Combating Okay-12 Sexual Harassment and Violence: How Far Have We Come?

Seven years in the past, two mother and father whose little one was sexually assaulted on a highschool discipline journey created the nonprofit Stop Sexual Assault in Schools (SSAIS) after demanding accountability from the Seattle college district. For the web site’s inaugural blog, Fatima Goss Graves, now president and CEO of the Nationwide Ladies’s Regulation Middle, wrote: “If we don’t deliver a critical focus to the issue of sexual harassment and assault in elementary and secondary colleges, it will likely be practically unattainable to make actual progress at some other degree of schooling.”

SSAIS founders quickly found that Okay-12 colleges proved blind to their duties underneath Title IX, as exemplified within the 2012 NBC report “Bay Area Schools Ignoring Title IX,” based mostly on the Equal Rights Advocates analysis on “Ending Harassment Now.” As a result of colleges nationwide have mischaracterized sexual harassment as “bullying,” thereby de-gendering it, they sidestep their obligation to handle the sex-based harassment underneath Title IX. By so doing, colleges have basically erased the harassment.

Lecturers, researchers like Nan Stein and Charol Shakeshaft, advocates just like the late Title IX “Godmother” Bernice Resnick Sandler and others have lengthy recognized these points. In 2001, the American Affiliation of College Ladies launched its “Hostile Hallways” report and in 2011, “Crossing the Line: Sexual Harassment at School.”

However the public was nonetheless unaware of widespread Okay-12 sexual harassment and violence.

If we don’t deliver a critical focus to the issue of sexual harassment and assault in elementary and secondary colleges, it will likely be practically unattainable to make actual progress at some other degree of schooling.

Fatima Goss Graves

By 2015, sexual violence on school campuses was part of the nationwide consciousness. President Obama had launched the It’s on Us marketing campaign, movies like It Happened Here and The Hunting Ground put a human face on campus assault, Woman Gaga sang about sexual violence in “Till it Happens to You,” and importantly, pupil and survivor-led activism fueled the campus anti-rape motion. 

That motion “laid the groundwork for the emergence of #MeToo, the best profile marketing campaign in opposition to sexual harassment and violence in U.S. historical past,” in accordance with The New Campus Anti-Rape Movement.

However school anti-rape advocates didn’t clarify how rampant Okay-12 sexual harassment led to sexual violence on school campuses. (The missed alternative to unfold consciousness is mentioned in “Why Lady Gaga Should Be Talking to a Rape Victim’s Mother About K-12 Sexual Assault.”)

Nonetheless, the campus anti-rape motion paved the way in which for a motion to handle Okay-12 sexual violence. The media reported heinous assaults, just like the 2012 Steubenville rape case, LGBTQIA+ suicides ensuing from sexual harassment, sexual assault “hazing” and incidents of educator abuse. However by and huge, the general public was nonetheless unaware of the widespread sexual harassment recognized by researchers many years earlier. When journalists centered on consent schooling, SSAIS asserted that consent schooling should happen alongside Title IX schooling. (See: “As the Mother of a Rape Victim, I Know Consent Education Is Not Enough.”)

To lift consciousness, SSAIS drew upon the nationwide attention the founders’ case acquired to sound the alarm. The Washington Publish revealed the groundbreaking 2016 report, “Sexual violence isn’t just a college problem. It happens in K-12 schools, too.” Shortly thereafter, then-VP Biden invited 4 organizations to debate Okay-12 sexual violence. (Learn extra: “What the White House Asked Us About K-12 Sexual Violence” and the Ladies’s Media Middle’s “School sexual harassment: Underreported and ignored.”)

Not like the school anti-rape motion fueled by outspoken survivors, the nascent Okay-12 motion lacked pupil survivor-advocates in its early years. Most survivors have been minors who feared being blamed, punished and retaliated in opposition to for talking out.

“We’ve seen too many instances the place college students inform trusted academics or directors that they’ve been abused and find yourself suspended or expelled,” stated Alexandra Broadsky, workers lawyer at Public Justice. “And public reporting suggests survivors of coloration are notably more likely to be punished on this method.”

There have been exceptions, like advocate Chessy Prout, whose assault at an elite personal college acquired worldwide consideration. However few Okay-12 survivors have the assist to wage high-profile campaigns for accountability. With out Okay-12 pupil survivors keen to talk to the media, SSAIS launched survivors’ mother and father to journalists, which led to groundbreaking articles (notably “Reporting a school sexual assault can increase a victim’s risk of punishment“). 

