THANK YOU to everyone who has signed and promoted our petition to end the misuse of NDAs in U.S. higher education. 

Because of you, petition is gaining support each day. Our next big benchmark is 500, and we're confident we'll get there before the ides of March. In the meantime, we are busy building coalition with national and international allies and honing our next steps to invite universities to sign on the the "University Pledge." 

“(W)e [our president and board of trustees] commit to not using Non-Disclosure Agreements to silence people who come forward to raise complaints of sexual harassment, abuse or misconduct, discrimination, or other forms of harassment and bullying.”

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One of the trickiest parts of advocating to end the misuse of NDAs in higher education is that NDAs erase the content being covered up as well as the very existence of an agreement. To draw on the metaphor of "sweeping under the rug," NDAs are both the rug and the broom...and they both vanish along with whatever has been swept "under." 

Students, faculty, parents, and stakeholders who trust in the integrity of higher education and the safety of college campuses often don't know that NDAs exist, let alone how and when they are misused. Therefore the problems that NDAs leave in their wake aren't accurately identified as connected to the misuse of NDAs, the contexts in which they are signed, or the tactics used to entice signers. Nor is NDA misuse widely understood to cause or contribute to the very silencing—"hush culture"—that they ensure and that impacts everyone connected to higher education.  Community members at institutions that misuse NDAs often don't know why they begin to speak in a whisper, or look over their shoulder to be sure they're not being overheard, when referring to a particular topic, person, or event. Why are some subjects taboo? Why do I suddenly feel at risk? Expression that is intuitively understood as safe and unsafe blur together to produce a pervasive sense of unease, insecurity, and lack of trust of one's community and institution. This dis-ease bleeds into all aspects of institutional life, often without the critique it warrants or curiosity as to its causes. 

NDAFreeCampus is committed to ending the misuse of non-disclosure agreements in US higher education, and building public awareness around the damage to individuals and institutional integrity when NDAs are used to silence survivors of sexual abuse, sexual harassment, workplace harassment, discrimination, and other forms of bullying.

We've included links to recent news on NDAs below, and THANK YOU for joining the good fight. 

Sincerely, NDAFreeCampus

NDAs in the news this week:

From Asbury Park Press:

Employees appreciate the freedom they have to publicly speak about their experiences without an NDA. One woman in her mid-20s who was sexually harassed said, “People need to know what they did to me. I don’t want anyone else to be at the center of that abuse. I want to tell the world, ‘Don’t work there, don’t work for him, run.’ And I do.”

From Business Insider: 

It's an important development in Utah, a state where some women have reported experiencing a culture of sexism and even harassment at companies they've worked at. Nationwide, confidentiality clauses, often in the form of nondisclosure and non-disparagement agreements, can be commonplace and keep employees from reporting cases of sexual harassment or assault at their company.