Schoolhouse harassment
We all know kids can be oversexed. But what happens when they become aggressive and other kids get hurt? San Francisco students search for solutions.

By Tali Woodward

MANY SAN FRANCISCANS were alarmed to hear about the recent rash of sexual assaults at San Francisco schools, including the story of a 14-year-old girl who was forced to perform three successive blow jobs in a bathroom at Raoul Wallenberg Traditional High School last December.

Even the police officers who dealt with the crime expressed shock at the attackers' nonchalance: "They think they didn't do anything wrong and it's OK for this kind of stuff to happen. They see it as horseplay," Inspector Sidney Laws of the San Francisco Police Department's sex crimes unit told the San Francisco Chronicle Jan. 17.

As the issue of schoolhouse harassment gains attention, this theme is sounded again and again. Sergeant Colleen Fatooh is in charge of the cops who are stationed in San Francisco schools. "Oftentimes the students are not aware," she told the city's Youth Commission April 1. "I know there was a student at one school stopped for sexual battery who said, 'I've been doing this all my life, and I never knew it was a problem.' "

But Cynthia Melgoza, Rayshone Bow, and Gerbert Marquez weren't surprised to hear about the rise in sexual aggression or the apparent ignorance of some of the kids. All three were part of a group of local students who identified in-school harassment as a serious concern back in the late 1990s. They did a student survey and found that many kids had no awareness of what harassment was or why it could be harmful. "A lot of them don't realize where you're just having fun and where you're really bothering [someone]," Bow said recently. "They don't know where the line is."

These young activists formed a group called Student Leaders Against Sexual Harassment and spent more than two years getting a handle on the problem, absorbing university research, and developing a thorough curriculum for teaching kids what harassment is, why it's damaging, and how to stop it. Eventually they took their plan to the San Francisco Board of Education, where it was an easy sell. The board unanimously approved SLASH's proposal and agreed to put a staff person in charge of getting the new educational program in gear. Things seemed to be going great.

But the coordinator was never chosen, the curriculum never put in place. Despite the best efforts of some of these kids, in-school harassment and assault fell off the political radar.

The school district, of course, has hundreds of pressing concerns – not to mention an ever shrinking budget. But that's hardly conciliation for the Wallenberg freshman forced into oral sex – or, for that matter, for her attackers.

At time when even our governor acknowledges his personal need for sexual harassment training, many people are demanding that something be done to stem the problem in schools. It's a tricky issue, one that's closely linked to other hot-button topics like sex education, bullying, and the perception that we live in a litigious society where everyone's all too eager to cry foul – at least until they get a hefty court settlement.

But the SLASH kids – who have good reason to be disillusioned – think it's a solvable problem.

SLASH's start

In 1997 Jose Carrasco assembled 20 middle and high school students, most of them Mission District residents, to design their own activist campaign. It was part of a pilot project in community organizing that he ran for the nonprofit Peer Resources.

"We had a bunch of topics, and we voted on them," explained Bow, who as a seventh grader was one of the youngest students. "Everyone was mostly affected by sexual harassment, and so we decided to work on that." Bow, who is now 19, told me she knew what it felt like to be teased and touched: "I was always more developed than the other people in my class. There was constantly talk about my body parts. Constantly." She was also accustomed to having her bra snapped.

Marquez, the only male student actively involved in the project, said that he witnessed sex harassment all the time in middle school but that the girls probably felt closer to the issue. However, he explained recently, "I feel other men should be educated. Most cases, it's boys who end up in jail, and they didn't know it was wrong."

SLASH surveyed 88 students at three schools, asking them how often they saw students pester one another in a sexual manner and what they did in response. Most had no idea how to define sexual harassment, but said behavior that fit the criteria was widespread. Forty-nine percent said they had experienced unwanted touching; 58 percent reported sexual taunting. And 60 percent said they never reported it to an adult. When surveyed by SLASH, many teachers also said they didn't know what to do when they witnessed sexual harassment, particularly when it was subtle.

The SLASH kids made contact with local groups like San Francisco Women Against Rape and tracked down a number of useful resources, including a 1992 survey done by researchers at Wellesley College and a detailed handbook produced in Los Angeles, a collaboration between the school district and the city's Commission on Assaults Against Women. Studies have concluded that roughly 80 percent of kids have experienced in-school sexual harassment, which can lead to academic problems, low self-esteem, depression, and even suicide. And when less flagrant forms of harassment are accepted, the behavior is likely to continue or worsen.

Studying available literature, the SLASH kids became experts in distinguishing harassment from less threatening behavior including run-of-the-mill flirting. They decided a behavior was only harassment if the object of the attention was disturbed by it. And not all harassment takes place between boys and girls. "The most popular kind is guys against girls, but there's also [incidents in] boys' locker rooms, hazing, rumors, teasing about sexual orientation," Melgoza said.

