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T A B L E++T A L K Parenting is hard, but kids are great. Gush over the great things your children do in the Mothers area of Table Talk - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y We've come a long way, baby Dear bridal party Spoiled rotten Mothers who think too much Ask Dr. Love BROWSE THE MOTHERS WHO THINK HOT FLASH ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - - Mamafesto
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THE SUPREME COURT RULING TO PROTECT SCHOOLS
BY DAWN MacKEEN | One spring day in 1992, Frank Waldrop, a high school social studies teacher in the small Texas community of Lago Vista, stopped by a student's house to drop off a book. According to the student, who was home alone when Waldrop arrived at her house, the 52-year-old teacher leaned forward and kissed her, then fondled her. The student, Alida Star Gebser, was 14 years old at the time. That interlude was the beginning of an affair that lasted six months and ended in the woods when a police officer found the two naked together. Though Waldrop was fired and went to jail after pleading no contest to attempted sexual assault, Gebser and her mother sued the Lago Vista school district for what happened to her. Their case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which last week upheld, by a vote of 5-4, a lower court's ruling dismissing the case. The justices found that victims of sexual harassment can hold school districts responsible only if an official -- a school administrator -- at the school knew about what was going on and didn't do anything about it. Since Gebser never told anyone about Waldrop and the district didn't discover the relationship, the Lago Vista School District was not held liable. What happened to Gebser is far from uncommon, according to the American Association of University Women. The AAUW's 1993 national survey, "Hostile Hallways," now considered a definitive report on sexual harassment in the schools, found that one out of four girls and one out of 10 boys have reported being harassed by an adult. "The number of reported cases involving sexual harassment of students in schools confirms that harassment unfortunately is an all too common aspect of the educational experience," wrote Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, representing the Supreme Court's majority opinion. But educators say the lawsuits stemming from these cases sometimes hit the school districts hard, with settlements reaching the million-dollar mark. Even so, the Supreme Court's decision has angered women's rights advocates and parents and prompted Justice John Paul Stevens, of the dissenting minority opinion, to write that the court was ranking "protection of the school's purse above protection of immature high school students." Should schools be held financially liable for the teachers they hire? Is it just too difficult to police every teacher-student relationship? Salon spoke with Charol Shakeshaft, who has been researching sexual harassment in schools for 12 years, about the occurrence of sexual advances by teachers, the reasons why students don't come forward and what this decision might mean to future generations of students who are caught as the apple of a lascivious teacher's eye. Shakeshaft is a professor of administration and policy studies at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. What does the Supreme Court decision mean? I am dismayed by the decision. It says to the adults in positions of power at the schools that it's better not to know when a teacher abuses a student; it's better not to have a grievance system; it's better to just keep things quiet because if we don't know about the abuse, then we can't be held liable. But school districts can still be liable if a student reports the abuse to someone at school ... There is a problem with having kids "report" to a person who is in a position to do something about it -- meaning an administrator. Children by and large don't distinguish between teachers and administrators or between counselors and administrators. When parents and children come to school and tell somebody about a problem, they consider all of us to be the officials. So telling someone about it may not do any good. If that person is not the person who can intervene, the complaint may be lost and the harm to the child will continue. Also, in my studies of 225 reported abuse cases and through observing teenagers from eight high schools over three years, I've found that only 6 to 7 percent of the students who had been physically sexually abused by a teacher or another adult in school actually told an adult. So most kids don't even tell. There are a lot of signs that you can pick up, but if you're waiting for a child to come forward and say, "This teacher is making me have sex with him or her," it's not likely to happen. A lawyer for the Lago Vista school district was quoted as saying, "The student here knew precisely what to do to stop this activity." Is it reasonable to expect students to come forward? It isn't up to the student to make it stop -- it's up to the school to provide a safe environment. Our experience in studying kids is, by and large, they don't know how to make it stop. We have found that when they get into a sexually compromising situation, they don't know what to do or how to make it stop, they have lots of mixed feelings toward the teacher, they care about the teacher, they feel special, they also might feel uncomfortable and they don't always know the policies, particularly if those policies are not published and distributed and talked about. Having sex with someone under the age of 18 is statutory rape, and it's a crime. But many people say, "If she's 14 and she wanted to have sex then it's OK." A lot of adults say that, a lot of school people say that, so why wouldn't kids believe that it's true, too? So the whole notion that a child would understand that a teacher was violating a law or a school policy is just not the case. Are sexual harassment policies in school widely known by students? No. Most of the time what happens is administrators mention the policies, pass out a handbook, but the majority of students don't look at it. Unless someone sits down with students, goes over it and explains it, it is unlikely that students will understand A.) that sexual harassment policy exists and B.) what it is. N E X T+P A G E: Typical school response: Ignore the problem |
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