5
—Plato1
Traders are generally an impatient lot. They speak quickly, walk fast, and hate to waste time. In one high-rise building where I was employed, the equity trading floor was on the fifth floor. An express elevator would whisk traders up to their desks. Although many high-rise buildings offer express elevators to higher floors, few offer express rides to floor five. At Morgan Stanley, where time was money, traders could not waste their time waiting in an elevator while passengers disembarked at lower floors. In order to save more time, shoe shiners would visit the trading floor, so that traders wouldn’t miss out on any important trades while scuff marks were removed from their shoes. A separate cafeteria was provided on the trading floors, so that rushed employees who did not have the time to make it to the corporate cafeteria (another elevator ride) could grab some lunch. My boss even requested a revolving door be placed between our adjacent offices. Walking out of his office door and into mine required too much time. That was the culture. Time was money.
Imagine the reaction of these time-sensitive traders when told they were required to attend sexual harassment training. The perception was that sexual harassment training was for the benefit of the few female employees, and so, it was the women’s fault the men had to endure the training.
Who Likes Going to Workplace Sexual Harassment Training?
It’s probably safe to say that most professionals don’t look forward to attending sexual harassment training in their organization—it’s just one more meeting to fit into a busy schedule. However, if employees believe that the training is primarily intended to benefit women, resentment at having to attend this training may be directed toward female employees. The true reason that sexual harassment training is typically provided is not for women or men, but to reduce legal liability. Nonetheless, most people still think of sexual harassment as a woman’s issue. By consequence, resentment at having to attend the training may be directed at women in the workplace.
Again, I’m certainly not suggesting that we eliminate sexual harassment training. We do, however, need to be aware of this frustration, because it’s one more issue that can alienate men and women at work. If we’re going to spend hours talking to our employees about creating a hospitable work environment for both sexes, then let’s make sure that’s the outcome. Sexual harassment training needs to be accurate, informative, and motivated by establishing a welcoming work environment for men and women. Busy people will still probably resent having to attend, but if they feel their concerns are addressed, their resentment may be minimized.
When Alexander McPherson Said “No” to Sexual Harassment Training
In order to limit legal liability, organizations take sexual harassment training very seriously, but often the concerns of individuals get lost in the process. So eager are they to cover their legal butt, trainers can forget that the point of the training should be to create a hospitable work environment for everyone. As a result, those who have reservations about the training can be ignored or even punished.
Alexander McPherson, a professor of molecular biology and biochemistry at the University of California-Irvine, refused to complete his university’s sexual harassment training. Why? He felt it was an attack on his integrity. In other words, he felt that forcing him to take sexual harassment training implied that he needs it. If the university felt he needed to take sexual harassment training it must be because they thought he might sexually harass someone. Although sexual harassment training is about tolerance and ensuring employees are comfortable in the workplace, the university refused to acknowledge McPherson’s reservations regarding the training. In fact, the great lengths his university was willing to go to in order to ensure his complicity with the training demonstrates the significance that sexual harassment training has achieved within organizations.
McPherson and other faculty and supervisors at UC-Irvine were asked to complete sexual harassment training so the university would be in compliance with California law AB1825 (the California state law requiring institutions with more than fifty employees to provide training to supervisors). McPherson was willing to complete the training if the university was willing to sign a statement indicating he was under no suspicion of sexual harassment.
Had the university stepped in and addressed McPherson’s concerns, the problem would have ended there. However, because sexual harassment training is motivated by legal issues and not people issues, the university refused. After McPherson’s story appeared in the Orange County Register, things started to get ugly. The university began by stripping McPherson of his supervisory duties. McPherson was not fazed and persevered. He told me:
I had to teach a course, and they said you can’t supervise your teaching assistants. So, they took away all the teaching assistants. Well, they thought that this was a terrible punishment. It meant I had to grade the papers, but big deal. In the old days, I used to do all of that anyway. They let me teach—funny how I could supervise my students but not my TAs.
When the university realized this punishment was not sufficiently severe to coerce McPherson into training, they came down even harder. McPherson had just been awarded a $1.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This grant supported McPherson’s laboratory and, in particular, the salaries of two senior researchers in his lab. As is the case with many grants (despite the fact that McPherson developed the grant proposal and was the principal investigator on the grant), the NIH grant was legally contracted to the university. Therefore the university had the right to refuse the grant.
