2008 Woodie Awards
HARASSMENT: campus occurrences; preventive steps
Katherine Jones
Issue date: 4/6/06 Section: News
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The phone is ringing, like it has every 15 minutes for three hours.
She is afraid to answer it because she does not know if the caller will hang up, breathe into the phone or cut loose with a torrent of obscenities.
Her nerves are rattled, her roommate is angry and she does not know what to do.
Harassment is a problem at Central. Last year, 14 instances of harassment were investigated by Campus Public Safety. Many more may have gone unreported.
"I think college students are particularly vulnerable because many are relatively new to romantic relationships, and they're not sure where the boundaries are," said Tracy Ochester, of Central's Counseling and Psychological Services (CPS).
"The most common scenario is that a student comes to CPS because he or she is distressed about a relationship that isn't working, and they don't realize the things that are being done in an attempt to make the relationship work actually meet the legal criteria for harassment."
Ochester said the number of harassment incidents she has encountered seems to have remained the same in the four years she has been here.
Public Safety Director Bob Ahring reported two cases of harassment out of 1,106 reports to public safety in 2004 and 14 cases out of 1,075 reports in 2005.
"Not a large increase, but an increase, just the same," Ahring said.
He noted an increase in the new ways people are choosing to send harassing messages to others.
For example, using text messaging devices and sending emails are often the tools used.
Ahring said in one recent case, someone was sending inappropriate emails.
"The partner wouldn't recognize they were broken up," Ahring said.
He encourages students receiving threatening messages on voicemails to notify Public Safety.
"You have to make the threat person-to-person," Ahring said. "You cannot threaten an answering machine. However, we do like to have those recorded messages because they make excellent evidence."
She is afraid to answer it because she does not know if the caller will hang up, breathe into the phone or cut loose with a torrent of obscenities.
Her nerves are rattled, her roommate is angry and she does not know what to do.
Harassment is a problem at Central. Last year, 14 instances of harassment were investigated by Campus Public Safety. Many more may have gone unreported.
"I think college students are particularly vulnerable because many are relatively new to romantic relationships, and they're not sure where the boundaries are," said Tracy Ochester, of Central's Counseling and Psychological Services (CPS).
"The most common scenario is that a student comes to CPS because he or she is distressed about a relationship that isn't working, and they don't realize the things that are being done in an attempt to make the relationship work actually meet the legal criteria for harassment."
Ochester said the number of harassment incidents she has encountered seems to have remained the same in the four years she has been here.
Public Safety Director Bob Ahring reported two cases of harassment out of 1,106 reports to public safety in 2004 and 14 cases out of 1,075 reports in 2005.
"Not a large increase, but an increase, just the same," Ahring said.
He noted an increase in the new ways people are choosing to send harassing messages to others.
For example, using text messaging devices and sending emails are often the tools used.
Ahring said in one recent case, someone was sending inappropriate emails.
"The partner wouldn't recognize they were broken up," Ahring said.
He encourages students receiving threatening messages on voicemails to notify Public Safety.
"You have to make the threat person-to-person," Ahring said. "You cannot threaten an answering machine. However, we do like to have those recorded messages because they make excellent evidence."