If a neighbor hadn’t witnessed the problem, high school sophomore Eleanor Linn might have kept her horrifying secret. One of her teachers was sexually harassing her.
“That was in the early ’60s, when we didn’t have a name for what was happening,” Linn said. “But clearly it planted a seed in my mind that this was unacceptable.”
Since then, Linn, now in her late 40s, has been instrumental in bringing new public attention to a not-so-new problem.
“I think harassment leaves permanent scars,” she said. “My own experience influenced my working life. I’ve used that negative experience to create a better world.”
As associate director of Programs for Educational Opportunity/Center for Sex Equity in Schools at the University of Michigan, Linn advises schools on issues of race, gender and national origin. She is co-author of the booklet “Tune In to Your Rights . . . A Guide for Teenagers about Turning Off Sexual Harassment.”
She also recently finished collaborating on a report, “The Culture of Sexual Harassment,” to be published in spring 1996 in the American Education Research Journal.
The report is a spinoff of one published by the American Association of University Women two years ago. Linn advised the AAUW in developing a survey about sexual harassment in schools. Results of that survey, dubbed “Hostile Hallways,” provided a startling picture of the pervasiveness of unwanted sexual attention in secondary schools.
Troubled by the findings of that survey, Linn and her cohorts decided to take another look at the data. They hoped to come up with some explanation for the prevalence of the problem. They also wanted to provide suggestions for schools to address the issue.
Their new look at the data confirmed that harassment was common in schools, often from fellow students but also from teachers and other adults.
“We found that 83 percent of girls and 60 percent of boys receive unwanted sexual attention in school,” Linn said.
Their study also turned up details that were even more surprising, she said, including that more than half the students who reported being harassed said they also participated in harassing classmates.
“There was an incredible overlap between students who said they were victims and said they also were harassers,” Linn said. “This was a very troubling finding.
“Even though they know how hurtful it is, they still do it to others. You would think that if you knew how it hurts, you wouldn’t do it.”
Linn’s experience with a harassing teacher when she was a sophomore gives her a firsthand perspective of the problem.
“I had a teacher who became overly friendly,” she said. “It was a difficult thing for me to handle because when it started out, I thought his interest in me was academic. It was like a kind of mentoring going on.
“Then his questions got too personal. Then he started showing up in my private life.”
She began noticing little things that made her uncomfortable. As she walked through the park on her way home from music lessons, he would be there. If she was sitting on a park bench, he sat “too close.”
“Then he wanted to walk me home,” she said.
“I was afraid to tell anyone about it. At that time we didn’t have a name for what was happening. . . . It was confusing, sort of flattering, but frightening.
“Now, in retrospect, I realize the complication of feelings involved.
“For some students it’s much more cut and dried. They know it’s something they don’t want. For other students, however, (my experience) was quite typical. It starts out feeling kind of complimentary, and then it becomes hard to know when it crosses the line.
“It’s a matter of thinking about it, talking about it — to acknowledge there will be contradictory feelings. You can feel flattered and angry at the same time. That, to me, seems like an important thing for a young person to talk through.
“That experience made me quite sensitive to those dynamics.”
Linn was never able to talk with anyone about her encounters with the teacher, she said, but was relieved when a neighbor saw the teacher approach Linn on the street and reported the incident to her mother.
“My mother went to talk to him and in an indirect way let it be known that she was watching him.
“This was before the passage of Title IX and before we knew anything about the words `sexual harassment,’ ” Linn said.
That doesn’t mean there was no sexual harassment before the 1972 implementation of Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education.
“Just ask any adult what went on in their middle school years, in their high school years,” Linn said. “There were some very problematic situations about unwanted sexuality. That influences (students’) ability to engage in schoolwork.
“How do we prevent this? That seems to me the most important thing. If we don’t feel safe in school, we don’t learn.
“Fear of harassment and the repercussions of harassment really influence everyone in school.”
While talking about the problem with friends, telling an adult or reporting it to school administrators may help, there are times “when being quiet may be the right thing (for students) to do,” Linn said. “These are complicated decisions.”
“Tune In to Your Rights” presents a number of real-life examples of sexual harassment, along with a definition: “Sexual harassment is unwanted and unwelcome sexual behavior which interferes with your life. No one has the right to harass another person. If you think that you are being harassed, you have a right to do something about it.”
The booklet also explains the difference between sexual harassment and sexual assault. It provides choices in dealing with harassment. It offers questions a student can ask herself or himself in deciding what to do. It gives tips for those who are friends or bystanders. It suggests what schools can do about sexual harassment.
Interest in the booklet has grown since it was first published in 1985, Linn said. It is now also published in Spanish and Arabic, taking cultural differences into account when presenting the material, she said.
The topic of sexual harassment and sexuality is not always an easy one to discuss, but it’s important to make people aware of the issue, even when they are youngsters. Linn has even broached the subject with her 8-year-old son, who, she said, doesn’t like Fred Astaire because of his behavior toward Ginger Rogers in a movie classic.
“When he was 6, he saw a Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movie,” Linn said. “He was disgusted by Fred Astaire because when Ginger told him to go away, he kept pushing himself on her. He was too young to understand subtle coyness and flirtation. He did not like that kind of ambiguity.
“He knows if a friend says, `I don’t like this,’ (you should) listen to what your friend says.
“It’s a difficult topic to talk about. This is not to say that all sexuality is bad and we need to cut off any discussion about feelings. But what we need to do is have open discussion about good feelings and bad feelings and some mixed feelings.”
