translated from Spanish: Edomex high school director after alumni protest

The Ministry of Education of the State of Mexico dismissed Omar Soberanis Galeana, director of the Industrial and Commercial Technical Secondary School (ESTIC) 52 Jaime Torres Bodet, in Cuautitlán, State of Mexico, following the protests of students who ensure have been suffering sexual harassment within the facilities for years.
Yesterday the director, Omar Soberanis Galeana, said they are the culprits, and he has ignored them several times.
Although her nonconformity erupted from this Sunday, February 23, one of the girls discovered that her ex-boyfriend was in a Facebook group of 2nd E roommates, in which photos were shared that took the girls up her skirt when they were seated.
She took screenshots and began to tell her friends, who were also spreading it. Then another 3rd E girl contacted them to tell them that a student had taken a video under the skirt of the Arts teacher, who even when she saw him, she started crying.
So on Monday, February 24, when they returned to school, they went to talk to their counselors to report the situation.
“They say the director started laughing and told them it was kid-friendly stuff. The truth was our anger, because of the comment and attitudes the director took to this situation,” one tells Animal Político. Her name and that of five other girls who gave her testimony, for privacy as minors, is not reproduced.
At the time of a tribute to the flag, they say, the director only had the children singled out for sharing the photos offer an apology. It was then that he made the comment that was shared on social networks, that they “caused such situations”.

This is what the high school principal said yesterday. pic.twitter.com/cc7GpAcduM
— Karen ?? ✨ (@_yosoykaren) February 25, 2020

Outraged, the girls re-arranged to hold a protest on Tuesday. There was the majority of the students, who are just under half of the school’s 800 students.
The answer, however, outraged them again, as the director told them that they allowed harassment because they had not reported it, although they did so on Monday, just knowing.

Listen to everyone for the dissemination and support of these girls. ?✨
I share the update of the director’s response to the protests pic.twitter.com/KFkbz9Z20g
— Karen ?? ✨ (@_yosoykaren) February 25, 2020

After that, they re-arranged a meeting with four students and then with some parents, as well as teachers, including the one who had allegedly cried when they saw their video, but positioned themselves on their side, which has them bewildered and upset.
According to the girls, the teacher’s attitude was already different than when he had spoken only to young women. Before the adults he assured that they had misunderstood their words. But they pointed out that his way of expressing himself had not been appropriate and that he had caused the scandal situation, that he did not have to blame the students.
The girls claim that not only did the complaint of this Sunday’s photos take her to her office, but many others that occurred before. In an interview with Animal Político, they explained that they have reported cases of bullying of teachers to students or their own colleagues, who even nalgue they are when they pass through the corridors.
They have first gone to their counselors, who ask them to sign a record with their complaint, but then nothing happens.
“I tried to testify about a teacher’s harassment and told my counselor. He told me he was going to discuss it with the principal. I waited days, weeks and months, and to date they have not told me anything,” one of them said of Teacher Sergio, Mathematics and Physical Education. “The teacher repeatedly stroked me, touched my hair, and felt glances at my body from him. There was once I was pointing out what he was dictating and he passed and I was told by his limb.”
“Also one of my classmates stated that a child played it and went with the counselor, and the counselor told the same thing as to me and to date they have done nothing,” she added.
In another case, one young man realized that someone else was recording his sister, so he hit him and the case ended up in the principal’s office. But already there, the director first started to check her skirt, if she didn’t have it folded, and the bottom line was that she told the girl why she was wearing her skirt so short.
Read more: UNAM already considers serious misconduct gender-based violence; but don’t toughen sanctions
Harassment history
The case went viral because the videos resumed and was published by an alumnus of that high school, Karen García, who studied there between 2003 and 2005. She says that from that time there was harassment, but back then they couldn’t even think of saying anything.
“The gentleman of the mayor, who is still himself, sold pallets, for example, and had his refrigerator in a hallway, so there he would put the girls and touch them. At that time we didn’t say anything, you didn’t dare,” he recalls.
“When I was in third grade, we did want to raise our voices because we had a math teacher, who when we would come to the desk to qualify something or something, the teacher would put his hand in his pants and touch himself. It was like… a bit of a mockery, because boys found it funny, but for us girls it was a terror to have to approach that teacher.”
The girls claim that they only want justice and respect, that the students who have harassed them are expelled. They have not thought of any more protests, but if they do not get an answer, they would consider seeking the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP).
For now they remain outraged, for in addition to the public scolding suffered on the internet, the director also intimidated them when they spoke to him in his office.
“He told us that what we had provoked was already very large and that we were his 24 years of career and the four years he has been in school, at the Institution Jaime Torres Bodet. And in fact he asked us that just like what we did, we had to remedy it one way or another because we were smearing his name. Excuse the word but it became something stupid, because it’s like he just wants to clear his name, and we, we’re going to stay that way?” they claim.
The school has not announced anything on its official website, while Facebook disappeared, after announcing the following:
“In view of the protocols for the prevention, detection and action in case of bullying of the government of the state of Mexico, this profile will be decommissioned”.
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Original source in Spanish

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