Today’s post comes from guest author Jon Rehm from Rehm, Bennett & Moore.

I recently received an inquiry from a student about working through the challenges caused and exacerbated by her bullying professor, because unfortunately, bullying has never been limited to work or a school filled with children. This is my response.

Sorry to hear about your professor making your life miserable. I have two pieces of advice for dealing with him. Here is how you can proceed to protect your rights:

1. Under Title IX, you likely have the right to take medical leave from school to deal with your psychiatric condition. This should allow you to stay in the program and preserve your ability to get your degree. This will at least give you time to treat your mental health condition so you can deal with your bullying professor. Here’s a blog post that touches on that portion of your concern. 
2. Once you get your mental health together, I would attempt to band together with other students who have been bullied by the professor and bring it up with the administration. I find there is more power for people when they band together rather when the face their employer, or in your case school administration, as individuals. This blog post shows some information about what to do when you’re dealing with a bully. 

I sent you these blog posts so you can understand the underlying legal principles here. As a student you are protected against discrimination by Title IX. This includes protection from harassment that is motivated by sex, race, religion, etc. However this professor seems to be an equal-opportunity jerk, which means his conduct is not against the law. However, you likely have some protections based on disability as well under Title IX. Your mental-health condition is a disability, so at the very least the school will probably have to grant you some leave to take care of your mental-health condition.

The weakness with asking for accommodations from a bullying boss based on a mental-health condition is that administrators and courts tend to view people with mental-health conditions as overly sensitive and unreasonable.

If you can get a few people to join with you in standing up to a bully, you are in a stronger position. It sounds like you would have some people who would be willing to join with you. You are in a stronger position than you think. Your major is an industry that is competitive where the pay is fairly low. There is no shortage of people who are qualified to be teachers within you major. I’m sure they could hire someone with a basic sense of decency.

Prior results do not guarantee outcomes.
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