Sexual Harassment on Campus: Justice That Fails from Within the Mind

Pramoedya Ananta Toer, in his novel Bumi Manusia, entrusts an eternal message through the character Jean Marais: “An educated person must act justly from within the mind, let alone in actions.”

For anyone who chooses the path of law as a profession, that sentence is not merely a literary quote. It is a mirror.

That mirror feels relevant when in April 2026 a screenshot from a closed conversation group spread to the public.

The conversation came from a group of students from the Faculty of Law at the University of Indonesia and contained language that demeaned women, including phrases implying sexual consent without confirmation and the use of legal terms for purposes contrary to their original meaning.

An ethics process is underway, and the presumption of innocence is a principle that must be upheld, including amid public opinion pressure.

What is more important to examine is the question behind this incident: why can such mindsets grow, and what needs to change?

Psychologist Carl Jung explains that everyone wears a “persona”, a social mask adjusted to environmental expectations.

Law students at prestigious institutions usually display a progressive and integrity-filled persona.

However, Jung also reminds us that the more perfect the mask in public, the greater the pressure from the hidden side of the self beneath it.

Closed conversation groups often become places where that mask is removed. There, a person feels safe from oversight and the usual standards applied in public spaces.

This also explains the anger from many parties. Not merely because of the conversation content, but because of the vast gap between the displayed image and what was revealed.

An argument that often arises in such cases is that conversations in closed groups are private matters, “just joking” among fellow members.

However, in the digital era, conversations are transmitted thoughts, recorded, and leave traces. Those traces can become evidence.

Legally, this is indeed a grey area that needs to be honestly acknowledged. Law No. 12 of 2022 on Sexual Violence Crimes regulates Electronic-Based Sexual Violence in Article 14, which among other things touches on the dissemination of sexually charged content.