Overview | How widespread are sexual harassment and sexual violence among teenagers today, and what role is social media playing? In this lesson, students take an anonymous survey about their own experiences. They then examine several recent articles, from The New York Times and elsewhere, about sexual harassment and assault in the age of social media. Finally, they discuss the issues that arise and consider ways to take action.
Note to Teacher | This lesson raises sensitive issues around teenagers? sexual experiences and attitudes. We have provided a number of resources here that can be used for reading and discussion; as always, please choose the pieces and adapt the lesson as appropriate for your students. You may also wish to establish ground rules for respectful, mature discussion before proceeding.
Materials | Computers with Internet access, copies of our anonymous survey.
Warm-up | Before the lesson, have students anonymously respond in writing to a series of questions (PDF) that we have taken, in part, from a national survey. Collect student responses and, before the lesson begins, create a chart showing your students? responses to each question.
Share the chart with the class, then ask:
- How would you summarize the data displayed in the chart?
- Does the information displayed in this chart surprise you? Explain.
You might then compare your chart to this one, published below, showing the percentage of students in a 2011 national survey reporting various forms of sexual harassment. Since The Learning Network survey asks the same first six questions, what conclusions can students draw from the comparison?
Next, read aloud the comments of students who indicated on our survey that their writing could be shared with the class. Continue the discussion, focusing on additional issues raised in the students? writing.
If students are reluctant to share their own comments, you might read aloud and discuss some of the comments young people posted on a Student Opinion question The Learning Network posed in 2011, just after the national survey was released: ?Have You Experienced Sexual Harassment?? (For example, the comment ?At my school, most conversations seem to be about gossiping whether that guy is gay or not and whether that gorgeous girl dating the hottest guy deserves to be called ?whore? or not.?) Note: Our Student Opinion question is still open for comment. Please feel free to invite your students to post thoughts there. No last names are allowed, and Learning Network staff members read every comment before it is made public to make sure it fits our standards.
You might also share the Motherlode blog post ?Handling Sexual Harassment in Schools.?
Related | We begin with a New York Times article, below, but suggest two other pieces, one a radio report from WNYC?s ?Radio Rookies? program and the other an article from Newsweek, which take on related issues. Students might read and listen to all three, or you might choose one as the basis for the small group and fishbowl discussions that follow.
Before you read the articles, you might wish to define some terms. The National Institute for Justice?s page on rape and sexual violence defines and differentiates ?rape,? ?sexual assault? and ?sexual harassment.?
In the Times article ?Rape Case Unfolds on Web and Splits City,? Juliet Macur and Nate Schweber report on an investigation into two high school football players accused of raping an unconscious girl during a series of house parties:
Hours after sunset, the cars pulled up, one after another, bringing dozens of teenagers from several nearby high schools to an end-of-summer party in August in a neighborhood here just off the main drag.
For some of the teenagers, it would be one last big night out before they left this decaying steel town, bound for college.
For others, it was a way to cap off a summer of socializing before school started in less than two weeks. For the lucky ones on the Steubenville High School football team, it would be the start of another season of possible glory as stars in this football-crazy county.
Some in the crowd, which would grow to close to 50 people, arrived with beer. Those who did not were met by cases of it and a makeshift bar of vodka, rum and whiskey, all for the taking, no identification needed. In a matter of no time, many of the partygoers ? many of them were high school athletes ? were imbibing from red plastic cups inside the home of a volunteer football coach at Steubenville High at what would be the first of several parties that night.
?Huge party!!! Banger!!!!? Trent Mays, a sophomore quarterback on Steubenville?s team, posted on Twitter, referring to one of the bashes that evening.
By sunrise, though, some people in and around Steubenville had gotten word that the night of fun on Aug. 11 might have taken a grim turn, and that members of the Steubenville High football team might have been involved. Twitter posts, videos and photographs circulated by some who attended the nightlong set of parties suggested that an unconscious girl had been sexually assaulted over several hours while others watched. She even might have been urinated on.
Read the entire article with your class. You might invite them to underline and annotate as they read, then discuss using the questions below.
Questions | For discussion and reading comprehension:
- Who are Trent Mays and Ma?lik Richmond? Of what have they been accused? What evidence is there to support the case of either the prosecution or the defense?
- How was the story complicated by postings by an outside blogger?
- What is the role of the Steubenville Big Red football team in this town, according to the article? How does it complicate the case, according to some who are quoted here?
- What role did social media play in further muddying this case?
- The Steubenville police chief, William McCafferty, said in the article, ?If you could charge people for not being decent human beings, a lot of people could have been charged that night.? What did he mean?
- What lines or sections in this article stood out for you for any reason? Why?
Tell students that this article was published on Dec. 17, 2012, and that there has been more news around the case since. A group has hacked the football team?s Web site as well as publicized a YouTube video of a student joking about the assault. That student has now dropped out of college.
RELATED RESOURCES
From The Learning Network
From NYTimes.com
Around the Web
Activity | As a class, students might discuss the Steubenville case alone, or also now listen to ?A Teenage Girl?s Perspective on the Culture of Online Slut-Shaming,? a production by WNYC?s ?Radio Rookies? team that is embedded below, or read Newsweek?s ? ?Thanks for Ruining My Life,? ? an article in which ?a teen tweets against her attackers ? and upends the courts.?
