Lessons from the FH UI Case: Why Law Students Violate Ethics Instead?

Allegations of verbal sexual harassment by 16 students from the Faculty of Law at Universitas Indonesia (FH UI) against several female students and lecturers continue to draw public attention. As individuals who daily engage with legal articles and theories of justice, they instead used a closed chat group to demean women’s dignity. Examining this phenomenon of law students who violate the law, sociologist from Universitas Negeri Jakarta (UNJ), Syaifudin, M.Kesos, explains that deep legal understanding does not automatically form personal integrity. The higher education law curriculum often gets trapped in mastering technical and textual material. According to Syaifudin, students are trained to memorise articles and sanctions, but this process does not necessarily touch the deeper human side. “Legal education often emphasises the cognitive aspect, namely understanding rules, articles, and sanctions, but does not necessarily succeed in internalising ethical and moral values in each individual,” stated the Sociology lecturer at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Law at UNJ. This lack of internalisation makes ethical values stop at the head without seeping into real actions. “As a result, for these individuals, law is understood as something ‘outside oneself’, not as a principle that guides daily behaviour,” he clarified. In addition, the perpetrators tend to separate their identity as academics from their behaviour in social environments. Syaifudin recounted that there is a mechanism called moral disengagement, which allows individuals to separate actions from their ethical consequences. When a group normalises harassment, the legal knowledge possessed by its members tends to become dysfunctional. “A person’s actions are more influenced by social habits formed in the environment, and not solely by formal knowledge,” said Syaifudin. Misguided group solidarity makes each individual feel safe to commit violations collectively.