Are vaginas still seen as the gates of hell in the classroom?
In “A Darkening Green: Notes on Harvard, the 1950s and the End of Innocence,” Peter Prescott describes what the experience of a female student is at Harvard in the ‘50s.
Harvard, like many other schools, created an environment with sexual harassment being a normalized part of the education system. In his book, Prescott notes a normal classroom environment with a male professor.
“Crane Bnnton, lecturing on what he called ‘the contraceptive theory of history,’ would ask ‘all the ladies in the audience to cross their legs.’ Pause. ‘Now that the gates to hell have been closed, we may proceed.’”
This begs the question, are females specifically still the subject of intense classroom abuse or is harassment in the classroom a dying concern?
Jennifer Jackson, an associate professor of English, said harassment in the classroom still exists and it can be seen at NCC.
“I’ve had students come up to me in a class and say, ‘can you please help me with this guy he’s driving me crazy. He’s calling me all the time and I went out with him once and now he expects something more…’ she was scared,” Jackson said.
At NCC, reports and investigations regarding sexual harassment are always happening. Students or faculty with concerns can open up investigations on the issue following Title IX guidelines.
Rebecca Gordon, the Title IX coordinator, said that over the years she has always had cases come to her on sexual harassment issues for students and staff. There has never been a pause to the allegations of misconduct happening on campus.
“The kind of reports I’ve received so far have been things like unwanted sexual attention that happens in a project group or negative comments that relate to gender,” said Gordon. “One example is in the STEM field where you hear this person is only getting this award because they’re a woman. If another woman gets an award then its really proof they’re only giving it to women.”
Sexual harassment cases on campus can go anywhere from repeated unwanted behavior, sexist or homophobic comments and sexual comments.
In many cases, the line between sexual harassment and stalking is a blurry and confused one. NCC has ways of restricting students’ contact with one another to reduce the risks of sexual misconduct.
“In addition to investigations, we also do remedies. Some remedies could be safety such as the college no contact or no trespass orders… there’s ways we can make sure students’ schedules aren’t overlapping,” said Gordon. “Many times sexual harassment does crossover into stalking in terms of harassing behavior like following and unwanted repeated behavior.”
Assistant Vice President of Student Affairs and Dean of Students, Kevin McCarthy, said that the conversation on sexual harassment has been morphing over the years. A lot of it has to do with the administration that is in control of the Department of Education. The Obama administration had certain guidelines that they put out that contradicts what the current administration’s guidelines are.
“All faculty, all staff and all students are held to the same standards from Title IX. It’s the one policy that covers everyone,” said McCarthy.
Title IX brings specific guidance, training and investigation standards to all college campuses. How the administration handles and addresses it is essential.
In the New York Times article, “Betsy DeVos’s New Harassment Rules Protect Schools, Not Students,” Dana Bolger explains the push towards less liability regarding sexual misconduct on college campuses.
“Under the Trump administration’s definition, harassment must be ‘so severe, pervasive and objectively offensive that it effectively denies a person equal access’ to education. Some courts (though fortunately not all) have said that even a rape does not count under this standard because a one-time act of violence is not ‘pervasive,’” said Bolger.
Gordon said there is a shift in how sexual violence is considered a part of sexual harassment and a lot of people didn’t look at it this way before.
The conversation regarding sexual harassment continues to change over time. In 1972, Title IX was introduced into education to help monitor sexual behavior and equality. In 1998, the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal created a conversation about sexual boundaries in the workplace and when is too far. In 2011 the “Dear Colleague” letter issued by the Office for Civil Rights gave guidelines on addressing sexual violence in schools and on campuses. In 2006, and then gaining mass audiences in 2017, the #MeToo movement paved the way for talking about and exposing sexual misconduct in all environments.
The history of sexual harassment in classrooms is a long, dark and slowly evolving entity.
According to Jackson, when she started her undergraduate degree in 1975 to 1979 all male professors did a great deal of what people then referred to as “flirting or clever behavior.” It wasn’t uncommon to have students over for drinks as it was considered exotic and interesting.
“There was no ‘bright line’ then behind what the behavior should be and I was trained by the one woman teacher I had who was our teacher trainer in masters… that was her line saying ‘draw a bright line because you’re 22 and your students are 18 and you can’t see them as anything other than students who are powerless and need your help,’” said Jackson.
A famous professor named Jane Gallop, who was accused of sexual harassment towards her students at UW-Milwaukee, also happened to be Jackson’s neighbor across the hall.
Jackson said that Gallop believed that if you don’t have an erotic charge in your students that they aren’t listening. Being in awe of a professor is part of a pedagogical process.
Through time this line that divides teachers from students is engraved deeper and deeper into the educational system. The mysterious, handsy professor image, while still out there somewhere, is nowhere near as prominent.
In today’s society, sexual harassment seems often times inescapable, but there are measures now to make sexual harassment in the classroom a less prominent issue.
“The whole bystander intervention movement was something that didn’t exist when I was in college,” said McCarthy. “The idea that you have power as someone who is observing… that you have the power to do something about it. That’s huge.”
Despite bystander training, such as Green Dot here on campus, teacher training and an overall increase in the culture of reporting, harassment seems like an unstoppable force.
According to a January 2018 online survey from Stop Street Harassment, 81 percent of women and 43 percent of men will experience some form of sexual harassment during their lifetime.
In an environment such as college, sexual harassment is in need of monitoring. A sudden backlash in Title IX accusations is currently causing people to be fearful for men and sympathetic to men being labeled as abusers. Even if abusers is what they are.
While NCC works at countering sexual harassment through bystander efforts and creating specialized people to go to for concerns, is it enough in today’s dangerously sexualized world?
NCC has come a long way from what Jackson described from when she first arrived. When she started in the ‘90s, faculty that had just broken up with their spouses started dating their grad students and in one case even married them.
“Culturally, as we talk about it more, we see more reporting happening,” McCarthy said. “They feel less fearful that they are going to be ignored. Back in the day if you went in and said my faculty member sexually harassed me, you wouldn’t necessarily be believed.”
NCC has a long evolution of growth in sexual harassment and misconduct. Can future generations learn to reduce sexual harassment in the workplace if the place where teaching is done still carries harassment?