The university threatened to strip McPherson of his grant due to his lack of participation in sexual harassment training. McPherson explained:
Had they killed that grant [my senior researchers] would have been out on the street after twenty years, because I couldn’t pay them. So this was the leverage they were using on me. Both of [the researchers] at that time were pretty near retirement age, and they’d been with me since 1989. These people are as close to me as family, and I had to protect these people.
In order to pay his researchers, McPherson needed the grant. Therefore, McPherson completed the training, but he never received any written statement from the university. At least his grant was not declined. What did McPherson think of the training?
In the end I did take the sexual harassment training online. It was trivial. It required me to sit there for forty-five minutes, and at the end answer these questions that were absolutely idiot questions. You didn’t even need to take the training—your grandmother taught you this.
One of the things I learned from the sexual harassment training was that it had only marginally to do with sexual harassment. It was mostly training on how to avoid getting the university sued. That’s what it was all about. This is nothing but a giant protection of the university racket. There was no sincerity behind it to prevent sexual harassment, but that’s not their objective. Their objective is to keep us from getting sued. And as long as they at least make the pretense that they are doing everything they can to prevent this, then it protects them from lawsuits.
If the university had been sympathetic to McPherson’s concerns, he would have complied and completed the training. Taking into account that some employees may be antagonistic toward the training should be an integral part of all sexual harassment training. Training programs that incorporate flexibility and understanding toward reluctant employees may curtail resentment.
One of the craziest aspects of McPherson’s story is the university’s reaction. Inspired by McPherson’s reluctance to partake in sexual harassment training, the University of California took up the issue of how to enforce sexual harassment training compliance by faculty. It turns out, a proposed punishment for those not participating in the training was more severe than the punishment typically given to sexual harassers!2
Perhaps it’s a sign we’ve gone a little far when the punishment for lack of participation in sexual harassment training exceeds the punishment for sexually harassing. We need to take a step back and remember what the goals of the training are, and be sure to address concerns about the training.
Other anecdotal evidence corroborates how obsessed organizations have become with regard to compliance with sexual harassment training. US News and World Report described how a team of Indiana firefighters volunteered to help rescue victims of Hurricane Katrina. When they arrived in Atlanta, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) staffers told them that their job was to hand out flyers, but their first task was to attend a multi-hour course on sexual harassment and equal employment opportunity.3 Evidently, this is standard operating procedure at FEMA. Another example comes from CIA agent Robert Baer’s memoir, See No Evil, where Baer describes asking headquarters to send someone who spoke Afghan languages.4 CIA headquarters offered to send a four-member sexual harassment team instead.
They Said What in Sexual Harassment Training?
I am certainly not suggesting we make sexual harassment training optional, but I do believe we should be more sensitive to the concerns of the participants. Most importantly, if organizations go to such great lengths to ensure that every employee attends sexual harassment training, they should at least ensure the information they provide during that training is accurate. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case.
Although regulation addresses the frequency and length of sexual harassment training, the substance of the training is somehow overlooked. Basically employers are told the importance of sexual harassment training but not the most effective approach to implementation. As a result, organizations ranging from automobile manufacturers to supermarkets must discover how to best instruct their employees about sexual harassment—not exactly their area of expertise. These organizations may rely on their own legal and human resources departments or hire outsiders to provide training. But even those who choose to outsource are forced to select from a proliferation of sexual harassment training providers.
As a result, the quality of training varies greatly from employer to employer. Negative experiences with the training not only lead to anger and frustration with required participation but also may result in negative feelings toward women. If employees are annoyed regarding their forced participation in sexual harassment training and feel that the training is intended to benefit women, then their irritation may be extended to women in the workplace.
