John Meyer (john_meyer@geocities.com)
Thu, 07 Jan 1999 12:39:04 -0700
Hmm, interesting article, although I have to question its objectivity.
Anyways, there are a couple of questions I need to peruse.
First off, the article mentions suing the schools themselves, but not the
students involved, or maybe I'm reading the article wrong. If that is the
case, then what you are namely saying is that there is no responsibility by
the boys in the case: its the schools, the overlords, who are primarily
responsible. Suing the boys and their parents might not have the financial
rewards, but it would have an effect of putting more emphasis on who actually
allegedly did something. Besides which, the article itself pointed out that
schools are financially strapped: certainly they could not be suing the schools
for the money.
Secondly, I still have to ask where does the school's responsibility and
rights start and stop. Does the school's liability end at the school fences, or
does it go beyond? I'll take an example: my high school had a policy which
said that if you committed a crime off campus, then you could
potentially be expelled from school. Now, sexual harassment is, for the most
part, a civil matter, not a criminal one. If the lawsuits got too high, could
we see a possible situation on this, where any even potential sexual harassment
could be grounds for expulsion? Would we see the schools
interfering in every aspect of our lives to simply avoid a lawsuit?
Finally, what are the responsibilities of the school in dealing with
sexual harassment? Does the school have to expel a student who allegedly
sexually harasses another student in order to be in the right? What happens if
the school takes appropriate actions, and the sexual harassment occurs.
And how do you deal with 200 students engaging in the sort of payback
described in this article?
These are not just trivial questions. Ultimately, any judgement against the
school is paid out by ourselves. Ironically, the victim and the harasser both
pay the same amount in terms in increased taxes and reduced services to pay for
the judgement.
Linda Purrington wrote:
> Excerpt re Eve Bruneau case regarding sexual harassment--Note the
> teacher's participation in the hostile environment.
> --forwarded by Linda Purrington, Title IX Advocates, leonie99@hotmail.com
>
> . . . .Sitting around the dinner table with his family three years ago,
> Raul Ugarte found himself hungering only for justice. His daughter
> Tianna, a sixth-grade cheerleader at Bidwell Elementary School in
> Antioch, Calif., near Sacramento, had mentioned that one of her
> classmates was verbally harassing her...
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Fri Jan 08 1999 - 15:42:20 EST