Cynicism about Sexual Harassment

Cynicism about Sexual Harassment

I have finished the text of Alex in Femiland. How realistic is my novel? Have I been fair to feminists and their attempts to stamp out sexual harassment? In the next few weeks I would like to tell you some true stories that I happened to witness over the years. I will then make some comments about the constitutionality of the laws and administrative guidelines on the subject, laws and guidelines that can be easily employed to destroy a person’s job, career, or political ambitions.

The following episode took place some 14 years ago, when I was teaching at a prestigious liberal arts college (for those from overseas, such an institution is a small university that offers, generally, no graduate programs). As you will see, my disgust prevented me from mincing words.

One day I was walking near my house when a student called my name. I knew him because we played in soccer pick-up games every Saturday morning. He said he needed to talk to me urgently. He had been a member of a group a students who had been sponsored by a faculty member to do a weekly show at the local TV station. It was the kind of station that offered many community-produced programs. Because the professor had his own show in the station and they knew him well there, the students were allowed the run of the studios, the equipment, etc. And they got academic credit through the professor. He was an exciting and excitable guy -- actually he was known for having a terrible temper. But the students were happy that he had sponsored them. For the students to get the station's permission they had to sign an agreement not to do anything pornographic. Apparently a local preacher who had a show decided to do his sermon naked and the station had been threatened with the loss of its license.

Everything went well for the first nine weeks of the quarter, but on the tenth week the group broadcasted a program that included a video of oral sex between two men. Fortunately the first showing of this program took place at 2 or 3 in the morning. The station immediately stopped the repeat showings (normally there were 4 showings of every program in a week, at varying hours). But the station also sent a letter to the professor and to the President of the College, threatening to sue. The professor immediately contacted the students. He forced them to write a letter of apology to the station. He also told them that they each had to write a ten-page paper on the ethics of journalism or else they would get no credit for the quarter. The station then backed off its threat to sue. The President sent a letter to the professor thanking him for the way he had handled this embarrassing problem.

A few weeks passed and the paper was coming due. Some of the students went to the professor's Dean with the complaint that since they had already apologized they shouldn't have to write an additional paper. It was the kind of school where the customer (the student) was always right, so the Dean took their side! He wrote an e-mail message to the professor asking him to rescind his ethics paper requirement. The professor ignored him. The Dean wrote him again. The professor told him pretty much to go to hell. He also said that he would not even read the Dean's messages anymore. The Dean was then unable to remove the “unfair” burden from the lives of the little darlings.

What the student soccer player wanted to tell me was that the group of students had had a meeting in which they had agreed that one of the girls would lodge a complaint of sexual harassment against the professor and the rest of the students would back it up. They then discussed the story the girl would make up. The soccer player was grossed out. Even though he had not been involved in the tenth week production, he felt responsibility because he was part of the group, and had thus already turned in his ten-page paper. He was asking me to do something to put a stop to the monstrous plan of his peers.

I called the Dean to make him aware of the plot being hatched by the students. I expected that he would initiate disciplinary action against them. Instead he told me that any complaint of sexual harassment made by this girl against the professor would be taken very seriously by the College! I felt as if I were swimming in slime. Nevertheless, I called the Provost, who was unusually decent by local standards. The Provost assured me that she would not allow such a complaint to prosper. She asked me to contact the professor, however, and to tell him not to do anything rash.

I was too late. The ring leader, a boy, had already gone into the professor's office and tried to blackmail him: if he did not back off on the paper, the girl would lodge her complaint. The professor blew his fuse, all his fuses. "Are you threatening me?" he shouted. He then picked up a chair and moved towards the student as he if were going to clobber the little shit with it. The student went pale and ran out of the office in a panic.

There was no sexual-harassment complaint filed. The little bullies got scared that this madman would actually do them bodily harm if they went through with their scheme.

Nevertheless this story illustrates well the kind of climate that the politically-correct worship of victimhood has brought to colleges and universities throughout the land. At that “liberal arts” college, professors who gave girls evaluations not to the girls' liking risked being accused, with a whole bunch of other students jumping in as "witnesses." Soon some professors stopped seeing girls in their offices. They started having their appointments in the open area of the cafeteria, in a place full of people, for their own protection. This situation resulted from a combination of feminist hysteria, cynical opportunism by students, and “sensitive” ass-kissing of the students by administrators.