The causes of frustration with the training vary. One of the most common complaints is that it is a waste of time. Employees often think they already know what constitutes sexual harassment and that they learn little from the training itself. If the information is provided with a condescending tone, the backlash may be even greater. Bill Whittle of the National Review describes his recent experience with sexual harassment training as follows:
To be subjected to two hours of second-grade style, “who can tell me what Johnny did wrong by telling Sarah she has a hot body” lecturing infuriates me on many levels. To begin with, I do not need to be told this is inappropriate behavior. I already know that is inappropriate behavior. I learned that was inappropriate behavior not from the state of California or a battalion of corporate lawyers, but from my parents who raised me to be polite, well-mannered, and who spent much of their own youth trying to form me into a civilized gentleman.5
Another complaint about sexual harassment training is that the training itself can be offensive. Several letters and e-mails written to Alexander McPherson described personal experiences with sexual harassment training that left participants offended, frustrated, and confused. (McPherson’s ordeal was widely publicized, and he was kind enough to share the e-mails and letters he received in response to his predicament.) Some of their experiences were appalling. One professor wrote:
While at [the university] all faculty were required to take “sensitivity training.” We were commanded to pair with a professor of the opposite sex. Then we were commanded to feel each other. I refused on the grounds that as a married man I had no intention of feeling any woman except my wife. I was forced to feel the woman’s arm or face disciplinary action. I felt her arm. Does it strike you as illogical that we are commanded to feel women who are strangers, then laws are passed making it illegal?
Clearly, sexual harassment training should not force men and women to touch one another, but without any oversight on the content, anything can be included in the training. Another employee described his experience with sexual harassment training that he found offensive:
As an employee of a university, it was mandatory (in order to keep my job) to accept the same policies that Professor McPherson did not accept. While taking the [sexual harassment] training course I was appalled by the example situations that were presented. I honestly felt like I was harassed by exposure to the training situations. There were several uncomfortable scenarios that were very unlikely to involve me. The perverted scenarios were presented as if they were common. I agree that nobody should harass their coworkers, but the training scenarios presented were vulgar.
Yet another described how he felt the training was demeaning to men: “Participants were told that because they are men they are prone to sexually harass.”
Consistent with the findings that the training leaves perceptions that women are weak, one employee expressed his disdain for sexual harassment training for just this reason. He wrote, “Europeans must be laughing at our weak and defenseless women who don’t have the guts to send some jerk to hell and must depend on the state’s legal system to protect them. In Europe women have no trouble telling someone to buzz off.”
In addition to descriptions of condescending, boring, and offensive training sessions (as if that’s not bad enough), sexual harassment training can also instill fear into employees. In his research on sexual harassment and training, Russell Eisenman describes a sexual harassment training session in which the seminar leader accidently admitted to using sexual harassment allegations to punish a disliked employee. Eisenman writes:
The person directing the sexual harassment seminar made what may have been a Freudian slip, saying “We would not try to fire someone for a minor behavior, even if it was sexual harassment, unless it was someone we are trying to get.” She then realized how awful it sounds to say that they might use their power arbitrarily to “get” someone. So, she “corrected” herself saying “I do not mean we would try to get someone. . . .” This is part of the problem. Sexual harassment, especially the “hostile environment” type, is so vague that even attorneys cannot agree what is and what is not sexual harassment. Thus, the concept can be used to get someone, if that person is politically disfavored. Or, the person may have done something relatively minor, such as tell one dirty joke, and they can be fired for sexual harassment.6
Such arguments only add fuel to the polarization of men and women in the workplace. The suggestion that someone could be fired for minor behavioral infractions could instill sufficient fear in employees so that they refrain from interactions with opposite-sex coworkers.
One professor that I know, let’s call him Ryan, told me how just this year he thought some in his department used sexual harassment to try to “get him” because they disapproved of his area of research (shhh, it involved unusual sexual practices!). The research was really the work of one of his graduate students. When the title of her thesis was announced at graduation, he could sense the disapproval from his colleagues. Although some colleagues clearly deemed the research topic inappropriate, the university research board had already given their stamp of approval for this line of research. Ryan felt that since his colleagues couldn’t complain directly about his research, they’d find another way to get him. They reported him to the human resources department.
Ryan was called in by his human resources department and initially probed about his teaching. “Do you discuss anal sex during class?” was one of the first questions shot at him. Not knowing where this investigation was going, he explained that his health course covered the AIDS epidemic. It would be hard to discuss the spread of AIDS without mentioning anal sex, he explained.
