On March 3rd, our group had the opportunity to meet with Glen Kendall, an attorney practicing in the area of employment law. Employment law is a broad category of law encompassing all areas of employee/employer relations. Within that is laws around sexual harassment in the workplace. This interview granted us another perspective on harassment in the workplace.

One thing mentioned by Mr. Kendall is the power imbalance that comes with the harassment. It is often an older, more senior member of the company harassing a more junior one. This gives the harasser power over their victim because they are afraid to report it out of fear it will damage their career. There were two main types of harassment Mr. Kendall described: “quid-pro-quo,” and “hostile work environment.” In the first, the harasser offers an opportunity for career gain in exchange for sexual favors. In the second it is done without wanting any specific thing in return other than making the victim uncomfortable.

Read more

My group mates and I met with Glen Kendall on Thursday, March 3rd. He kindly gave us yet another perspective of a lawyer who has had to deal with sexual harassment and assault in a workplace environment. He helped us gain even more information on our topic, information that can only be learned from firsthand experience.

Mr. Kendall discussed many topics that related to sexual harassment, such as the power imbalance that often comes into play. The most common instance of harassment or assault in the workplace is an older, more senior employee harassing a younger, more junior employee. This puts the victim in a difficult position, causing them to stay silent about their experience due to fear of being demoted or even fired. Another thing we discussed is the two main types of sexual harassment. The first one is blatant harassment: unwanted touching or comments, unsolicited photos and videos such as non-consensual pornography, etc. The second type is what he referred to as a “quid-pro-quo.” This is when the offender asks for a sexual and/or romantic relation with the victim in exchange for some sort of promotion or raise. This information was extremely helpful to us and we will be sure to use it in the future.

Read more

On Friday, the 18th of February, my social justice team and I accompanied two other groups to the Paley Center for Media, where we met Rebecca Fisk, who talked with us about healthy versus unhealthy portrayal of women in things such as television shows and music videos. We held a discussion as well as watched multiple examples of females in media and how it affected the minds of others.

Some examples of unhealthy portrayals of women shown to us were Britney Spears’ “Baby One More Time,” a music video where she and her background dancers wear overly-sexualized schoolgirl uniforms. Another music video was Miley Cyrus’ “We Can’t Stop,” where the women are objectified by the camera angles, the costumes, etc.

When it comes to television shows and movies, there were quite a sufficient amount of examples. The 1970 version of Wonder Woman played by Lynda Carter wore a sexualizing and impractical uniform as well as displaying a weak and feeble style of fighting. Another example was from the first season of Riverdale, where the character Veronica Lodge (Camila Mendes) is shown actively trying to objectify herself in an attempt to satisfy the male gaze.

However there were healthy representations of women as well. An example of this is the portrayal of Buffy in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She is seen saving countless boys from vampires, turning the classic trope of “damsel in destress” on its head.

These representations of women were pretty much all catered towards entertaining male audiences and much less towards representing female ones. Modern media has done a much better job in accurately displaying female characters than in the past and I hope that we as a society will continue to make progress.

Read more

On February 21, our group had the honor to meet with the legendary Gloria Allred. She is an attorney known for taking high profile cases related to women’s rights or sexual harassment. One of her most famous cases is the Bill Cosby case, where she represented several of the women who alleged sexual assault against the comedian. Before meeting with Ms. Allred we watched a documentary about her on Netflix called “Seeing Allred.”

We discussed with her a lot of common patterns in “rape culture” and how she chooses her clients. She talked about how letting harassment go on in the workplace is such an unfair disadvantage because those in that position are often not able to do anything about it.

We were so lucky to have such an amazing opportunity to meet with Ms. Allred and we have learned so much from her.

Read more

On Monday, February 21, my group mates and had the honor of meeting with Feminist and Attorney Gloria Allred, who has a long history of combatting the ever-lasting issue of sexual assault. She is known for her work involving the Bill Cosby case and defending some of the many women who spoke up against him. She has received much praise and criticism for her accomplishments over the years, but despite the continuous misogynistic and close-minded people and ideals that have tried to hold her back since the beginning of her career, she continues to march on the frontlines of advocating for equal rights, not just for women, but for everyone.

We learned about the perspective of a lawyer who specializes in this area and about the patterns that they notice when dealing with the accused. A lot of the time, a response to sexual assault victims speaking up against their assaulter is “she was asking for it.” This is because of a sense of entitlement to the woman’s body. This toxically masculine mindset is taught to boys at a young age and is the reason why misogyny and the patriarchy are still very much prevalent today. Ms. Allred’s work is dedicated to both helping women who have been victims of this mindset and to correcting and eradicating it all together. She is a truly inspirational individual and we are all glad that we got the chance to speak with her.

Read more

On Monday, February 21st, our group had the honor of interviewing Gloria Allred. Gloria Allred is an attorney known for the large part for taking notable and a lot of the time controversial cases. Gloria currently lives in California, so we had to Zoom with her. Before our interview, we watched a documentary made about Gloria, called Seeing Allred. It gave us a lot of interesting information about Gloria Allred, and about our topic in general. