Two former medical students are suing a US college, claiming that they were forced to undergo internal vaginal probing or risk missing out on grades.
The ex-students of Valencia College, Orlando, Florida, are also suing three medical diagnostic instructors who made other classmates, including one male student, carry out vaginal tests on them, despite ‘anatomically correct simulators’, ie realistic vaginas being available for this precise purpose.
And if the students really needed to practice gynaecological exams on real people, they were legally allowed to practice on actual patients at Central Florida Hospital.
‘When our clients went to orientation, these vaginal ultrasounds were positioned as voluntary,’ attorney Christopher Dillingham states in legal papers obtained by Fox News: ‘However, as time went on it became clear that they were anything but.
‘I can only begin to image what type of psychological stress this had upon them,’ he said.
When the former students complained to their tutors about this, they were allegedly threatened with lower grades: ‘They were told they could go to another program or that their grades would be reduced and that they would be blacklisted within the medical community’
Which is weird because getting your fanny out and probed against your will really shouldn’t be integral to getting a degree (imagine how many men would fall flat at this task!)
Dillingham’s clients are seeking unspecified damages and also want a refund of their tuition fees.
The college has responded by insisting the vaginal probing programme was all above board: ‘The use of volunteers, including fellow students for medical training, is a nationally accepted practice. We continue to review this practice and others to ensure that they’re effective and appropriate for the learning environment’
There’s a severe lack of women studying STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths and Medicine) subjects at university, and with stories like this, it’s no wonder.
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Picture: Ada Hamza
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.