Linn (1996) has noted that for both adults and young people sexuality is often one of the areas in life where we are extremely vulnerable; this because of sexuality's associations with out most intense personal feelings. Linn further states that emotions involving sexuality:
...are still more strongly felt by young people who are less familiar and less sure of their sexually-related emotions. And these negative feelings about unwanted sexuality can be almost unbearable when young people are the target of frequent or particularly offensive sexual behavior...(p. 3)
This notion of unwanted or unwelcomed sexuality is at the heart of most legal notions of sexual harassment (Brandenburg, 1997). Indeed, in the school environment, sexual harassment is most commonly conceptualized in terms of undesired sexual attention which would be considered offensive by any reasonable person and which negatively affects the work or the school environment (Brandenburg, 1997).
A more specific characterization of the term as applied to the educational setting is provided by Brown and Frels (1993) who state that based on Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 and associated court cases, sexual harassment in academia can be said to occur when there is: (1) gender-based denial of the benefits of an educational program; (2) gender-based exclusion from an educational program; (3) a situation in which a student's grade or academic progress is made contingent upon submission to sexual activity; (4) a situation in which a student is refused help after making a claim of sexual harassment against an instructor; and/or (5) there is evidence of a sexually hostile environment.
What needs to be noted here is that sexual harassment is pervasive in American schools. Indeed, in a national study conducted by the American Association of University Women (1993), it was revealed that 81 percent of students in grades 8 to 11 experienced occasional to f...