SSAIS continued to have interaction in media outreach and supplied background for the Related Press’s 2017 collection “Schoolhouse Sexual Assault.” Mark Keierleber’s 2017 report “The Younger Victims of Sexual Violence in School” and his “#MeTooK12: One Daughter’s Trauma, and a Family’s Quest to Prevent School-Related Sexual Violence” (2018) adopted. In 2019, the New York Occasions addressed Okay-12 sexual violence in “‘It’s Like the Wild West’: Sexual Assault Victims Struggle in K-12 Schools.” (See a chronological survey of chosen media reviews here.)

Whereas SSAIS centered on sexual harassment in colleges, the Unslut Project addressed “sexual bullying” usually. UnSlut: A Documentary Film (2015) featured conversations with ladies who skilled sexual shaming, together with household and buddies of Rehtaeh Parsons, a Halifax teen who died by suicide after being gang-raped. 

UnSlut’s creator, Meghan Joyce Tozer, defined the significance of survivor advocacy: “One of many essential causes we’re now conscious of the rampant sexual violence in grades Okay-12 is that youngsters and youngsters have began talking up. Now, with the success of story-sharing initiatives like The UnSlut Mission and the viral #MeToo motion, college students know they’re not alone. … They’ve made it unattainable to disregard the hazard they face at college when adults look the opposite method.”

Two different movies specializing in Okay-12 sexual violence—Audrie and Daisy (2016) and Roll Red Roll (2018)—have been launched.

New organizations, like SafeBAE and I Have the Right To emerged, whereas Know Your IX posted further sources for highschool college students. The Nationwide Ladies’s Regulation Middle raised consciousness with toolkits addressing college pushout, women of coloration, intersectionality and extra. Equal Rights Advocates revealed an expanded survivor guide together with Okay-12 college students. SSAIS created toolkits and the student-focused video “Sexual Harassment: Not in Our School!” Public Justice lawyer Adele Kimmel raised consciousness in media reviews, whereas lawyer Carrie Goldberg spotlighted the disproportionate punishment women of coloration expertise after being sexually assaulted at college.

Additional consideration was drawn to Okay-12 sexual harassment and violence in 2016 when former U.S. Division of Training Secretary Betsy DeVos proposed amendments to the rules governing Title IX implementation. In 2017, the #HandsOffIX social media marketing campaign was created to oppose the amendments, which dangerously impacted each school and Okay-12 college students. Public opposition was substantial—over 124,000 feedback have been submitted to the regulations.gov website, however DeVos’ amendments took impact anyway.

“The modifications that the Trump administration made in 2020 to the Title IX guidelines that create excessive burdens for college kids reporting sexual violence … successfully permit colleges to additional sweep harassment underneath the rug,” stated. NWLC lawyer Shiwali Patel.

In 2018, the SSAIS #MeTooK12 campaign acquired appreciable media attention. The marketing campaign’s progress is mentioned in “Levin: #MeTooK12 at 2 — the Impact of National Campaign to Stop Sexual Assault in Schools, and What Needs to Happen Next” and “#MeTooK12 Turns 4, Students Can’t Wait for Adults to Make Change.” (Chosen articles throughout varied media seem here.)

Whereas student-led teams could be efficient in elevating consciousness and making native change, they’re troublesome to maintain. Berkeley High School Stop Harassing, established in 2012 with assist from devoted grownup advisors, is a notable exception. Scholar advocacy dramatically elevated when classroom studying resumed after the pandemic. College students resorted to Instagram campaigns and demonstrations to reveal their colleges’ failures to handle sexual assault, as mentioned in “Students Are Walking Out of School to Demand Better Protections From Sexual Harassment and Assault.” The long-awaited upsurge of younger survivors to drive change had arrived.

However obstacles to creating efficient change stem from “the shortage of sources to assist Title IX compliance, together with for Title IX coordinators, who’re liable for guaranteeing colleges are complying with Title IX and responding appropriately to intercourse discrimination, together with sexual harassment, Patel explains. Obstacles are additionally cultural, particularly the “long-standing rape myths that affect how we understand and reply to victims and survivors of sexual violence.”