Students, Consultants to Meet To Combat Sexual Harassment

Two consultants to the Department of Education will participate this weekend in two afternoon-long roundtable discussions with women who have suffered sexual harassment in academic situations.

The discussions, coordinated by the Radcliffe Union of Students (RUS) and Marlyn M. Lewis, assistant dean of the College, will kick off a federally funded national campaign against harassment of women. The project this spring will include ten regional workshops--the Northeast workshop will probably be held at Harvard--and the production of a leaflet on sexual harassment, which will be distributed nationwide, Sharon J. Orr '83, an RUS member, said this week.

Treating sexual harassment as an issue covered by Title IX, which forbids sex discrimination in education, the soon-to-be-defunct Department of Education funded the project "with the assumption that if not now, never," Orr said.

The two female consultants, who work with the Washington, D.C., consulting firm L-Miranda, will meet Saturday and Sunday afternoon with women--or men--who feel they have suffered harassment, which Orr defined as sexual advances accompanied by power or "the force of a working relationship."

The "brainstorming on a first-name basis" should provide ideas for the spring workshop series, Orr said, adding that one of the objectives is to reevaluate established grievance procedures for sexually harassed students at various universities, including Harvard.