Clearly, questions about his teaching weren’t going anywhere, but a guy that does sex research must have done something inappropriate. The questioning continued. The human resources representative asked Ryan if he ever asked female colleagues to lunch. When he replied yes, the follow-up question was, “Don’t you know that asking a woman to lunch is different than asking a man?” When Ryan defended himself by stating the department was predominantly female, and if he didn’t want to dine alone, he had to ask women to join him, an investigation ensued. Several of Ryan’s female colleagues were questioned as to whether Ryan had ever asked them to lunch. Thankfully, his female colleagues supported the notion that he was their friend, and reported that, indeed, they did dine with their friends—even male friends like Ryan.
Ryan’s human resources department is sending a message that having lunch with an opposite-sex colleague is harassment. It’s not. Needless to say, Ryan felt attacked and is now very hesitant to interact with his female colleagues. The suggestion that dining with opposite-sex colleagues could land you in trouble would instill fear into anyone. Ryan has also significantly reduced the number of students he is willing to work with. Those few students with whom he discusses his research must sign a waiver first.
If a new female faculty member is hired, it’s unlikely Ryan will go out of his way to get to know her. He certainly won’t be asking her to join him for lunch. She won’t be able to garner the advantages of his years of experience in the department. Although Ryan’s department is predominantly female, he told me the department has been chaired by men since his arrival twelve years ago. Connections with both sexes are necessary to get ahead, and at least in Ryan’s university, they seem to be shutting down cross-sex interaction.
How Does Backlash Impact Sexual Harassment Training?
While Ryan felt attacked by human resources and his own department, other men feel attacked by the sexual harassment training provided by their organization. In fact, sometimes they feel so attacked in sexual harassment training that the training actually backfires. A primary goal of sexual harassment training is to make employees more sensitive to sexual harassment issues in their workplaces. But sometimes just the opposite happens. Researchers Shereen Bingham and Lisa Scherer examined the impact of sexual harassment training and obtained shocking results.
Surveying half of their participants before they attended sexual harassment training and the other half after they completed training, they examined sensitivity to sexual harassment. If sexual harassment training was accomplishing its goal, those who attended sexual harassment training would be more sensitive to issues surrounding sexual harassment than those who had not.
Perhaps shockingly, that’s exactly the opposite of what they found. Men who participated in sexual harassment training were more likely than men who did not to blame the victim and to think it was okay to sexually coerce a subordinate. Men who participated in training were also less likely to report sexual harassment in their workplaces.7
For men, the sexual harassment training had the exact opposite effect from what was intended. This negative effect of sexual harassment training was unique to men. Women who had completed training did not differ from women who had not had training on any of these issues. How do the researchers involved in this study explain their results? They argue that the men felt attacked and were attempting to defend themselves. Although the sexual harassment presentation clearly stated that both sexes engage in harassment, everyone knows that offenders are typically men. So, as a result of feeling attacked, the male participants experienced backlash against the policies. They were more likely to blame the victim and less likely to recognize sexual harassment when they saw it.8
When sexual harassment training is having the opposite of the intended effect, clearly intervention is necessary. It’s important to note, as far as we know, there was nothing unique about the presentation of the sexual harassment training that caused this result. It was the insinuation that accompanies the training that allegations of sexual harassment give women power over men. In reality, sexual harassment training should focus on the rights of both the victims and alleged harassers, making it clear that a thorough investigation will ensure that all parties are treated fairly.
When not scaring men, sometimes the suggestions for avoiding sexual harassment are just too time-consuming and impractical. As an example, one published list of suggestions to help managers handle the sexuality and intimacy in cross-sex mentor relationships suggested that mentor and mentee should abide by the following guidelines.9 First, they suggest that the mentor and mentee should refrain from calling each other by nicknames. I guess this makes sense if your nickname is “Cutiepie,” but “Bob” for Robert seems okay. There’s more. They suggest that the mentor and mentee should keep a journal with all times and places met and what was discussed. In addition, the pair should let others know about their scheduled appointments. Finally, they advise, the pair should be trained by human resources on the dangers of sexualizing the mentor relationship. These, along with the other suggestions they provide for establishing cross-sex mentor relationships, would no doubt reduce the likelihood of impropriety or perceived impropriety of these relationships.
