Fighting Lechery on Campus

Feminists take action against professors who take liberties

The lecherous professor is a standard figure at most colleges, as much a part of the campus scene as ivy-covered brick or the statue of the founder. In one informal poll at a California college, a quarter of the faculty members said they had been sexually active with students, and another fourth said they would like to be. A more ambitious survey of American women with degrees in psychology reported that 10% of the women said they had had sexual contact with their educators. For women who earned those degrees in the past six years, the figure was an astonishing 25%.

Student-faculty sex is not exactly news. For the roving professor, female students are a vast pool of young, relatively inexperienced women who look at faculty members with respect and often a dash of awe. As one professor candidly admits, "We deal with young people when they are most physically beautiful, most open to new thought and experience. All the while we get older. It's quite a lure."

Perhaps not quite so much of a lure now that feminists have zeroed in on the issue. They argue that females are routinely harassed by fanny-patting professors. Even if a woman student agrees to sex, they say, she is being exploited--because the professor has crucial power over her grades and career. Campus women fought back in 1977, when a Yale undergraduate accused her political science professor of sexual harassment, charging that he offered her an A in exchange for sexual favors. Along with several others who said they had been similarly treated, she filed a class-action suit against Yale for protection against sexual harassment. That case was dismissed last July, in a decision that is now being appealed. Undaunted, other women have stepped up the campaign and have just won their most significant victories so far; in separate actions, one California professor has been fired and another suspended without pay.

The dismissed professor, Phillip D. Jacklin, 42, of San Jose State University, was accused of embracing, fondling and propositioning five of his female students. Married and the father of two, Jacklin was a popular and tenured associate professor of philosophy who had taught at the college for 16 years. Last May the complaining women, who have not been publicly identified or interviewed, sent a letter to college authorities charging Jacklin with "heavy physical contact" and "verbal sexual suggestions by telephone." That wording left many on campus wondering how bad it might have been. Said one official: "Although the charges were not criminal, the conduct was traumatic to the women involved." Replies Jacklin's attorney, Mark Lipton: "His career is ruined, yet there were no grades involved. There was no persistence involved. There were no minors involved. There were no physical attacks." Jacklin, on vacation and unreachable since the decision, admitted some sexual contact, but denied harassing students. "Sometimes they initiated it; sometimes I did," he said. "Student-faculty relationships are very prevalent on campus."

In Berkeley, a group of female sociology students at the University of California banded together as Women Organized Against Sexual Harassment (WOASH) and waged a yearlong campaign against Elbaki Hermassi, an assistant professor of sociology. He was charged with fondling and propositioning 13 students, offering a good grade in exchange for sex, and writing an unfavorable letter of recommendation for a student who refused his sexual advances. Charges were brought to Hermassi's department chairman. The professor was reprimanded orally, and according to the university the behavior stopped. But WOASH dismissed the reprimand as a "slap on the wrist" and demanded a university investigation. Amid heavy publicity, the university reached a decision that seemed designed to placate both the feminist lobby and its anxious faculty: Hermassi was suspended without pay for one quarter, which in effect was a fine of more than $5,000.

Hermassi was upset over the one-sided nature of the publicity. Though WOASH leaked his name to the press, none of his supposed victims has been identified. Said he: "I'm terrified." But WOASH does not believe Hermassi has suffered enough. "The suspension is a piddling result, an outrage," says Merle Weiner, 27, a sociology graduate student who is a leader of WOASH. The organization vows to re-open the fight if the professor returns to Berkeley and seeks tenure next fall.

That kind of zeal can send tremors through many a faculty. At Harvard a student recently filed charges against Government Professor Martin Kilson, alleging that he had tried to kiss her on the lips. Kilson denied the charge but admitted kissing her on the forehead as a spontaneous gesture of affection. He was formally reprimanded, the first known action in a sexual harassment case at the university. Said his accuser, Helen Sahadi York of Brooklyn: "I just saw him as patronizing and somewhat sexist--he calls every woman a gal--then it was very obvious when he kissed me." York insists the kiss was "psychologically damaging in itself," and registered her complaint "out of feminist consciousness and to test the system. I think it's very important that a sexist act receive public punishment."

But where will it all end? Among the hundred or so complaints received by a Government council monitoring sexual harassment on campus are several demands that professors be punished for "sexist" teasing and joking.

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