The other day in a Barrington High School classroom, a sophomore boy slapped the behind of a 14-year-old girl with his chalk-covered hand, planting his fingerprints on her black pants, where they stayed for the rest of the day.
”He was totally kidding around,” the girl later said. ”I even tried to run around the room and get him back.”
At the same time, the girl said she found the behavior ”out of line”
and embarrassing. ”Things like that happen every day,” she added.
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To the young student, only in her first year at high school, it was the kind of routine experience that stirs up complex emotions among teenage girls trying to figure out how to interact with boys.
It was the kind of experience that is quite acceptable between playmates at age 4, completely inappropriate between co-workers at age 24, but confounding to 14-year-olds trying to navigate adolescence.
At the recent hearings on the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, the nation got a submersion course on sexual harassment. But even before the hearings, some of the lessons were being learned in Chicago-area high schools, where educators are reporting increased discussion about sexual harassment and assault.
Sometimes, the discussions go beyond what might be considered ”kidding around.”
– At Conant High School in Hoffman Estates, a group of students is alleging that a series of abusive incidents forced a 16-year-old girl to quit school. The students have issued fliers protesting what they describe as widespread sexual harassment of girls at the school by their male classmates. – For more than a decade, Oak Park-River Forest High School has offered self-defense courses for girls, showing them how they can prevent sexual harassment and violence. But on Thursday, the school offered male and female students special sessions with counselors from Sarah`s Inn, a shelter for abused women, to discuss acceptable behavior between men and women.
– At Rolling Meadows High School, where a student was convicted earlier this year of raping a classmate, director of student services Frank de Rosa said the school has held a meeting with social workers so teachers can discuss how to handle a variety of sexually related, sensitive situations, including how to present explicit reading material.
– At Evanston Township High School, students are going to begin receiving personal safety instruction as part of their physical education classes, said spokeswoman Kathy Miehls. Also planned are after-school seminars conducted by the Evanston police on personal safety.
At Conant High, the students who have complained of sexual harassment met Friday with Principal William Perry. The students maintain that girls at the school are often exposed to harassing language and, in some cases, unwanted fondling or other physical contact by boys.
Perry is opposed to the students` proposal that the school hold a mandatory general assembly to address the issue of sexual harassment, but said he is ”open to ideas.”
The Conant students began their push for more education about sexual harassment after a 16-year-old student chose to be schooled at home by her parents this fall because of repeated experiences she had with three boys at the school, said the girl`s boyfriend, Matthew Hernacki, 16, a junior at Conant.
Hernacki said the three boys sexually harassed his girlfriend at school-lifting up her skirt, touching her breast and touching in between her legs when she was standing in the lunch line. The three boys, according to Hernacki and others, were suspended for five days each.
The girl declined to discuss the incidents, and Perry refused to comment on the case. ”That`s been dealt with; we followed up on it,” the Conant principal said.
Eleanor Linn, director of the University of Michigan-based Programs for Educational Opportunity, said some studies show that 40 to 60 percent of girls and 10 percent of boys say they have been sexually harassed.
In addition, 95 percent of girls say that they have taken precautions after hearing about or experiencing sexual harassment, Linn said. The precautions taken by the girls may include avoiding a stairwell in school where others have been harassed, or holding their books up to their chests to avoid being fondled in crowded hallways.
Marcia Hunt, Oak Park`s self-defense instructor, asked a recent class of girls how many of them had ever received an unwanted kiss from a boy, but did nothing to stop it. ”Every hand in the room went up,” she said.
Nicole Morales, 15, who is in her first year at Barrington High School, said she doesn`t think teens understand sexual harassment as it occurs in their very unique environment.
”People think sexual harassment is being thrown on the table and being raped,” said Morales. ”Everybody in the school has a story of being sexually harassed. But they probably wouldn`t call it harassment; they`d call it joking around.”
Myra Sadker, an education professor at American University in Washington, D.C., and author of ”Sexism in the Schools,” said in the face of such confusion, parents and educators are apt to throw up their hands and say:
”Those crazy kids. Their hormones are all out of control . . . So under the rubric of `growing up,` it`s allowed to go on.”
”Guys need feedback,” said Julie Hoeppner, an assistant director of Schaumburg Township`s Spectrum Youth and Family Services. ”They need someone to tell them, `This is not OK with me.` ”
Moreover, educators as well as teenage girls express concern that young men are growing up in a society that bombards them with images of women in erotic roles, whether in movies, Madonna videos, or cigarette and beer billboards.
Said Natasha Pavlovic, 15, an Oak Park sophomore: ”Guys see all these movies and TV shows that show women in a really bad light, that make fun of women, that show men calling women bad names, and they think that that`s the cool way to act.”
The State Board of Education prohibits sexual harassment and sexual intimidation by students through statewide rules that carry the same weight as law. Board rules, which apply to students as well as teachers, define sexual harassment as unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature.
But many students said they were unaware of any sexual harassment policies at their schools. And some of those schools that do have policies, such as Schaumburg and Barrington High Schools, only address adult-to-student incidents, not student-to-student behavior.
Even if students understood all their rights, many said they would be reluctant to come forward, out of embarrassment, fear of becoming known as a tattletale or a sense that little will be done to stop the situation.
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Indeed, one female senior at Naperville Central High School said she has been subjected to inappropriate comments whispered to her by a boy in one of her classes-”He blows in my ear and leans forward and says rude things,”
said the 17-year-old-but has been fearful of complaining about it.
”I figure, what am I going to do and who am I going to tell?` she said. ”It`d be embarrassing to say, and at Naperville Central, they don`t like big controversy. They`d just keep it hush-hush.”
Though such behavior could be considered unlawful under State Board of Education rules, it is up to individual school districts to determine what course of action to take.
Bad language and lewd comments, which can be considered sexual harassment, are such an integral part of the male teen`s vernacular, according to some young women interviewed, that many feel that they don`t have the power to fight it.
”It`s just the typical guys nowadays,” said Diana Meyer, 16, a junior at Hoffman Estates High School. ”It`s to the point that (most people) don`t even think twice about it.”
Tara Bradshaw, a junior involved in the awareness campaign at Conant High School said: ”I just feel so much for the girls that experience this. I don`t want this problem to be swept under the rug.”