Page 6
University Dally Kansan, November 5, 1981
Harassment
From page one
everything from me. He was trying to take my humanness and crush it.
"I've lost an innocence I used to have.
In some respects that makes me very sad.
I'm always cynical, I say, 'What's the
angle. Jack?' It changed my whole life."
The Problem
Sexual harassment.
No one is sure exactly how often it happens,
and no one knows where they are urinating at
universities across the country.
To combat the problem, KU administrators have drafted two sexual harassment policies: one governing employers and employees, the other for faculty and students.
A special committee appointed by the University Senate executive committee has circulated those drafts to all department heads and several organizations.
But when Mary was harassed, no one was talking about forming a policy for students (the teacher).
A week after the incident she told her department chairman.
1. "guess he made the problem, no! He told the teacher, 'You bad thing, never do that'."
A professor who counselled Mary at that time said, "Because the department was not required by procedure to do anything, the chairman didn't do anything. He had to deal with it off the cuff, as fit he fit. He decided it to be better to leave it lease than to deal with it."
The professor didn't stop his pursuits. And he had tenure.
"I couldn't," I wanted him out of my life. There was nothing he could or do to guard her.
"He would come up to me in the hall, saying, 'I don't want to hurt you. Can't you just speak to me?'
"I wasn't coming on to anyone, making sexual overtones. But a lot of my friends play down their looks. They told me, I think you should dye your hair or be brown. Don't wear my make-up. But I don't see becoming neuter the answer."
"The secretaries in the department were most supportive. They'd watch when I'd go in the copy room and he'd follow me in. One of the secretaries would go in, but just stand and stare at him. This was something women had to do for each other."
The department chairman had told her he couldn't have the teacher fired and said her problem was a matter for the courts.
She checked with the police.
"They told me, 'You're asking for a parcel of salt. Unless you were brushed and battered, you wouldn't.'"
She had told one professor about the incident, and with her permission he told a few others. They all encouraged her to take the professor to civil court.
"But by then, I was so far gone. What innate strength had just lost to surviving. I was a slackening mess."
"I came home every night and creed, I felt like a demon weight. I felt Jelly. My husband kissed me."
"Those people tried to help me, but I just couldn't function. I just couldn't take it."
A year after the incident, she left KU
The professor is still at KU. Still teaching classes, still advising graduate students.
Fault cannot be found in male faculty members alone. Male students have found themselves trapped in the web of female teachers.
John, a fifth year senior, found out his grade depended on how he treated his
He was taking a liberal arts course required for graduation. She was a graduate teaching teacher.
John was doing poorly in the course, but he kept hitting how he could im- plain.
"She just sat there and smiled. She said.
"You know how you can improve your grade."
"I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to get mixed up with her. I couldn't complain to the department head. It would have been disgusted. I never had been laughed out of the department."
Later in the semester, John began to feel he had rejected her once too often.
"I had the feeling I had screwed up—killed my grade. So to save my grade, I started to play up to her. If I rejected her again, I knew I would screw myself up.
"I told her, 'Maybe we could go our sometime at the end of the semester.' Her answer was.
Before the final, she told him not to worry about his grade.
"I blew the final. I didn't have to study it. I was dead sure there was nothing wrong."
He earned a "B" in the class and never talked to his teacher again.
"I didn't even deserve to pass," he said.
The Reason
Although faculty and administrators disagree on exactly how to define sexual harassment, most agree it's a power play. The professor can always hold a course grade over students' heads to make them give in to advances.
So, according to Judith Galas, a teaching assistant in Women's Studies, students cannot sexually harass their teachers because they don't hold power over them.
"That's not harassment, that's prostitution," she said.
Shirley Harkess, chairman of the Senate sexual harassment committee, said professors held more power over graduate students.
"An undergraduate has one professor for one course in one semester, and that's it," she said. "But a graduate student may need to be a faculty member member after semester."
"They have a closer working relationship. It should be a relationship of trust and intellectual exchange. If something goes wrong, we can step in to help." As well as to the student's professional career.
Brecca Pyles, a graduate student in biological studies, said she had seen this power plant.
"I've been aware of four cases in the past three years," she said.
Even if a professor does not have a particular student in a class, he can still make things tough, she said.
"The progress of a graduate faculty is defined by the opinion of the faculty who sit on the student's committee," she said. "Nor were they instructors or professor who is chairman of your committee."
"The chair can give you a very hard time in a number of ways. He can make unrealistic requirements in terms of course load and study schedule, but he actually depends on the recommendations of professors in the department. Your actual subsistence can be jeopardized.
"Your thesis must be passed and signed by the members of the committee. They must be willing to work."
Robert Oppenheimer, assistant professor of history, says that teacher can wield many things through the medium.
"I knew a professor who used to travel a lot," he said. "His graduate students had to drive."
Oppenheimer said he had counseled students who said they were sexually harassed.
"Sexual harassment is the most abusive among abuses of power," he said.
Longitudes of power. We stand
So why don't students speak up?
"They feel shame, anger. They feel mixed up," she said.
Napier, too, has helped harassed students.
Students may also fear repercussions from speaking up.
"Students are afraid of the consequences in case they lose," Napier said. "Students have to deal."
And, Oppenheimer said, "Students are reluctant to act on the grounds that they don't know how far it will go. They're not sure they can do much."
"They just sit on it, and do the best they can to avoid it," he said.
"At least 10 other women had the same experience," Openhheimer said. "No two of them had ever talked to each other about it. They had even told that, in a case like that, the wappup son."
This fear excacerbates the problem, he said. He said a female student at KU thought she was harassed, and asked another faculty member if other students had had similar problems.
"If you can get 10 clear cases like that,
somebody ought to be doing something about
The Solution
Now, somebody is doing something. But
this is not a solution seems to be
frowned with indifference.
