(From the January, 1991 issue of the Athena Insider) Letter on Harrassment A graduate student recently came into my office and showed me a picture that had been run off on a Project Athena printer located in one of the Athena clusters in the main building of the Institute. She had gone to the cluster to work about 11:30 p.m. and found the picture sitting next to the printer. The picture was of a headless female torso lifting up a tank top to reveal its chest. The student was totally unprepared to see this image and, in part because of the lateness of the hour and because of the possibility that someone in the cluster had meant it for her, she felt threatened and unable to work. There are two aspects of this incident which I would like to comment on. The first concerns the image itself. There is, indeed, something sinister about the disembodied character of the picture. Having neither a head nor lower body, it displays a part of a female body torso in much the same way that chicken parts are displayed in a supermarket. So many legs, breasts, wings. The image is dehumanizing and threatening precisely because it associates a sexually charged image with dismemberment and conveys a message that sex and violence go hand in hand. To come upon this symbol in an Athena cluster late at night is certainly threatening. And this brings me to my second point. Using Project Athena to produce the image I have just described and to leave it where it can be seen by a fellow member of the community is an aggressive act. It is tantamount to turning an educational resource into a weapon that is used against a fellow member of our community. The question that this incident raises in my mind is why does it happen at all. My belief is that it happens because the norms of our community have not yet equated the leaving of an image such as I have described above in a public place for anyone to view with other acts of violence such as striking someone with one's fist. I believe the equation is justified and neither act of violence should be countenanced. Samuel Jay Keyser, Associate Provost for Educational Policy and Programs November 11, 1990