A Complaint Collector

I began collecting complaints before I became a complaint collector.

On November 3rd 2013, I walked into a meeting with students who had made a collective complaint about sexual harassment.

I walked into that meeting. And when I walked out of it, I had a different path in front of me.

The one that led me here.

To doing this work.

In that meeting the students, some of whom are now academics, others are working in different sectors, spoke about what happened that had led them to complain and what happened when they did. They have since shared their story of complaint, how and why they made it together. Leila Whitley, Tiffany Page, Alice Corble, Chryssa Sdrolia and Heidi Hasbrouck (and others who remain anonymous) explain, “There is no one story of how our collective came together.” They came together because of what they faced, working as they did in a department where “sexualized abuses happened in the open,” where they were “grabbed at and touched,” or watched others “be grabbed at and touched.” They came together to try and stop what was happening from happening. “We did not want future cohorts of students to be confronted with what happened to us,” they said. “We knew this couldn’t continue to be the way things were.” I learn so much from this description: how it can take a complaint to stop the reproduction of an inheritance. And so, when a complaint is stopped, so much else does not.

In that initial meeting, I heard that there had been earlier inquiries into sexual harassment in the department. After the meeting, I heard of even earlier ones.

I have since found out how common this is: when you complain you learn of earlier complaints, other complaints.

It is like discovering a secret room full of untold stories.

You come to know how much you had not known. To see what you did not see. And to see yourself not seeing it.

I could not stomach what I learnt.

I left not just my post but my profession. And when I left, I made it a task, perhaps even a lifelong commitment, to become a complaint collector.

A collector “is a person who accumulates special objects, like stamps or coins. If you're crazy about unicorns, you may also be a collector of unicorn figurines, stickers, and paintings…If you can think