Principians Raise Awareness about Sexual Harassment

Last night, Principia’s Peace and Conflict class presented a documentary they made about Sexual Harassment at Principia. The students who created the documentary included several anonymous records of sexual harassment at Principia in the video, submitted by students in the Principia community. The documentary also included the responses of a variety of students to various questions about sexual harassment. About thirty students, three professors, three parents and one administrator attended the showing, which was followed by a discussion about how to prevent sexual harassment on campus and how to make sure that those instances that do occur are handled effectively and with utmost concern for those who have been sexually harassed.

I was heartened to see that most students who were asked to provide a definition of sexual harassment provided consistent, accurate definitions. This has to be one of the first steps to addressing the problem—making sure that people know the definition of sexual harassment—and, if the documentary is any indication, students seem to know the legal definition. The trickier part is educating members of the community about what in the group discussion was referred to as “rules of social conduct” which would help members of the community recognize certain behaviors as inappropriate and would help prevent sexual harassment on campus.

During the discussion, a transfer student also talked about his experience with sexual harassment education at his former school. This college spent two days showing presentations and videos and engaging students in small and large group discussions about sexual harassment, and the orientation was presented in such a way that it made students feel it was “cool” to be informed about sexual harassment. Those engaged in last night’s discussion mostly agreed that this kind of model could be used at Principia, and that it would be more effective than the current model, which involves talking to students during freshman orientation and providing each person with a sexual harassment manual. Students often lose or forget about the manual, and there was a general consensus that very few read it, so when students are faced with sexual harassment they are often unsure about how to react and how to bring it forward so that counseling and appropriate disciplinary action can be taken.