My Boyfriend Attends SUNY Maritime College. He Has Been Shamed and Rejected From Friendships Because He Stood Up to Injustices and Inequality on Campus. He Feels Alone, & Something Must Change.

* This account was submitted to MLAA by the author, the girlfriend of a current student at the SUNY Maritime College *

Hi, I see a lot of posts about the Merchant Marine Industry and I just wanted to reach out. My boyfriend attends college at SUNY Maritime College and he has told me how uncomfortable it is to make friends with his peers due to the majority of the male student population sexualizing women and displaying racial injustices.

He has lost friends due to standing up to his peers for making degrading comments about any public announcements made about real issues, and he consistently feels alone. So many people put these maritime universities on a pedestal because of how many high-end career opportunities are available to graduates, but it’s clear to me that SUNY Maritime College doesn’t care about their students well being at all.

They seem to care much more about their image than whether or not their students are genuinely okay (mentally, physically, emotionally). My boyfriend has literally heard his peers say things like, “if girls don’t want to be sexualized then they should’ve picked a different school,” and “they act like those sexual assault assemblies are going to stop us.”

On top of this, there have even been incidents where condoms have been put on female dorm room doorknobs. And in addition to the current Capt. Hanft situation that’s in the news, my boyfriend was telling me about how Hanft even sent out an email to the school telling female students what to do to avoid being sexually harassed, instead of punishing the male actors for doing the actual sexual harassment.

As a woman and a human with morals, I constantly bring up the question of, “what can actually be done?” Because it isn’t just about altering the system that’s in place, but raising our children to be a well-rounded and meaningful contributors to our society.

But being at SUNY Maritime, it seems as though if you do have those human morals to stick up for inequalities and injustices, you are shamed and rejected from friendships.

Do you know if there are any legal measures that are able to be taken to ensure the alteration of these schools? Something needs to be done. Things need to change.