Encourage students to underline and annotate as they read, or jot down their thoughts and impressions as they listen.
Then, explain to students that they will first meet as partners or in small groups to discuss what they have read and heard; then, during this class period or another one, they will participate as a whole class in a ?fishbowl? discussion.
Here is the ?Radio Rookies? piece:
In their pairings or small groups, have students discuss the piece or pieces they have read or heard, using some or all of the following open-ended questions that could apply to any of the three:
- What stood out for you most in what you read or heard? Why?
- What parts of what you just read or heard echo something in the class discussion earlier, or in the survey you took? How?
- What do these pieces say about gender roles and how they are changing, or not changing, in the 21st century? How much of a double standard is there around sexuality in your community or school right now?
- Have you ever seen the ?slut shaming? or ?smut lists? referred to in the ?Radio Rookies? piece? Do you, too, see girls ?exposed? on your Facebook news feed ?almost every day?? If so, what is your reaction to this?
- Do you think it is acceptable to document or share sexual images and video of others on social media? Why or why not?
- What are the differences between sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape?
- Do you agree with a line from the Newsweek article that ?technologies make it possible for youthful stupidity to become known far beyond the community where, perhaps less than a generation ago, it might have remained?? What examples of that can you think of from your own experience?
- If you were a parent, what guidelines would you give your children about the use of social media around sexuality and bullying?
- What are the legal questions or implications of the behaviors raised in the pieces you read or heard?
- What do you think the consequences should be for perpetrators of sexual harassment? Should the consequences be the same whether the harassment takes place in person or online?
- What can individual students do to bring about change? How can teachers, coaches and parents help? What can we do as a school?
- What stood out to you most from this discussion? Was anything said that you hadn?t thought about before? If so, what?
After students have had a chance to mull these questions as partners or in small groups, you might convene a fishbowl discussion around the same or similar questions, or simply ask students to start the discussion themselves by repeating for the class one interesting thing they discussed in the smaller groups. Here, for reference, is how a fishbowl format works:
Ask students to number off 1 to 5, and keep a list on the board of all 1?s, 2?s, 3?s, 4?s and 5?s. Ask all 1?s to sit facing one another in the middle of a circle created by the rest of the students. The students in the center are the only ones allowed to speak. If a student from the outer circle wants to add to the discussion, he or she moves to the middle of the circle, taps a participant to indicate that he or she should resume a place in the outer circle, and takes that student?s place as the new person in the discussion. After discussing answers to the first question, switch the students in the center to all 2?s and allow the same fishbowl procedure to occur. Be sure to switch questions enough times so that all students have the opportunity to be in the center of the discussion at least once.
As students leave class after this lesson or lessons, you might ask them to write a short anonymous reflection of the day?s events and issues and leave it with you as they exit. You might then consider reading aloud or handing out a sheet with some of what was written in a future class to continue the discussion.
Going further | Here are some ways students might take action. As always, please post a comment if you have ideas.
? Does your school have a policy against sexual harassment, as required under federal Title IX? Have students read and react to it. To what extent is your school following its own guidelines?
? Invite students to write personal essays or editorials for their school or community newspaper on some aspect of this topic, or, with the ?Radio Rookies? piece as a model, their own podcast devoted to the topic.
? Educate others: RAINN, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, might be a good place to start, as it offers information, help and ways to get involved. What facts and advice might it be important for teenagers to know? How can you present the information so it will be heard and understood best and reach its desired audience?
? Have students concentrate on efforts their school might take to combat attitudes that lead to sexual harassment. For example, they might design and lead peer-education groups on the topic, create clubs around related issues or petition school administrators to invite experts to talk to the school community.
? Students may be aware of a rape case in India that has been in the news over the last several weeks. Have them read about it in order to understand the similarities and differences compared to the sexual harassment or violence in their own communities. What can be done to prevent sexual violence like this ? in India or closer to home?
Here are some recent news and opinion pieces on the incident from The Times:
?Indians Outraged Over Rape on Moving Bus in New Delhi?
?Clashes Break Out in India at a Protest Over a Rape Case?
?Indian Women March: ?That Girl Could Have Been Any One of Us? ?
?Op-Ed | The Unspeakable Truth About Rape in India?
Standards | This lesson is correlated to Common Core State Standards:
Reading
1. Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.
8. Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of the reasoning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence.
9. Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take.
10. Read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts independently and proficiently.
Writing
1. Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.
4. Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization and style are appropriate to task, purpose and audience.
5. Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting or trying a new approach.
Speaking and Listening
1. Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others? ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
2. Integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively and orally.
4. Present information, findings and supporting evidence such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning and the organization, development and style are appropriate to task, purpose and audience.
Language
1. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.
This lesson is also aligned to the McREL Standards
Health
1. Knows the availability and effective use of health services, products and information.
4. Knows how to maintain mental and emotional health.
7. Knows how to maintain and promote personal health.
9. Understands aspects of substance use and abuse.
Life Skills
2. Performs self-appraisal.
3.Considers risks.
5. Maintains a healthy self-concept.
6. Restrains impulsivity.
Behavioral Studies
1. Understands that group and cultural influences contribute to human development, identity and behavior.
2. Understands various meanings of social group, general implications of group membership and different ways that groups function.
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