Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 7, 1993 TAG: 9308240773
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Here is murky territory.
A survey of eighth-through 11th-graders by the American Association of University Women reveals that, nationwide, 85 percent of girls and 76 percent of boys report they have been sexually harassed. What do they mean by this?
Seventy-six percent of the girls who have felt victimized and 56 percent of the boys said they had been the targets of sexual comments, jokes, gestures or looks. This, perhaps, is supposed to be shocking, but it isn't surprising, really.
As children grow into their sexuality, they feel embarrassed and awkward about the changes in their bodies. Kids who are mean and aggressive in other dealings with their peers surely will be mean and aggressive about this, too.
Parents, teachers and other authority figures in young people's lives should recognize this as rotten behavior and punish it.
But should it be on the long list of federal protections offered to an ever- growing number of victimized groups in our litigious society? It is.
Sexual harassment is against the law under Title IX of the 1972 Education Act, as it should be.
The survey indicates a troubling amount of serious wrongdoing: 13 percent of girls and 9 percent of boys reported they had been forced to do something sexual other than kissing. And not all of the poor behavior is coming from immature, ill-mannered kids. Twenty-five percent of the girls and 10 percent of the boys who reported they have been harassed said their harasser was a teacher or other school employee.
The statistics don't tell precisely what has gone on in these cases, but forced sexual activity or sexual aggression by an adult toward a child sounds like criminality, and should be pursued as such.
On the other hand, such juvenile behavior as whistling and making cat-calls also is considered sexual harassment, at least for the purposes of the AAUW survey, and that is rather ludicrous.
There is no denying that these may cause embarrassment, but society cannot hope to regulate poor manners or insensitivity out of existence. This is a job for parents.
To say that a courtroom is not the proper place to correct most of the problems revealed in the AAUW survey is not to say that no attempt should be made to correct them.
What sound like juvenile aggravations apparently create serious fears and loss of confidence, particularly among girls. About a third said they did not want to attend school or did not want to talk as much in class as a result; about a quarter said the incidents made it harder to pay attention in class or led them to stay home from school or cut a class.
Parents and school officials shouldn't shrug off misbehavior with a "boys will be boys" attitude. Undisciplined, these boys might grow into those men who just can't figure out what sexual harassment is, but get in trouble for engaging in it.
by CNB