The Quebec Human Rights Commission has ordered a Montreal engineering school to pay a former student $34,500 in moral and punitive damages, after she says she was humiliated and sexually harassed at a frosh party — and dissatisfied with the response to her complaints.
In September 2015, Kimberley Marin was a second-year mechanical engineering student at the École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS), working toward a master's degree. At one point during a Hawaiian-themed frosh event, she says three male students grabbed her from behind and pulled her straw skirt off.
"They ran away with it, thinking it was fun," Marin says. "It took me around five seconds to realize that my behind was showing in front of everyone because my bikini [bottom] went down.
"It was the most humiliating moment of my life."
In the days that followed the incident, Marin says she was dismayed at how little support she received from either her student union, or the school's administration.
"The boy from the student union told me, 'well, you were dressed in a Hawaiian skirt, what were you expecting?'" she said.
Later, she says she wasn't very well received at the director of student services' office, either.
"I was with one of my witnesses, one of my friends who saw everything," she said. "This director told me that it was the student union organizing the event, and ÉTS did not really have anything to do with it."
At that point, she tried to impress upon him the culture of sexual harassment which existed at ÉTS — which has an overwhelming majority of male students — and to demand he do something to change it.
"His answer to me was, 'you know, some people victimize themselves,'" Marin said.
She then took her case to the Quebec Human Rights Commission, who heard her case in October of last year. By then, she had already dropped out of ÉTS, not long after word got out to some of her peers that she had filed a harassment complaint with the school — a complaint which essentially went nowhere.
The Commission awarded her $34,500 earlier this year, but for Marin, the case was never about the money.
"All I asked the Commission was to tell the ÉTS that they had to have policies, and to receive the complaint with no discrimination against women. I did it for all the other women," she said.
Marin says she has accepted a formal apology from ÉTS, and says she hopes to return in January to complete her degree.