“Since you have been a student at Harvard University has a student or someone employed by or otherwise associated with Harvard . . . continued to ask you to go out, get dinner, have drinks or have sex even though you said no?” If so, you may be a victim of sexual misconduct or sexual assault or sexual harassment.
Which of those, if any, applies is not entirely clear, and the 67-part anonymous survey of Harvard students that included this question seems like it was intended to obscure more than enlighten.
Recommended by the school’s Task Force on the Prevention of Sexual Assault, the survey is, according to Harvard’s president, “part of our effort to reduce the incidence of sexual harassment and assault.”
All degree-seeking students received a link and have until May 3 to complete it. But before they do, they have to read — you guessed it — a trigger warning.
“Some of the language used in this survey is explicit and some people may find it uncomfortable, but it is important that we ask the questions in this way so that you are clear what we mean. If responding to this survey is distressful, information on how to get help if you need it appears at the top of each page and at the end of the survey. Personal benefit from participating in this survey is unlikely.”
Well, except that you’ll get a $5 Amazon gift card. Shouldn’t make too much of a dent in the endowment, I guess.
What’s distressful about the survey, however, is not the explicit language — though it does seem a little creepy to get a survey from the president of the university asking about your experiences with oral sex. It’s the fact that the results will no doubt add to the piles of bad data already out there on campus sexual assault.
The “one in four” and “one in five” statistics about women being sexually assaulted on campuses that are trotted out so regularly are simply the results of survey administrators failing to distinguish exactly what is sexual assault, notes Shep Melnick. A professor of political science at Boston College, Melnick says “these surveys can be used really helpfully to get a handle on the extent of the problem or further muddy it on the basis of faulty information.”
“If they were really serious,” notes Melnick, “they would say, ‘Here is the definition of rape, here is forceful sexual assault, here’s a form of misconduct, here’s harassment.’ ” Instead, the Harvard survey simply lists a bunch of bad things and then asks — yes or no — whether any of these has happened to you.
Once you get past the basic demographic data — the bit asking students to identify their gender offers eight possible answers — come the questions about experiences.
And the survey offers this important note: “Sexual assault and sexual misconduct refer to a range of behaviors that are nonconsensual or unwanted. These behaviors could include remarks about physical appearance or persistent sexual advances.
“These could also include threats of force to get someone to engage in sexual behavior such as nonconsensual or unwanted touching, sexual penetration, oral sex, anal sex or attempts to engage in these behaviors.”
So which is which? What is sexual assault? What is sexual misconduct? What is harassment? And is there any category for simply obnoxious behavior?
As one graduate student noted about the questions: “It also seems to me that the main point of possible confusion is that ‘sexual assault’ and ‘sexual harassment’ appear multiple times in no particular order. I had to go pretty slowly not to accidentally say I had witnessed ‘assault’ when all I had seen was a jerk guy at a party harassing someone.”
Indeed, there are questions about people tweeting offensive sexual remarks thrown in with questions about anal penetration.
And, oddly, nowhere in the whole document does the word “rape” appear. Perhaps that’s because rape is a word that respondents might be a little more careful about using.
But the school isn’t trying to understand a problem. It’s trying to cover its behind. These surveys have been recommended by the Office of Civil Rights, and schools can point to them if they are ever investigated by the feds.
The university also seems to be casually adopting the “affirmative consent” doctrine that has become popular on campuses around the country.
Take this question: “Since you have been a student at Harvard University has someone had contact with you involving penetration or oral sex without your active, ongoing, voluntary agreement?”
Active, ongoing and voluntary? One can only imagine the contracts Harvard Law students are drawing up as we speak.
The Harvard administration seems to be on a fishing expedition. “How likely do you think it is that you will experience sexual assault or sexual misconduct during off-campus university-sponsored events?” Um, calls for speculation, your honor. So, by the way, does, “Have you seen a drunk person heading off for what looked like a sexual encounter?”
This survey is so badly written that one wonders whether its results would even pass muster in the kind of peer-reviewed journals in which Harvard professors regularly publish. But then, the goal here isn’t science. It’s politics.
Naomi Schaefer Riley is a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum.