It is a myth that the school is not responsible for dealing with these issues. In fact, the school district is legally required to have a Title IX representative to deal with this sort of sexual harassment. These are the sorts of things that
are covered:
- A female student hooked up with a boy at her school, and now a group of girls are repeatedly texting her and tweeting about her at school, calling her a slut and a whore. This is gender-based harassment.
- Another female student sent her boyfriend sexts and pictures of herself naked. Then they break up. The boyfriend shares these sexts and photos with his friends at school to get back at her. He also spreads rumors about her sexual behavior. This is sexual harassment.
- A female student, who has short hair and wears T-shirts, baggy jeans, and sneakers, had a relationship with another girl at school, and now a group of students are repeatedly texting her and tweeting about her at school, calling her a slut, whore, dyke, and butch.
- A male student has mostly female friends, he sings Lady Gaga songs in the hallway and is on the dance team. Fellow students call him a fairy, gay boy, or queer, both in-person and online, and knock his books out of his hands in the hallway. He has also been physically assaulted and threatened on the school bus.
- Students maliciously use she and her to refer to a transgender classmate, even though they know he identifies as a boy. The principal has told him to just act like a girl. The student enrolled in an auto shop class, and is being taunted by classmates, who make sexually suggestive jokes about the students tool and ask whats under the hood.
- In the locker room at school a group of boys surround a younger boy, grab his genitals, and tell him that they heard he liked that.
Title IX "prohibits gender-based harassment, which may include acts of verbal, nonverbal, or physical aggression, intimidation, or hostility based on sex or sex stereotyping. Thus, it can be sex discrimination if students are harassed either for exhibiting what is perceived as a stereotypical characteristic for their sex, or for failing to conform to stereotypical notions of masculinity and femininity. Title IX also prohibits sexual harassment and gender-based harassment of all students, regardless of the actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity of the harasser or target." You can find a similar statement on any school's
legally required Title IX Notice of Nondiscrimination, and the OCR makes it exceedingly easy to report violations on
their website.
In 2010, the OCR published
this memo which said, among other things:
Some school anti-bullying policies already may list classes or traits on which bases bullying or harassment is specifically prohibited. Indeed, many schools have adopted anti-bullying policies that go beyond prohibiting bullying on the basis of traits expressly protected by the federal civil rights laws enforced by OCRrace, color, national origin, sex, and disabilityto include such bases as sexual orientation and religion. While this letter concerns your legal obligations under the laws enforced by OCR, other federal, state, and local laws impose additional obligations on schools.7 And, of course, even when bullying or harassment is not a civil rights violation, schools should still seek to prevent it in order to protect students from the physical and emotional harms that it may cause.
Harassing conduct may take many forms, including verbal acts and name-calling; graphic and written statements, which may include use of cell phones or the Internet; or other conduct that may be physically threatening, harmful, or humiliating. Harassment does not have to include intent to harm, be directed at a specific target, or involve repeated incidents. Harassment creates a hostile environment when the conduct is sufficiently severe, pervasive, or persistent so as to interfere with or limit a students ability to participate in or benefit from the services, activities, or opportunities offered by a school. When such harassment is based on race, color, national origin, sex, or disability, it violates the civil rights laws that OCR enforces.8
A school is responsible for addressing harassment incidents about which it knows or reasonably should have known.9 In some situations, harassment may be in plain sight, widespread, or well-known to students and staff, such as harassment occurring in hallways, during academic or physical education classes, during extracurricular activities, at recess, on a school bus, or through graffiti in public areas. In these cases, the obvious signs of the harassment are sufficient to put the school on notice. In other situations, the school may become aware of misconduct, triggering an investigation that could lead to the discovery of additional incidents that, taken together, may constitute a hostile environment. In all cases, schools should have well-publicized policies prohibiting harassment and procedures for reporting and resolving complaints that will alert the school to incidents of harassment.10
When responding to harassment, a school must take immediate and appropriate action to investigate or otherwise determine what occurred. The specific steps in a schools investigation will vary depending upon the nature of the allegations, the source of the complaint, the age of the student or students involved, the size and administrative structure of the school, and other factors. In all cases, however, the inquiry should be prompt, thorough, and impartial.
If an investigation reveals that discriminatory harassment has occurred, a school must take prompt and effective steps reasonably calculated to end the harassment, eliminate any hostile environment and its effects, and prevent the harassment from recurring. These duties are a schools responsibility even if the misconduct also is covered by an anti-bullying policy, and regardless of whether a student has complained, asked the school to take action, or identified the harassment as a form of discrimination.
Appropriate steps to end harassment may include separating the accused harasser and the target, providing counseling for the target and/or harasser, or taking disciplinary action against the harasser. These steps should not penalize the student who was harassed. For example, any separation of the target from an alleged harasser should be designed to minimize the burden on the targets educational program (e.g., not requiring the target to change his or her class schedule).
If the school was aware of this (or "reasonably should have known"), the school has some legal responsibility here.
My wife was all like "violence isn't the answer", but I feel like sometimes yeah, it is. I'm pretty sure that kid is going to think twice about picking on that kid again. I grew up in a boys-don't-cry-rub-some-dirt-on-it era and worry that I'm out of touch. I don't know.
