Curb Abuse of Power, Not Sex : Misguided responses to harassment, date rape trivialize sexual crimes on campuses.
It hasn’t been easy to persuade Americans that sexual harassment and date rape really do threaten women’s sense of their safety and security. Anita Hill’s testimony and Mike Tyson’s trial probably helped, but there always lurks the residual belief that women deserve what they get.
To their credit, American colleges and universities have responded to these threats by waging extensive education campaigns and by implementing grievance procedures. But now, some campus administrators, prodded by misguided faculty and student zealots, have passed regulations so ridiculous that they threaten to trivialize the actual crimes that turn campuses into a sexual minefield for some women students.
To prevent sexual harassment, for example, the University of Virginia recently passed regulations that forbid romantic or sexual liaisons between any faculty member and any student--whether or not they have a current professional relationship. Such a blanket prohibition is absurd. The best sexual harassment guidelines--such as those promoted by the University of California--rely on common sense. They prohibit faculty from engaging in romantic relationships with students whom they are teaching or supervising. Professors who do become romantically involved with their students must remove themselves from any situation in which they supervise, evaluate or recommend the students’ work. Where there is no such professional relationship, the guidelines recognize that the university has no business legislating affairs of the heart.
The problem with the University of Virginia’s blanket prohibition is that since--thank goodness--there are no sex police to ferret out “offenders,’ it would lead to deception, cynicism and disregard for actual incidents of sexual harassment. Its quaint depiction of women students as innocent victims of older men’s lust, moreover, condescendingly portrays them as passionless and passive creatures. Affairs with professors, though sometimes traumatic, are not always an unmitigated disaster. Thousands of marriages--some good, some bad--have originated in these relationships. Most important, this blanket prohibition disregards the fact that the core definition of sexual harassment involves persistent unwanted sexual attention, the abuse of power or the creation of an inhospitable work environment. Sexual harassment laws are supposed to protect employees or students from such violations, not from sexual activity itself.
A second trend, fast spreading through academic corridors, is a bizarre bureaucratic attempt to prevent date rape. Antioch College, a small liberal-arts college in Ohio, has enacted rules that, if read aloud, would surely boost Jay Leno’s ratings. Anyone who initiates a “sexual activity” must seek verbal consent as he or she moves through each “level of sexual intimacy.” Since, under these rules, anyone who drinks alcohol or takes drugs is viewed as incapable of giving consent, sex with such a partner automatically equals date rape. If the definition of date rape expands to include nearly all sexual activity, it ceases to have any meaning at all.
Students are also required to attend mandatory workshops at which they learn how to ask for such verbal consent. May I sit down next to you? Is it OK to kiss you? Can I put my arms around you now? Do you mind if I unbutton . . .? Only a fraction of the most politically correct and cowed students will follow such ridiculous regulations. Since so few students currently use condoms to protect themselves from AIDS, why should we assume that they are going to forgo the excitement of passion for the antics of a “Saturday Night Live” routine?
Date rape is a serious crime. I’ve had dozens of women undergraduates confide how a friend or acquaintance had raped them. Many blamed themselves. Some became so traumatized that they left the university, leaving everyone bewildered at their sudden departure.
But Antioch College’s regulations won’t stop date rape any more than the University of Virginia’s rules will abolish sexual harassment. The fact is, colleges need only two rules to protect women from sexual crimes. The first is that no really means no . The second is that anyone can say no at any time and, when it is said, it must be respected. That--along with appropriate police investigations and campus procedures--is all that is required.
Europeans are right to giggle at Americans’ obsession with sex. We have created a highly sexualized and pornographic culture that squirms at the very idea of consensual sex. All these regulations really miss the point: It is the abuse of power that a civilized society ought to restrain, not sex itself.
