'TISS student harasses queer members, makes campus unsafe'

Mumbai: After the Supreme Court (SC) legalised consensual gay sex, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, (LGBTQ) community of Mumbai-based Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) has alleged that a student passed certain unpleasant remarks against one of its members. Such behaviour does disservice to the cause of creating a safe space for students, the ‘queer collective’, and a group of gay members at TISS, said in a statement issued on Tuesday. The group alleged that the comment was directed at the cultural secretary of the students’ union during a gathering last Friday.

The statement reads as  “The personal attack by a research scholar included references to the person's family, caste and economic background.” “There was lack of acknowledgement of the student's identity as an openly queer person, besides using an aggressive manner of speech and violently occupying the space and disrupting scope for meaningful engagement,” it said.

The alleged remark was passed during a students' general body meeting organized for making various budgetary allocations, sources said. “This is a classic case of cis-gender heterosexuality oppressing people who do not bow to the binaries of gender,” the Queer Collective group said in the statement.

“We firmly believe that such behavior does disservice to the cause of creating a safe space for students for practicing their politics,” it added.

TISS officials were not available for comments on the matter.