Dear Editor:
We invite everyone to a forum on SIU's "sexual harassment code," slated for Thursday in the Law School Auditorium. Two high-level committees have already recommended sweeping changes in a code that violates due process, assumes guilt on the part of the accused and operates as a speech code.
Above all, the definition of "harassment" is dangerously broad. In "Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Future of Feminism" (1998), Professor Daphne Patai (University of Massachusetts) cited SIU's loose harassment language as an example of what is wrong with the system. Nine years later, she examined the code once again and stated:
"The long list of possible offenses is, of course, absurd. It covers sexual assault (a crime) and 'inappropriate' comments, jokes, etc. Especially interesting is that humor/jokes ABOUT sex/gender are prohibited! A clear violation of first amendment rights which do not outlaw jokes that someone may find 'inappropriate. . . .' Possible interference with one's education etc. is long forgotten and we're immersed in anyone-being-offended land."
In our years at SIU, we have known many individuals who faced frivolous, false or malicious accusations of harassment. They included men and women, gays and straights, young and old, liberals and conservatives. Nearly always the charges were vague and had nothing to do with actual sexual harassment (the stuff of the "bad old days").
It is time to can the code and begin anew. A good place to start is with a statement by the Office for Civil Rights (U.S. Department of Education) at http://tinyurl.com/28zf6a and the NAS Statement on "Sexual Harassment and Academic Freedom" (http://www.nas.org/statements/harass.htm). Meanwhile those accused ought to seek counsel of their union representatives and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (www.thefire.org).
If SIU doesn't get its house in order, it may face the embarrassment of negative media publicity or a major lawsuit. Indeed, one of the above-mentioned committees concluded that "office practices - which, it should be pointed out, are not consistently followed - are so profoundly prejudiced against respondents that one can only wonder that they are apparently approved by the Office of Legal Counsel."
For more information on the SIU Code, Daphne Patai's commentary and the committee recommendations, go to http://tinyurl.com/2tcpj4. The committee's case study of a witch-hunt is particularly horrifying to read.
Leonard Gross
professor of law
Jonathan Bean
professor of history