The problem lies in the emphasis on the sexual aspects of mentor relationships. By suggesting that these relationships are more complicated and time consuming, they are basically recommending that employees should avoid cross-sex mentoring. While the suggestions they provide would most likely decrease the chances that a sexual relationship would develop, most employees would probably find it easier to just stick to same-sex mentor relationships.
As extreme as these guidelines may seem, other organizations are even more zealous in their suggestions to employees. Some, in an effort to prevent sexual harassment, suggest curtailing interactions between coworkers to eliminate any possibility that sexual harassment could occur. In doing this, the organization is most likely decreasing its own productivity. Informal friendships within an organization tend to increase collaboration, spark creativity, and increase information flow.10 Organizations that discourage these informal networks are at a clear disadvantage.
Nonetheless, a fast-food restaurant provides an example of just such a policy. In a sexual harassment seminar, restaurant employees were instructed not to talk to each other at work about anything personal.11 Instead, the employees were told they could only talk about job-related matters while at work. The goal of the policy was to avoid the possibility that someone may inadvertently sexually harass another.
At a law firm, where employees are typically lawyers who have been educated in the finer points of sexual harassment, one would expect misinformation would be less of a problem. However, one male lawyer points out what he garnered about social interaction from a seminar he attended:
I was at a seminar, and a defense lawyer, a partner in a huge law firm, said the advice he gives is, do not interact with women subordinates socially, period. Don’t ever go to lunch with one, don’t ever go for drinks after work, don’t ever do stuff on weekends. I knew this guy. I knew he’s a real social guy, a party guy. I raised my hand and said, “Isn’t social interaction helpful to one’s career; aren’t you more apt to give [an associate] work if you go out for drinks with him?” He said, “Yes, that’s true.” So I said, “What you’re saying is that to avoid sexual harassment you’re going to have to engage in conduct that’s discrimination.”12
Ironically, as this lawyer highlights, avoiding women in order to steer clear of any legal sexual harassment issues is, in itself, illegal. It is discriminatory to exclude women from activities that may further their career. Excluding all female employees to avoid potentially offending a few doesn’t seem like a great strategy anyway. In other words, the proposed solution potentially has a greater negative impact on female employees than the original problem it was trying to solve.
Complimenting a Coworker—Is That Sexual Harassment?
In order to eliminate any possibility of legal liability, organizations often adopt an overly cautious stance in their sexual harassment training. So heavy-handed are many training seminars that the current approach toward sexual harassment training has been compared to fixing a watch with a sledgehammer.13 Unfortunately, this overzealous approach to sexual harassment training may increase rather than decrease the ambiguity about what constitutes sexual harassment—and recall that ambiguity regarding what constitutes harassment strengthens the sex partition.
A study by Mary Pilgram and Joann Keyton illustrates how participants emerge from sexual harassment training more confused than when they started.14 Participants in this study were questioned both before and after participating in sexual harassment training which consisted of a widely used, commercially produced online sexual harassment training program. After participating in the training, participants were more confused about what behaviors were considered harassing.
An example from this study illustrates the point. Participants were given the following true or false question both before and after participation in the sexual harassment training: “True or False. It is considered sexual harassment to tell a classmate of the opposite sex that he/she looks nice.” As you know from reading this book, the correct answer is false, and 87 percent of the participants answered this question correctly before participating in the sexual harassment training. However, only 54 percent answered it correctly after participating in the sexual harassment training. Participating in the training caused the participants’ knowledge about sexual harassment to decrease!
Pilgram and Keyton suggest that “perhaps the training caused the participants to be overly sensitive and more cautious in identifying what constitutes sexual harassment after the training, supporting the complex nature of the topic. Some may have become paranoid, believing that to even pay a compliment to someone could be misinterpreted.”15
Training should lead to greater clarity on exactly what constitutes harassment, not greater confusion. What good results from forcing employees to endure hours of training that only results in misunderstanding the fundamentals of sexual harassment and reluctance to interact with opposite-sex employees?
