On Wednesday, September 20 PACRIM sophomores attended a sexual-harassment seminar in teacher Libby Huff’s classroom. PACRIM alumni Rodney Patterson was the guest speaker whose intention was to better educate students and to make them aware of the different types of “harassment.”
Huff said that Patterson was brought back this fall to speak regarding eliminating the miscommunication between the male and female students.
Huff went on to explain how the issue of sexual harassment is not taken seriously.
“This came about, because we as teachers have noticed that girls tend to blow off a lot of the stuff
guys do, sexting, the way they talk or how they act,” Huff said. “They either ignore it or laugh it off.”
Girls were asked about their thoughts on harassment, and the lack of seriousness was apparent.
Huff stated that when girls were asked about the harassment they responded that their male peers are ‘just like that,’ because they have been doing it since freshmen year.
The male peers said they believe their ‘harassing’ was not harmful. Huff described that the male students believed the ‘harassing’ to be appropriate, because the girls did not say ‘no’ and they were laughing it off.
“ ‘The girls didn’t say stop,’ and ‘they were laughing,’ ‘so it must be ok’ ” Huff described the male responses to harassment.
Huff explained that in the news, there are several examples of
sexual harassment among female celebrities and how [harassment] is treated.
“We have a lot of examples of culturally acceptable [harassment], and we wanted to make that not culturally acceptable within our academy,” said Huff. “The kids worked on their own definition together as a class based on what [Patterson] explained to them. In the end, they understood that it is a cultural thing and that there is no gray area. It helps them learn to be respectful of each other and setting their own priorities.”
The students wrote a sexual- harassment policy based on their definitions of harassment. The students then discussed what would be the appropriate consequences for such behaviors.
The focus of the seminar was not only on female victims, but also male victims as well.
“We defined it as something as bullying, power, and dominance. There were incidents and stories of every combination you could thinkof.Thetieinisthatitisa power thing,” Huff said. “We also talked about false accusations and what are the consequences of those accusations. And we also talked about how [false accusations] are damaging and what happens to the person who does that.”
Huff explained that it is important to educate students on what harassment is and means for those affected by it.
“That being able to say it and recognize it [harassment] stops it dead in its tracks, because there are people who just don’t know what they are doing is bad,” Huff said. “In their mind they have never been educated about what is inappropriate or what is appropriate.”
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