118 Shaw Hall
16 Everett St.
Harvard Law School
Cambridge, MA 02138
March 11, 1992

Letters to the Editor
The New York Times
229 West 43rd Street
New York, NY 10036

Dear Sir/Madam:

"Schools Are Newest Arena for Sex-Harassment Cases" (front page, March
11), raises the alarming possibility that America's schools, already
facing the daunting challenges of violence, drug use, and family
disintegration, will now be burdened with the responsibility for
enforcing politically correct interaction between the sexes.

     Given the difficulties school officials experience in maintaining
even rudimentary discipline, the proliferation of suits against them
by students alleging sexual harassment at the hands of peers will make
their already thankless job even more difficult.  A 1988 poll showed
only four percent of principals rated their jobs excellent, reflecting
job dissatisfaction that surely will rise with the imposition of
financial liability for teen-age high-jinks like sexual innuendos over
which they and their vastly outnumbered faculty have little control.

     The ambiguity of what constitutes sexual harassment poses a
threat to teen-age boys, whose already confusing journey towards
sexual maturity will now be burdened by draconian speech regulations
that pose an everpresent threat of disciplinary inquisition for
inadvertently offending a female classmate. Anti-harassment policies
already implemented, like the Amherst Regional High School policy
which bans "staring" and "leering," conjure up images of the Old
South, where black men were subject to savage reprisals for offending
white women.

Rather than imposing liability on administrators and penalties on
students for nebulously-defined "sexual harassment" which schools
often cannot control, American lawmakers should increase the
assistance available to students filing suits against abusive peers
under the extensive remedies already available under the common law.
Encouraging lawsuits and school disciplinary action against student
offenders for activities such as assault and battery, offensive
battery, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional
distress by extreme and outrageous means, would safeguard the security
of students of both genders, while preserving the free expression
threatened by vague sexual harassment policies.


Sincerely,

Hans Bader
Harvard Law School Class of 1994