Study: Harassment Plagues Campuses

Campus environments at colleges such as Harvard are often pervaded by varying degrees of sexual harassment that make many of their students uncomfortable and upset, according to a recent study by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), “Drawing the Line: A Study of Sexual Harassment on Campus,” which surveyed 2,036 randomly-selected undergraduate students between the ages of 18 and 24 this past May, showed that 62 percent of college students felt they had been sexually harassed in some way during their college experience.

However, the definition of “sexual harassment” that the study employed as “unwanted and unwelcome sexual behavior which interferes with your life” is much broader than the technical legal definition. It included such activities as making “sexual comments, jokes, gestures, or looks” and flashing, as well as the more commonly focused-on groping and coerced sexual interaction.

Elena Silva, director of research for the AAUW Educational Foundation and an author of the study, explained that the study was not trying to trivialize the issue of sexual harassment by defining it so broadly. Rather, Silva said, the authors wanted to gauge the more general atmosphere and attitudes in campus environments and the existence of widespread—but not necessarily illegal—sexual harassment as a cultural phenomenon.

“We are interested in the attitudes and behaviors that young adults are—very appropriately—testing on campus that they will bring with them into the workplace and the wider world,” Silva said. “We were not setting out to talk about sexual harassment and define or critique it as a legal or sexual behavior.”

The study showed that there was a trend towards greater incidence of sexual harassment at private colleges, four-year colleges, and larger university campuses. There were also disparities at private universities between the students’ assessments of their own experiences and their perceptions of the rest of the campus.

“Private college students were more likely to say that they had been sexually harassed when asked directly if they had been sexually harassed, but less likely than public school students to say that there was a sexual harassment problem on campus,” Silva said.

According to the study, more male than female students are the perpetrators of harassment. Although the study shows that male and female students are equally likely to experience some sort of harassment, it appears that “female students are more likely to be upset by sexual harassment” than male students. And females are more likely change their behavior or to experience disruption in their class work or sleep because of it.

Sixty-eight percent of female students reported feeling “very or somewhat upset” by harassing behavior—as opposed to only 35 percent of male students.

The co-chair of the Radcliffe Union of Students, Dana F. Goodman ’07, who has been a part of the campaign for a women’s center to provide a “safe space” for female students on campus, said that it was beneficial for the administration to “become aware of this, that it is a specific problem, so that people are comfortable speaking out about it.”

“I think that what we should learn from the study is to use it as an opportunity to look at Harvard’s campus and the climate and interactions here,” Goodman said.

According to the study, “lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) students,” were more likely to be affected by sexual harassment than their heterosexual peers, with higher percentages of LGBT students reporting anger, embarrassment, fear, and other negative reactions than among heterosexual students.

Ryan R. Thoreson ’07, co-chair of the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Trangender, and Supporters Alliance, explained why LGBT students might feel more threatened or helpless when sexually harassed.

“I think the perception—and very often, the reality—is that there’s nothing queer students can do about same-sex harassment, either because it isn’t taken seriously or simply because there’s no safe space if you’re being harassed by a roommate or teammate with whom you have to share space,” he said.

“In many cases, it’s a lot harder to come forward because there’s no private way to remove yourself from the situation. Combatting harassment by a teammate or roommate might require that you use a separate locker room or move out of your suite, for example, and a whole range of choices and bureaucratic obstacles spring up that make seeking help seem much more difficult,” Thoreson said.

Sexual harassment was also more widely-spread and more recurrent in the student LGBT population than among heterosexual students.

The study showed that there was more perceived overall sexual harassment of white college students than black or Hispanic ones. Although physical harassment percentages were similar, white students appeared to be more likely to be subjected to verbal and other non-physical harassment.

The study concluded that the motivations for harassment differed between racial groups. White students were “more likely to do so because they think it is funny, while black and Hispanic students are more likely to think the sexual attention is wanted,”

Silva called for a more “sophisticated” discussion of attitudes to sexual harassment on campuses.

“We are not suggesting that one line should be drawn or that AAUW should be the one to draw it,” Silva said. “But it seems that this is something that students are really grappling with.”

—Staff writer Alexandra C. Bell can be reached at acbell@fas.harvard.edu.