The kids also came across some of the more controversial incidents in the history of in-school harassment – including the much-mocked 1996 suspension of a 6-year-old North Carolina boy for kissing a girl in his first-grade class. They realized efforts to stop harassment could go too far, but the incident also brought up something they felt applied directly to San Francisco. If you can't expect a 6-year-old to know better, should you necessarily expect it of a 16-year-old who's never been taught otherwise?

"It's kind of, like, imbedded in us. As a society, we sort of push it. It's because of a lack of knowledge," Melgoza said. "Once you recognize [harassment], you're more likely to say that it's not OK." Unfortunately, many of her peers had no idea what constituted harassment, and SLASH soon discovered that the San Francisco Unified School District was woefully behind on the issue.

So, after more than a year of work, SLASH appealed to the school board. Commissioner Dan Kelly worked with the group to fashion a board resolution requiring that "all teachers and all students shall receive training in the recognition of and response to sexual harassment" and that the district designate a staffer to coordinate efforts and report on them annually.

"This was the moment of glory and achievement for the kids," Carrasco recounted. "We thought it was a victory, but it was actually the first step in a very long and drawn-out process."

The hard work

Apparently somewhere in the school district bureaucracy, someone wasn't pleased with SLASH's progress. Melgoza, who is now a San Francisco State University student determined to become a neurosurgeon, said of the district, "First they want youth input. Then, when we were finally making a difference, they shut it down."

Carrasco said, "Officials in the district were highly upset that students came forward in such a strong, clear, powerful manner." The kids' activism was perceived as a threat to Peer Resources' funding. "My supervisors told me to get SLASH to cool it," Carrasco said.

Things got harder when, less than two weeks after the resolution passed, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on May 24, 1999, that school districts could be liable for in-school harassment if they demonstrate "deliberate indifference." The case was brought on behalf of LaShonda Davis, a Georgia fifth-grader who was consistently groped and propositioned by a classmate. The court found that Title IX, the federal law meant to prevent gender discrimination in education, compels school districts to make a reasonable effort to combat harassment. (If the harassment is pervasive enough, the court opined, it could constitute a hostile environment for students, which might then impede learning.)

After the decision came down, "Peer Resources made a point of telling me we couldn't talk to the media," Carrasco said. "I told my supervisor that I wasn't going to censor my kids. I felt the kids had done a great job; how can I tell them to back down?"

SLASH representatives spoke to reporters and appeared in multiple stories and newscasts.

Meanwhile the kids were included in the district task force charged with reviewing the sexual harassment curriculum. But according to them, the district dragged out implementation of the resolution and generally scorned their suggestions.

"Every time we went to meet with them, they wouldn't let us speak," Marquez told me. "Sometimes they switched the day and didn't even tell us."

SLASH communicated its concerns in letters and in person, according to minutes of task force meetings, which also indicate there was a fair amount of discord within the group. (When I questioned Trish Bascom, who, as School Health Programs executive director, was one of the point people on this issue, she told me, "I don't remember. People have concerns about a whole lot of things." The SFUSD later added, in writing, "The collaboration on how to address sexual harassment and assault involved input by all parties. It also involved a consensus by the SFUSD Task Force on steps to implement.")

By April 2000 the task force had certainly agreed on one thing: the need to follow the lead of other school districts and create a staff position dedicated to sexual harassment programming. It sent a letter to then-superintendent Linda Davis saying as much.

Meanwhile SLASH kept working to pull together an awareness program. Members of the group say the curriculum they developed was simple, self-explanatory, and youth friendly – and the samples of handouts, agendas, and overhead projections they shared with me certainly attest to that. They even produced a magazine-type pamphlet that's heavy on comics. "How can we attract students to read about sexual harassment?" Marquez said they asked one another. "So we did comics – young men read comics." The magazine is also packed with kids' quotes, personal stories, and information about how to distinguish and report harassment.

SLASH held a conference for 150 San Francisco kids in October 1999 that Melgoza describes as "great – everyone learned what sexual harassment was, there was music, it was hip. It was meant to be a whole network – not only us teaching, but us teaching other people to teach about [sexual harassment], so there was a cycle." They trained peer educators at A.P. Giannini Middle School, Benjamin Franklin Middle School, and MacAteer High. And then they designed a more thorough pilot program for Francisco Middle School, working with staff and students there over several months.

The response was immediate. "Every time we used it, we got great feedback. People came up afterwards, they wanted to talk about it more," Marquez said almost wistfully.

When Peer Resources' funding dried up in 2000, a few of the kids tried to keep SLASH going on their own. They won a grant from the Youth Leadership Institute to run education programs at two more city schools.

Pretty soon, however, the lack of funding caught up to them and SLASH disintegrated. That might have been the end of it, were it not for recent publicity surrounding the dramatic rise in sexual assaults.

Kids today

Thirty-three SFUSD students have been suspended for sexual assault this school year – three times at many as were suspended during the same period last year. And many of the attacks were serious: the Wallenberg incident turned out to be only one of four that involved attempted or forced oral sex.

