Pizza Seminar from February 9, 2001
Presenter: April Bradley
Although I would least expect a lecture on the definition of sexual
harassment as a chemical engineering seminar,
the fact that April Bradley gave us a presentation on it is unavoidable.
From this meeting, I learned a lot of statistic
I would never have guessed were true in my wildest dreams. Without
using exact numbers, I will simply say that a
much larger percentage that I had previously expected of males have
been sexually assaulted. The fact and fiction
slides cleared up a few false impressions I had about sexual assault.
Here are a few of them: a large majority of
rapes are committed by someone close, as opposed to the stranger on
the street; a very small number of sex
offenders are homosexuals; it is sexual intimidation if someone says
"no" once ,and eventually says "yes"; women
generally don’t generally consider it to be a turn on when they are
roughed up; most women prefer to be asked
before they are kissed. This last bit of information made me wonder
what a situation would be like where a guy
literally asked the girl if he could kiss her.
I asked, "Wouldn’t that sound something like, ‘Soo… do want to make
out now?’" Bradley tried to elaborate on
how t would not be completely out of the ordinary, while a number of
people made very creative comments on this
situation.
From this seminar, I got to think a little bit about the sexually harassing
monster hidden inside all of us, but I soon
went on with my day continuing not to harass people. I was, however,
a little more conscious of it, as I normally
don’t’ thin about my interactions with others as having anything to
do with sexual harassment. This seminar made
me more aware of how to prevent sexual assault, it improved false impression
I had of it, and it gave me
information to get myself or somebody else counseling in case they
need it. So, this seminar definitely was a good
learning experience.
Contributed by Brehnen Wong
Class of 2004