Be Honest: Training Is Offered to Cover Legal Liability Not to Help Employees
One of the reasons that the message about sexual harassment is not getting through to employees is because the training is aimed at limiting legal liability, and it’s not focused on the best way to create a harassment-free workplace. Employees aren’t stupid, and they can differentiate between sexual harassment training designed out of a desire to improve workplace relations and instruction designed to meet legal requirements. Interestingly, researchers have confirmed that the intentions of the organization play an important role in the effectiveness of sexual harassment training.16 The training is less effective when the employees feel that the training is merely provided to meet legal requirements. However, when employees feel that the organization’s goal is to genuinely improve the quality of life in the work environment, they are more likely to respond positively to sexual harassment training.
When an organization offers sexual harassment training for legal reasons, but feigns a genuine interest in decreasing sexual harassment, repercussions may be greatest. Instead, a frankness regarding motives may be the best move to help dispel resentment regarding forced participation in the training. Recall how Alexander McPherson resented his university’s motives for requiring participation in sexual harassment training sessions. When asked what his university could do to make sexual harassment training more palatable for him, McPherson replied, “Well, if they would call it what it really is. If they had simply made it absolutely clear that the reason you’re taking this is not that you are involved in sexual harassment in any way, but you must do this in order to protect the university from lawsuits. If they had just made that clear, so everyone understood—I wouldn’t have objected at all.” In other words, McPherson felt the university should not pretend to be genuinely interested in making the workplace more hospitable when their motives were purely legal. From his perspective, if the organization had been up front about their legal motives, he would not have resisted participating in training.
Sexual Harassment Training on Campus
I’ve spent a good deal of time on university campuses, in one role or another, and sexual harassment training on the university campus has problems too. Campus training and warnings can fall into the overzealous category, overstating what constitutes harassing behavior. Some warn that a professor’s praise of a promising student should set off warning bells that sexual harassment may be afoot. Over twenty years ago, in their book on sexual harassment on campus, The Lecherous Professor, Billie Wright Dziech and Linda Weiner provided a list of warning signs to identify a lecherous professor at your university.17 One of the warning signs is “excessive flattery and praise of the student.” Apparently, according to the authors, both students with low self-esteem and those with high aspirations succumb to this praise trick. Professors tell students about their exceptional abilities “to get psychological access to them.”18 The following, one of their suggestions, exemplifies the overidentification of sexual harassment:
If a student is having a personal relationship with a professor and is sure that sexual harassment has nothing to do with her situation, she should think again. One type of sexual harasser has a pattern of making a student believe she is intellectually or physically gifted, “special” somehow. Because he recognizes her good qualities or traits that others may not see, she is attracted to that recognition.19
This advice sounds similar to the advice given to the students at Rohit’s university who were told they should be wary both of professors who dress nicely and those who dress casually. Interviews I’ve conducted with professors suggest the environment hasn’t changed much. Recall the male professor whose human resources department advised him against having lunch with female colleagues. Other male professors are reluctant to meet with female students.
In my own experience it seems that students should value the encouragement of their professors. During my college years at Vassar, as a math and computer science major, my classes were taught almost exclusively by male professors. I also socialized with my male professors, playing squash matches against them or joining them for dinner. It was during these off-campus one-on-one meetings that I got to know them, and they got to know me. I learned about opportunities that I wouldn’t have been aware of otherwise.
One of the male professors with whom I socialized went out of his way to highly recommend me for my first job at Morgan Stanley; another wrote me a glowing recommendation that was instrumental in gaining acceptance to graduate school at MIT. I am forever indebted to these professors, without whose help and encouragement my career trajectory may have been quite different. I wonder, though, how I may have behaved differently around these professors, if I were hypersensitive to sexual harassment. Would I have refused the dinners or squash matches? Or if these professors had feared sexual harassment charges and limited their socializing to male students, how would my experience have changed? Would the male students have had sole access to the benefits associated with socializing with these male professors? Sexual harassment training should offer a balanced perspective. In addition to warning prospective harassers and victims, training should also mention the benefits of close mentor relationships. Scaring undergraduates and professors away from these relationships may result in more harm than good.
Even Younger—Sexual Harassment Training in Elementary School?
