was horrible for the few women in the class. We learned early on that if we had a question, we had to ask one of the guys to ask it, otherwise we were just told to read the textbook or that we should have paid attention. Meanwhile, the guys would get a full answer.
What you did helped save multiple people's careers. Just think how many people left their major because of this professor. Think about how many people would have changed their major if they were forced in his class. I truly wonder how many women's gpa got screwed over by this guy. On behalf of all of us, thank you. You did the right thing.
Aggravating-Sock6502 wrote:
I'm having a really tough time believing this is real. I had a professor make blatant insults against any religion that wasn't Christ-based. A bunch of us went to the administration with in-class recordings we made and they said, "everyone's allowed an opinion at this university and if you don't like what your teacher says, you're welcome to drop the class."
(Which we couldn't actually do at that point in the semester without getting Fs.) Plus, if the professor in this story has tenure, then it's really unlikely they were fired this quickly.
Rightbuthumble wrote:
I did the same thing to my chemistry professor in 1965. I was the only female in the class and he was so openly hostile to me. I taped his lectures with the old fashion tape recorders so he knew he was being taped but he just went on about how women couldn't understand the hard sciences and one day he told me I was s#$t out of luck if I thought I was going to get out of his class with a wink and a smile.
I didn't even know what that meant. Then, he gave my lab partner an A for our lab assignment and gave me a D...I did most of the work. I went to the dean with my tapes and he was fired the next day. You know he was being sexists if back in the sixties they fired him.