The sexual harassment committee is trying to get a series of sexual harassment questions included in November's Student Opinion Survev.
Harkess said the committee wanted to know the extent of the problem it was dealing with. Harkess gave a sample survey to one class.
But the committee that chooses the survey's questions is still waivering on whether to include the sexual harassment questions or not, because it takes up too much class time. Hartess said.
"The results revealed more incidents of harassment than one would think," she said. "I see no evidence of it."
Also, if the questions are included, the survey will still be given to undergraduates only, leaving graduate students without a voice.
Another duty of the sexual harassment
committee was to circulate the policy drafts to various departments and organizations.
Harkess said that few departments had responded and that her committee would spend this week trying to collect the remaining comments.
As for the policy drafts themselves, some people have said they are inadequate.
When the drafts first came before SenExn, members applauded the definition of sexual harassment included in the employer/employee policy, but said the student policy would cover nothing short of rape. They asked that the policies be combined.
Oppenheimer said, "If guidelines are acceptable for one group, they should be acceptable for all."
The student draft defines sexual harassment as "the use of the authority vested in an employee . . . to compel a student to engage in sexual relations as a necessary condition of continued advancement, proper evaluation or other services and benefits to which the student is entitled, or . . . to retaliate against a student for refusing to engage in sexual relations."
But included in the employee statement is the definition: "When sexual advances, requests for sexual favors or other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature have the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual's work performance or create an intimidating, hostile or offensive working environment."
Vickie Thomas, general counsel to the University, said the disparity arose from existing law.
The employee draft is based on regulations from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Title VII of the Civil Rights prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex.
But she said there was no body of law that protected students from their teachers. University administrators have said the student policy was developed out of simple policy.
But, Oppenheimer said, "If a body of law establishes a set of guidelines for employers and employees based on sex, and these laws are valid, why shouldn't we have them for everyone?"
Thomas stressed that the policies were still in draft form, but she said that the broader agenda was in place.
"Who's to say what conduct is offensive?" he asked, the mind of the person looking at the contract.
But Galas said the policy should be made as broad as possible.
"Anything that makes students uncomfortable about their sex affects not only their opportunity to receive an education, but it affords them a sense of comfort in a classroom," she said.
"It doesn't matter if the professor says he's just kidding. If the professor causes discomfort, then he must be willing to take flack for it."
Critics of broad harassment policies may say that such a policy legislates behavior. If so, proponents of a broad definition say "Great."
"Society is being forced to change its toward women," Galas said. "People have to deal with it."
"It's the same as the civil rights movement. This is elevating people's consciousness. If a person needs to change behavior, he should change it."
Another area where the policy draft draws complaints is the grievance procedures: what happens when a complaint is received?
The draft suggests that students may go to a number of different offices, including the Headquarters and the Library.
dent Assistance Center and Affirmative Action.
When members of SenEx first examined the draft, it said he was too diffuse.
George Worth, a member of SenEx, said,
"You'll have students traveling up and down
the halls of Strong, getting a lot of sympathy,
but not a real solution."
The draft also advises students to use individual department grievance procedures.
But Napier said, "Although I respect my
conquers, I'm afraid to leave this up to their
guages."
Napier called for a single sexual harassment grievance committee,
"We need a clear cut kind of procedure which has specific steps that one goes through. Students need to know what they're doing. They need a specific place to go."
The Future
The sexual harassment committee has until Jan. 1 to compile a report based on its own findings. The committee will present it.
But the wording of the final policy or
pillars will be left to the chancellor and
plummetly the policies.
No matter how broad the policy turns out, It wouldn't necessarily get "Mary's" professor fired. But it would have other, more far-reaching effects.
Galas said, "Professors my be dismused from that behavior in the future. That's going to be the effect of the policy. There'll be sufficient enough embarrassment to a particular teacher so it wouldn't happen again. They'll foster their behavior so they won't get caught."
Oppenheimer explained the effects a good policy would have on students.
"The policy would stipulate more clearly the lines of communication that exist for a person in that position. It would also indicate to people in that position that the University is willing to take a strong stand against sexual harassment. It also helps in understanding what kind of circumstances could be brought before a committee.
"A student might come forward if she there was going to be support. Then, other students might come."
Perhaps Mary would have pressed charges against her professor if she had found more evidence.
"That's the closest I've ever come to being destroyed. Some people are survivors. I've survived a lot. But I barely survived that."
"I was a 'fight' em back, the bastards aren't going to get us' person. But it was hopeless. My career was at an end, I realized it and cut a track."
Since Mary left KU, she found a good
place to be communicating to the University
to finish her degree.
"It itdn't screw up my life," she said.
"I'm going to be just fine." I'm just sorry for the delay. Now I feel a real need to get on with my life.
"I just want something good to come on of all this. Things don't have to be that hard."
Staff reporter Sharon Appelbaum conducted wide range interviews for this article with individuals who claim to have been sexually harassed and those who are concerned about the issue of sexual harassment of both employees and students at the University of Kansai. Because of this topic's sensitivity, KU students KU students included have been changed.
PJSA* MEMBERS NOTE:
The *Photojournalism Students Association* is having an important meeting today at 4:00 in the Council room of the Kansas Union. All members please be there promptly at 4:00 because we will have our yearbook picture taken at that time.
Paid for by Student Activity Fee.
COORS NOVEMBERFEST Saturday November 7 at Gammons
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plus -
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11pm-12am
BRIGADOON
November 6-7.12-14.1981 8pm
November 8,1981 2:30 pm
University Theatre
Murphy Hall
V
P presented by the University of Kansas Theatre and the School of Fine Arts
Tickets on sale in the Murphy Hall Box Office. For reservations call 648-398-398.