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Insight on the News, August 9, 1999 by Bernice Sandler, Sarah J. McCarthy
Beyond concerns about emptying taxpayers' pockets and bankrupting school districts, we have to wonder what effect this centralized behavior control will have on the kids. Squelching spontaneous behaviors such as teasing, joking and chasing members of the opposite sex is an outrageous thing to do to an entire nation of schoolchildren because a few have gone out of bounds. Instead, third-graders who create a hostile environment can be punished with suspensions without involving the entire school population of the United States in an Americanized version of Mao's Cultural Revolution.
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The nonchalance with which Congress passes sexual-harassment laws, combined with an impassioned preference for overblown fines, is frightening. Laws are passed with a casualness about the definitions of the acts they are criminalizing and with drifting definitions such as the broadening of sexual assault to mean any unwanted touching. How can someone be sure a touch or a kiss is unwanted before it occurs?
In an article, "Could You Be the Next Monica?" by Nurith Aizenman in the July 1999 New Woman magazine, GOP former representative Susan Molinari of New York says she didn't "set out to make Monica Lewinsky's life miserable" when she pushed through groundbreaking sexual-assault legislation five years ago. Molinari only wanted to give a woman accusing a man of sexual assault the chance to bolster her case by showing that he also had attacked other women. Sensible enough -- but the law defined sexual assault so broadly (essentially any attempt at unwanted touching) that it allowed lawyers in the Paula Jones case to probe President Clinton's past for other violations. That investigation, in turn, set an unexpected precedent: Now any woman who's had a consensual relationship with a man accused of harassment could find herself subpoenaed -- just as Lewinsky was. Molinari was astonished to learn that her law was behind Lewinsky's interrogation. "The law was supposed to target sexual assault," Molinari says.
And consider, if you can, the import of this revealing admission by Democratic former representative Patricia Schroeder of Colorado: "It was so much more fun to legislate than oversee. You could find many reasons to put more regulations on. We didn't feel accountable as much as we should have to make sure regulations were being applied reasonably."
It would be an oversimplification to claim that most school harassment is like the madcap adventures in American Graffiti or that high-school harassers are harmless. There are serious cases of harassment that need to be remedied.
In Pittsburgh, fraternity brothers at a university held "Pig Parties," inviting the ugliest dates they could find. The guy with the ugliest date would win. The girls soon realized why they were invited and would flee the party in tears. In cases such as these, the punishment should be placed at the door of the offending students rather than with the school or with the student body at large in the form of higher tuition payments to cover lawsuit expenses.
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