A number of students testified about in-school harassment before the Youth Commission April 1. Eliana Paredes, who attends Mission High, said that when students act inappropriately, they're sent to the dean, "but they don't get taught what's harassment." She has been working within her school to raise awareness and getting guidance from former members of SLASH.

"All the curriculum is still there," Marquez reminded everyone later on. "I'm glad you guys are actually taking a step to doing something now."

Mark Sanchez, who has served almost four years on the school board, pointed out that "we're almost mimicking the process of six years ago." He said some teachers and principals fear drawing negative attention by reporting harassment to the central district office: "There is a lingering perception that you'll be dinged. If not an overt policy, it's part of the inner workings."

District administrators scoff at the idea that schools don't report incidents of harassment – particularly the most significant ones. They say they're on top of the issue in every way – and it seems at least comparatively true.

It's important to remember that the SLASH debacle happened during what was, by all measures, a tumultuous time for the SFUSD. Given the district was plagued with financial scandal, facing enormous budget cuts, and searching for a new superintendent, it wasn't exactly an ideal time to create a new staff position or implement a new program. In fact, the year that a new position was proposed, there was a $9 million budget hole. The district has since made substantial cuts to the central office budget – more than $5 million last year alone – and planned to eliminate all unfilled central office positions.

Yet, though it's being forced to do with less, the district is running better today than in the recent past. And district officials insist that extends to sexual harassment education. Administrators said that while budget constraints have made hiring a staffer to work specifically on sexual harassment impossible, the Office of Equity Assurance that Superintendent Arlene Ackerman established after she was hired helps to monitor harassment. Director of pupil services Susan Wong, who with Bascom is responsible for this issue, said that the district's complaint system encourages students to learn from any disciplinary experience by articulating how they could have acted differently and that punishment is more serious for repeat offenses.

The SFUSD lacks a district-wide system for tracking incidents that fall short of suspension. However, each school is supposed to maintain records on "school climate," district representatives said. They are also anxious to point out that the Safe Schools Task Force – assembled to deal with issues like bullying, gangs, and truancy – organized a district-wide Day of Kindness April 7. Brian Fox, the current director of Peer Resources, is cheered that "the district has committed to helping our organization teach the next generation about this issue."

And Bascom is adamant that the district's embedded health curriculum covers sex ed unusually well and incorporates sexual harassment education on several levels. She told me harassment education involves "a very basic sociological question: How can we teach and communicate morals in a society that is broken?" The SFUSD, she said, emphasizes character education and is one of the last districts in the state to still require each high school graduate to take a semester-long health class. And Bascom emphasized that SLASH worked on "really a specific piece" of that wraparound curriculum.

But it's still hard not to feel district representatives are being defensive. On April 1, after the San Francisco Examiner reported in-school sexual assaults were on the rise, Ackerman called a press conference. She said that the perceived increase might be due to increased reporting and emphasized that harassment is a community-wide problem. Fair enough. But she also expressed frustration that the Youth Commission had scheduled a hearing on the issue that very afternoon.

The Youth Commission planned the hearing weeks before, in response to what happened at Wallenberg. Isn't that what the Youth Commission is supposed to do? And besides, if it's a community problem, what's wrong with a community dialogue?

Another chance

What's happening in San Francisco coincides with increased attention to in-school harassment nationwide. The American Association of University Women, which took its first comprehensive look at the problem in elementary and secondary education in 1993, updated its research in 2002 and has since developed a thorough guide on the issue.

The first broad study of antigay harassment, released in January of this year, found that harassment involving sexual orientation is rampant in California schools and has serious consequences. The report, by the California Safe Schools Project, concluded that "students harassed on the basis of actual or perceived sexual orientation are three times more likely to miss school because they feel unsafe, and more than twice as likely to be depressed, to consider suicide." Harassed students also tend to perform poorly in school, abuse substances, and fall victim to violence.

Closer to home, San Francisco company Women's Educational Media released an anti-bullying film called Let's Get Real just last year. The movie, meant to be shown in school, shows middle schoolers talking honestly about their experiences bullying, being bullied, or witnessing bullying, and also their suggestions for solutions.

The curriculum on this topic is obviously designed to be accessible and clear, and to articulate the differences between true harassment and simple flirting ("hurting versus flirting" is the well-worn phrase).

But none of it rivals the materials SLASH developed, which are visually striking and undeniably hip. "I believe we did a great job back then. If it had continued, I can't say [sexual harassment] wouldn't happen, but the numbers would have decreased," said Marquez, who now works at a health clinic. "They need to listen to kids more."

"I wasn't surprised when all this stuff started to happen," Bow said of the recently reported assaults. "I've been out of school two years, so it's like all the people we taught are out now. People don't know about sexual harassment and how dangerous it is. It's kind of like going backwards."

But all three SLASH leaders are still confident sexual harassment can be diminished, even erased. The SFUSD just needs to find a way to harness student energy.

Research assistance by Lisa Wong Macabasco and Liam O'Donoghue.

E-mail Tali Woodward