Sexual harassment training at the university level could use improvement, but some have suggested we roll out sexual harassment training for high school and even younger students. You might be surprised to find out that a six-year-old boy was found in violation of his school’s sexual harassment policy when two of his fingers reached under a female classmate’s waistband to touch the skin of her back. The principal suspended the boy from school for three days for violating the school’s sexual harassment policy. In a newspaper interview the boy’s mom said he is too young to understand what the word sexual means.20
In Massachusetts, a first-grade boy was charged with sexual harassment for kicking a fellow first-grade boy in the groin during a fight (he said the other kid started it),21 and when a nine-year-old in North Carolina was suspended for calling his teacher “cute,” the principal labeled the behavior sexual harassment.22 Although experts fortunately concur that these examples do not represent acts of sexual harassment, the label persists.
Just recently, seventeen-year-old Sam McNair’s hopes for attending college next year came crashing down. Bad grades? Drugs? Weapons? No, McNair hugged his teacher and received a one-year suspension for sexual harassment.23 His alleged harassing hug was captured on surveillance video (you can search for “Sam McNair hug” on YouTube.com). McNair’s mom says they are a family of huggers, and McNair insists he was just trying to brighten the teacher’s day.
Recently, calls for sexual harassment prevention training to begin in high schools or middle schools are gaining strength. Just as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act protects the workplace, courts have found that sexual harassment at school is prohibited by Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. Title IX provides that “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” Although Title IX is typically invoked in connection with equality in men’s and women’s school sports activities, more recently it has been used to ensure that a school provides an environment that is free from sexual harassment.
There’s no question that we want our kids and their teachers to have a harassment-free environment. Kids shouldn’t be permitted to kick their classmates in the groin, and teachers who don’t wish to be hugged shouldn’t have to endure embraces from their students. So what’s the problem? It’s the sexual harassment label that has been assigned to these behaviors that is problematic. Sexual harassment is a term that has its origins in the workplace, and I have two primary concerns about using the label “sexual harassment” and offering sexual harassment training in schools.
First, high schools and elementary schools are different from the workplace. Using the same label to describe different behaviors will only add to the confusion about sexual harassment as students transition to employees. Take, for example, relationships between students. Peer dating is acceptable and even encouraged in schools (for example, students often are encouraged to have a date accompany them to their school-sanctioned prom), and consensual making out on some high school campuses is commonplace. Obviously, this wouldn’t be cool at work. In the workplace, issues of kicking a coworker in the groin or posting locker room photos on social media don’t come up all that often (at least not in my own experience). There’s enough confusion surrounding sexual harassment, and that confusion adds to the sex partition. Let’s not add to this confusion. What happens at school should have a different label from what happens at work.
My second concern emerges from my own research. Sexual harassment training at the high school level may have the same repercussions as it does for older employees, segregating the sexes and potentially altering perceptions of female students. Recently calls for sexual harassment training in high schools and middle schools have increased. But what will be the reaction to this training? Will boys be afraid to interact with their female peers at school? Will they think the sexual harassment training is provided for girls who can’t fend for themselves?
Providing a unique label such as “sexual bullying” will allow educators to clearly define what is acceptable and what is not on the school campus. Sexual bullying should not be minimized. Because of the victims’ young age, some sexual bullying at school may have even greater repercussions for the victim than sexual harassment at work. Referring to the behavior as bullying, and not sexual harassment, helps solve the second problem as well. Bullying is not perceived as just a girl’s issue.
In order to address the much less frequent, but more severe, teacher-student sexual harassment in high school and elementary school, sexual harassment training should be provided to teachers. Students, in turn, should be aware of grievance procedures.
Awareness Is the First Step
Whether in elementary school, high school, university, or a Fortune 500 company, overzealous efforts at reducing harassment are contributing to the sex partition. And, what’s worse, it isn’t even clear that these training efforts actually reduce harassing behavior. In some states legislation requires employers to provide hours of sexual harassment training, but often we’re not using that time as effectively as we could. At the very least, we should ensure that the training actually reduces sexual harassment. However, I believe we should set the bar even higher. I’m confident that we can develop training methods that reduce sexual harassment and encourage cross-sex friendships at the same time.