Female instructors and female teaching assistants are still struggling to receive recognition as men's equals in academic circles. Although many obvious barriers have fallen, more base and personal forms of discrimination and harassment still exist. Women are trivialized in the professional system and are devalued by the administration. Students…

Sexual harassment complaints are challenges to the abuse of power in certain kinds of communicative relationships, and sexual harassment policies and procedures are ways of defining the responsible exercise of power and providing the means to address grievances that result from irresponsible and potentially harmful uses of power in those…

Although illegal, sexual harassment is frequent in the American workplace and extremely disruptive and costly to employees and employers alike. Most organizational responses to the problem have been hard line, short term, after-the-fact measures that inform, threaten, or discipline employees. What is needed, however, is a training program with an…

Sexual harassment is widespread on college campuses across the United States and is a subject that merits sensitive and sensible discussion. Once they acknowledge the problem, speech communication professionals can become better informed about sexual harassment and ways of dealing with it, and commit themselves to responsible communicative action.…

This paper sets out the legal grounds for sexual harassment claims in education settings, and notes a number of pertinent cases that are illustrative of common legal and factual issues. Sexual harassment, including sexual abuse, is prohibited by federal and state statutes. Sexual harassment in the context of employment constitutes employment…

School safety is a topic of national debate due to the severity of student violence in the last few years. While the percentage of violent incidences in schools nationwide has decreased, the problem resides in the increased severity of such crimes. Teachers are facing random acts of violence seldom faced in the past. This paper discusses…

Sexual harassment can range from touching, tickling, pinching, patting, or grabbing; to comments about one's body; to sexual remarks, innuendoes, and jokes that cause discomfort; to obscene gestures, staring, or leering; to assault and rape. This paper addresses student testimonies of harassment, provides a profile of harassment behaviors, and…

A study examined four reports of sexual harassment on college campuses. The reports show that harassers "key" their victims so that a contest will begin but the victims do not understand what is happening. Miscommunication occurs when power myths about men and women intersect during the harassment episode. Such myths include: the looking…

This paper addresses five specific questions: (1) What are the attitudes and feelings of preservice teachers toward homosexuality? (2) How do these compare with other samples of professional and student groups? (3) What contact have preservice teachers had with lesbians and gay men? (4) What are preservice teachers' views of their professional…

Recent court definitions of immoral conduct require that employers establish a nexus between the objectionable conduct and the individual's fitness to teach, while teacher plaintiffs have argued that dismissals for alleged immoral conduct violated various constitutional rights. This paper reviews a cross-section of recent court cases involving…

Sexual harassment is one concern of women graduate students in community psychology programs. When a sexual relationship exists between male faculty and female students, the distribution of power reflects the subordinate status of women and the dominant position of men. Many studies have documented the negative consequences of sexual contact…

Sexual harassment is deemed a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which provides protection from discrimination based on sex. Provincial jurisdictions may offer legislation more stringent than that reflected in the Canadian code. Recourse for acts of sexual harassment through the courts is sought by alleging discrimination.…

The experiences of a seventh-grade teacher in helping female students combat sexual harassment and in establishing a school sexual harassment policy show that sexism in the schools is hard to change and that much of the trauma of adolescence is related to the system's perpetuation of male dominance. (SLD)

In addition to organizational liability, deans and department chairs can be held personally liable for their actions in certain circumstances. To avoid liability from hiring and firing employees and responding to complaints of sexual harassment, the two major areas in which deans and department chairs are often involved, strategies and guidelines…

Teachers have a special trust with students that includes not taking advantage of or abusing them. To ensure that sexual abuse is handled correctly in the school system, a policy must be adopted that requires employees to report incidences of abuse and make sure that the reporting requirement is balanced against the accused individual's rights.…