Workshops to Combat Sexual Harassment: A Case Study of Changing Attitudes

Abstract

In 1980, the affirmative action office at the University of Michigan established a sexual harassment task force to begin developing a multifaceted attempt to combat sexual harassment on campus. "Tell Someone," as the resulting program came to be known, has as one of its components a training workshop for engaging in personal and institutional battle with sexual harassment.' At the center of the workshop is a set of twelve trigger tapes (thirty-second videotaped dramas), six focused on student settings and six focused on employment settings. The tapes are designed to demonstrate the variety, complexity and genuine uncertainty typically surrounding incidents of sexual harassment, and they examine several basic forms: (1) male harassing female; (2) female harassing male; (3) heterosexual harassing homosexual; and (4) homosexual harassing heterosexual.2 With the help of trained facilitators, work-