Harassment Rules OKd for Students : Moorpark: The school board tentatively approves suspension or expulsion for unwelcome sexual behavior.

Moorpark public-school students could be suspended or expelled for sexually harassing each other under a new district policy tentatively approved by the Moorpark school board.

The matter will return to the board for final wording changes and input from district employees next month, but all five board members agreed during Tuesday’s regular meeting that the move was needed, said board President Tom Baldwin.

Baldwin said he came up with the idea for a harassment policy governing student behavior more than a year ago to supplement an existing policy that protects teachers and administrators.

“I think that our society is becoming more aware of the evils of this kind of behavior,” Baldwin said Wednesday. “It’s not that I’m pointing my finger at someone in the district and saying this is going on. It may or may not be. I did it as a preventive measure to let our staff, our faculty and our students know that this is the sort of thing that can’t be tolerated anymore.”

Under legislation sponsored by state Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara) and signed by Gov. Pete Wilson last month, sexual harassment will be added to the list of punishable offenses in the state Education Code on Jan. 1. The move gives school districts “the power to suspend a student for sexual harassment,” said Joe Caves, a legislative assistant for Hart.

The new Moorpark policy--which could be revised before final adoption--defines sexual harassment as “unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature.”

The policy lists several forms of sexual harassment, including derogatory comments, jokes or slurs, physical harassment such as touching or blocking one’s movement and visual harassment.

Visual harassment “would be like if a boy had a Playboy centerfold taped to the inside of his locker and he knew the girl next door to him didn’t like it and whenever she came over he opened it,” Baldwin said.

But deciding what constitutes sexual harassment is already a point of contention among school board members, who are searching for the sometimes imperceptible distinction between an overzealous teen-age crush and harassment.

“That’s a hard line to define,” said board member Clint Harper. “I would imagine it would involve repeated requests from the target of the actions to cease and desist. . . . A policy like this would only be invoked in very aggravated cases.”

Harper tempered his support for the policy at Tuesday’s meeting with the suggestion that the district ask for comment from its employee unions and incorporate some element that protects the rights of the accused.

“In concept, this is a very acceptable way to go. I just think that there’s some fine-tuning that needs to be done,” said board member Greg Barker, who teaches history at Thousand Oaks High School. “The high school is like a big laboratory to (students), and they’re trying all kinds of things. . . . Are we going to be able to apply the appropriate punishment to the harassment that takes place?”

For his part, Baldwin said the district will know that social behavior becomes harassment when it changes from the innocent to the physically graphic.

“If you tell a girl, ‘You’re a good-looking girl and I like you,’ that’s not sexual harassment,’ ” Baldwin said. “But if you say, ‘You’ve got a great this.’ Or, ‘I really like your that,’ then that’s sexual harassment.”