<p>A 20 year old is a kid. How was she supposed to figure all this out?</p>
<p>The incident happened in 1983. Wolf wrote her article in 2004. The more recent issues about sexual harassment at Yale did not involve faculty harassment (as far as I know). While this is all interesting to discuss, I don’t quite get what it has to do with policies at Yale now.</p>
<p>I have no idea what sexual harassment policies at Yale are now. This isn’t about any one school to me. It’s about anyone being blamed for being victimized by someone in power/authority and not feeling able to speak out. And then, after finally speaking out, being trashed for doing so.</p>
<p>Perhaps if she wasn’t a hypocrit, it would go over better.
[The</a> women accusing Julian Assange of sexual assault deserve to be taken seriously. - Slate Magazine](<a href=“http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2010/12/the_perils_of_charging_rape.html]The”>The women accusing Julian Assange of sexual assault deserve to be taken seriously.)</p>
<p>I’m with Calmom on this one. </p>
<p>Of course institutions should have policies and processes to prevent and deal with sexual harassment in place, etc. But as parent we should teach our children that authority figures, including profs, are just people and people are complex beings, each with a unique combination of strengths and weaknesses. If a prof or boss is behaving inappropriately or unethically, you don’t have to, and shouldn’t, go along. Sometimes, not going along has a cost…a letter of recommendataion, a promotion, needing to resign from a job…whether or not the situation has anything to do with sex. This is just life, and sometimes it sucks.</p>
<p>The effects of sexual harassment extend in unexpected ways that affect students and faculty alike. I think that faculty and assistants actually avoid contact with some students outside of class to some extent, to avoid the appearance of (or potential for) inappropriate behavior. This is a loss for everyone, balanced perhaps by a reduction in traumatic experiences.</p>
<p>motherbear, your post was interesting to me. I went to male-dominanated schools gr 9 through college. Then I worked on Wall St, also male-dominated.</p>
<p>Comparing education to work on this issue reveals crucial differences to me.</p>
<p>I felt very very discriminated against and harassed at work. I had no recourse- it was insidious, and the male was in power, so I had nowhere to go. I had problems with bosses, co-workers, even my clients. Being a whistle-blower would have been the end of my career on Wall St. I just put up with it, did not go along, played dumb, and was definitely less successful as a result, but that is what I needed to do for myself. That is life. It sucks. It should not be that way, but when there is a lack of diversity, these things can happen. I had a choice- I could have left and changed careers. I was an adult, too.</p>
<p>Now, when it comes to these things happening in the educational context, it seems a bit different to me. Part of why is that the environment is supposed to be didactic and instructional, even the culture. The values of a school (yeah, you know, diversity, equal opportunity, whatever is being trumpeted there) have been legislated a bit, but each private college is free to create their own systems to reflect these values. Each college needs to reflect carefully and often, even at the behest of students, parents, and lawyers, to see how well their system really reflects their values. And a school that allows complaints, publicizes and responds to them may thus be healthier.
From a consumer point of view, this can be considered caveat emptor, as long as there is really a range of choices in values and how effectively they are being moderated (which I am not so sure exists to the extent it should).
I feel that Yale has allowed a relatively high amount of complaining and publicity about these complaints. And has educated its students to be critical thinkers about these issues. This is helpful, though can make Yale appear to be “worse” than other colleges.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I do feel that college is a time when students do need to be a bit protected, as they are still young, susceptible to poor decision-making and the manipulation of others. And having clear, easy to use systems in place is mightily important.
College is a place of idealism, an ivory tower, where things can be discussed and proposed and changed more easily than in the real world, I believe.</p>
<p>My take on Naomi wolf is that she sort of wants to have her cake and eat it:
Yes, see me as attractive and sexy, and let that be a part of how you, even my professor, treat me. But do not get too close, or else.
She was obviously struggling with her identity as a sexual being and as an intellectual- how to be both. That may actually be her basic modus operandi still…</p>
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<p>A HS classmate of Ds is in this years Rhodes Scholar class. The process from pre-application to final selection requires a tremendous amount of university support. There is a multi-disciplinary committee/team formed to coach the student throughout the entire process. I assume Yale thought they were entitled to a return on their investment in Wolf. Actually, she should have contacted them offering her support not the other way around.</p>
<p>One of the stated invitations was to be a speaker at a function celebrating women at Yale. It doesn’t seem that out of place to me that she would want to tie up loose ends in her mind about the role and treatment of women and institutional process before participating as a keynote speaker at such an event where she would be representing the University “as a woman” rather than just as a scholar.</p>
<p>It’s a topic of conversation because someone started the thread and some people chose to respond. No one has to participate. I came on the thread to read what a friend has to say and Yale as the target does not interest me at all. However, I do not think that all history or historical arguments are irrelevant.</p>
<p>performersmom,</p>
<p>I don’t disagree with you. </p>
<p>The university where I’m a faculty member (not Yale) requires all staff members, from faculty to custodians, to spend a whole day learning about sexual harassment–what it is, how to deal with it if it happens to you, what to do if a student reports an incident to you, etc. There are plenty of policies and plenty of attention to the subject. But, among of the group of people I happen to know personally, other kinds of abuses of power in academia have caused MUCH more harm than sexual harassment. I remember wishing that they would give a seminar on general ethical behavior instead of focusing so much attention on just sexual harassment. And as compmom says, it really doesn’t help female students when every male faculty member sees them as a possible false sexual harassment accuser. </p>
<p>The other question, and I’m changing the topic of the thread slightly, is what can we do as parents. I know of one situation where a student was so cowed by the prof/authority figure that she let a SH situation escalate to the point where reporting it was, she felt, the only option. I thought at the time (we were both in grad school, so this was some years ago) that if she had had more confidence to clearly say “not interested” sooner, the whole thing could have been nipped in the bud. I don’t know all that happened as a result of her reporting it, but I do know that she lost her TA position that semester, while the prof stayed at the university until he retired many years later.</p>
<p>Also, it seems that a lot of damage in the case of students is the trauma, the sense of betrayal by an authority figure, etc. which leads to self-inflicted damage beyond what the prof actually did. This seems to have been the case for Naomi Wolf. I think a student who understands that profs are people, and some of them are jerks or worse, will be more able to effectively deal with bad situations. It also helps for students to have confidence that they can roll with the punches. Parents can help teach that.</p>
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<p>I was the same age as this woman in 1982 (a sophomore year in college). I was not only a legal adult, I was 2 years past being of legal drinking age, had worked many jobs and was working my way through college with some help from my parents. I was not a “kid.”</p>
<p>I was not sexually promiscuous, had only had one serious boyfriend ever at that point, yet I KNEW that fraternizing with professors was NOT a good idea. That same year (1982), one of my teachers casually suggested we “have a drink sometime.” My immediate reaction was “Uh-NO.” I would NEVER have agreed to host a professor in my private home for dinner, certainly would have not viewed it as “kosher” to be drinking alcohol alone with any teacher in public, much less in private. I think calling her a “kid” is infanticizing her. Nowadays, I think we keep our children “children” longer than past generations, but in 1982 a 20 year old was generally considered an adult.</p>
<p>Personally, I think it was unprofessional of this teacher to even accept an invitation from a student to eat dinner and drink alcohol in her home. What he proceeded to do once there was completely unacceptable. But I don’t accept that a 20 year old woman should have been incapable of using common sense about the wisdom of positioning herself to be alone *anywhere *with a teacher while drinking alcohol, much less in her apartment.</p>
<p>^^ I agree with the above. Wolf is way too hyper on this and seems almost to enjoy dragging Yale through the mud time and time again. Candles, wine, a private dinner, a private discussion over “poetry.” Where was her common sense? Where was her radar?</p>
<p>The professor is not to be excused, but she seems completely clueless as to how she may actually have set him up, however unwittingly. My experience with feminists like Wolf is that they always expect men to be better than they are and are vastly surprised that men actually have hormones.</p>
<p>Guess what placido? Women have hormones, too. I especially like male behinds but I ALWAYS refrain from touching ones I shouldn’t.</p>
<p>Nrdsb4–spot on. Have some common sense. If 20 YOs have not learned a few things by that age they have a problem.</p>
<h1>94</h1>
<p>That’s how I met my husband.
;)</p>
<p>
I personally don’t consider that to be “feminism”. </p>
<p>In my personal view, feminism = women are equal to men in all respects, including mutual rights & responsibilities</p>
<p>That means that in a social & professional situations, both bear equal responsibility</p>
<p>My personal view as to what is real (as opposed to what is ideal), is that females in general are far better able to control their libidos than men are. Perhaps this is a biological drive that can’t be solved with laws, derived from evolutionary pressures, since men make babies by spreading their sperm around while women have babies, usually one at a time with several years devoted to gestation and lactation for each one. </p>
<p>But the point is, part of the exercising responsibility part, from the female end of things, is to recognize that males often behave badly, especially when drunk. It’s analogous to defensive driving: I may have the legal right of way, but that doesn’t absolve me from responsibility of I pull into the path of an oncoming, speeding vehicle. </p>
<p>And to me, a woman who fails to exercise personal responsibility and then blames others for the outcome is not a “feminist”. </p>
<p>On the contrary, she is someone who is asserting that her status as a female entitles her to extra protections – which I would see as an argument that could also justify extra restrictions or limitations, such as employment discrimination.</p>
<p>She was 20. He was much older and in a position of power. That is not equality.</p>
<p>Your boss cannot hit on you, particularly if you are an INTERN, which is this age.</p>
<p>Your attorney cannot hit on you.</p>
<p>Your therapist cannot hit on you.</p>
<p>If you are in the military, your CO cannot hit on you.</p>
<p>Your professor can?</p>
<p>I find your arguments less compelling than usual in this case, calmom. Anyone in a power position to make decisions about somobody’s career future is not ethically in a position to hit on them. If you want to make this about the idiocy of a 20 year old girl? Or how much more savvy she should have been? That’s fine. </p>
<p>But there’s no way this was her “fault.” Sheesh.</p>
<p>To be clear, it’s not either/or. It’s not either he was inappropriate OR she displayed poor judgment. Both can be true. I don’t know exactly what happened that night, I am just disputing that a 20 year old is a “kid” and incapable of “figuring these things out.” I was not particularly savvy or experienced as a 20 year old, but I had enough sense to know not to put myself in a position to be misunderstood and/or easily exploited. I don’t accept that in 1982 a person pushing 21 was a child incapable of predicting the potential risks and consequences of certain behaviors or questioning the wisdom of combining alcohol and candles with a professional agenda.</p>
<p>His behavior is a separate issue and in my opinion should not really be judged in context with hers. As said above, he was the professional in a position of power and should have recognized the impropriety of the whole proposed encounter even if the student did not.</p>