All in the Family

THIS FALL AN 18 year old small town woman entered Harvard with the Class of 1985 and began very rapidly in grow in wisdom. In a conference with her English professor, he suddenly said he did not want to discuss the poetry she had written instead, he asked her how she made love and how she thought he made love. He spoke to her about "licking" a woman. He asked her if she would make love to him. She wouldn't She got a C in the class reportedly the only C in the class.

The student filed a charge of sexual harassment with the College, and after an investigation the College decided that the student's complaint "had met." Indeed Marlyn M Lewis '70, assistant dean of the College, wrote to the student that she spoke to the professor involved. Derek Walcott, a visiting professor of poetry from Boston University last fall and that "he acknowledged that you had described his conduct accurately." It seemed that all that was yet to come was the announcement of the punishment.

But the announcement of the punishment never came. The student received a letter from Lewis saving that the College had "taken formal action" Terming the entire incident a "family affair." Lewis later explained that the College does not really consider the resolution of the complaint any of the student's business--the height of nonsensical, Harvard paternalism.

The College's policy is essentially to treat cases of sexual harassment as personnel matters, to be handled discreetly with a minimum of fosse. The rationale is a bit difficult to fathom. It seems largely to be predicated jointly on two beliefs. The first is that only by promising secrecy will the College be able to get the professor's accurate and full account of an incident. And secondly there is the principle that by Harvard, an educational institution, treating the matter secretly, the guilty party will have the opportunity to mend his ways and learn from the experience.

The point about using secrecy to obtain the professor truthful account offered up by Lewis as a partial defense of the College's current practice, is absurd on its face. An investigative body must operate on the assumption that it has the power to get its suspects to tell the truth. To act otherwise is to make every case a plea bargain, in which Harvard makes a major concession at the start of a case, merely in return for the professor's decision to tell the truth. The College should act with the assumption that its faculty members are at the minimum, truthful, and that their lies can be detected.

More troublesome though, is the question of whether secrecy is necessary to allow the professor to learn from his mistakes. The entire American system of justice is predicated on the theory of re-habilitation. Yet no criminal court works under the presumption that an offender will be forever damned it his transgression is made public. A chastened offender, it is hoped may come to live down his past. For example, Martin Kilson, the Harvard Government professor whose sexual harassment of a freshman three years ago drew national attention, is quietly plugging away in the Government Department even today.

AGAINST THESE RATHER lame justifications for secrecy, there are some very compelling reasons that instances of sexual harassment should be publicized. Most important is the chilling deterrent effect such publicity would have on future cases of sexual harassment. A crucial factor in discouraging crime is the presumption that it will be punished. As long as the punishment for sexual harassment is kept secret, it will deter no one Harvard could be holding up Walcott as an example, censuring him, and forbidding him any future affiliation with Harvard, as a stunning example to all professors teaching fellows, and administrators that molestation of students will be severely dealt with instead, it quietly sticks by this member of the "family."

Another compelling reason for publicity is to assert firmly Harvard's commitment to make women welcome in the 350-year-old boys' club. With so few female professors and administrators, Harvard already seems an institution ill-equipped to deal with a matter like sexual harassment. Although Lewis has said that more than 25 women came to her this year alone with complaints of sexual harassment--and this is no doubt the tip of a much larger iceberg--each of these women is made to feel that she is the only one. Only when cases of sexual harassment are publicized and publicly condemned, will women know that this is something the College takes seriously--something women now have no way of knowing.

Moreover, there is a natural tendency to favor openness rather than secrecy is issues of justice. When a body assumes the role of determining right, its actions should be made public, if only to allow others to see that justice was indeed done.

In the Walcott case, for example, a Black campus leader recently charged the College with racism because the only two publicized cases of sexual harassment at Harvard involved white women complaining against Black professors. Given the minute portion of the Faculty that is Black, the student charged that there are many more complaints against white professors, but that in these cases the College gets tough with the students, and makes it clear that an important career is on the line. While such a charge of institutional racism in the College's dealings with sexual harassment cases remains unsubstantiated, only dealing openly with all cases will make the College's purity of motives and procedure apparent.

Finally, although retribution should play a small part in such matters, it is hard to argue that the student involved has been fairly dealt with. She has suffered emotional difficulties, bouts of depression, academic problems, and has had her freshman year unalterably tainted. While the College asserts that it has "taken formal action," the student involved is correct in stating that she cannot name one way in which Walcott seems to have been punished by the College Indeed, because of the College's secrecy, the author of a highly laudatory profile in the New York Times Magazine section, which appeared after the resolution of the case, had no way of knowing of Walcott's indiscretion.

It now appears that Dean Rosovsky will himself inform the student of the College's action. But this is an ad hoc decision that does not seem to reflect any official policy, and the decision came only after the student publicly charged the College with ignoring her interests Deans Fox and Lewis continue the official policy of the College in not speaking about the case.

As long as Harvard promises that mum is the word on cases of sexual harassment, open season will remain on women undergraduates Indeed, the only lesson a potential harasser can draw from the Walcott case is that the College will stand by him steadfastly, and that it is his victim who will have to ask anonymity to hide the shame of the entire incident Harvard clings tightly to its tradition of imbuing its students with knowledge--sometimes even in the biblical sense.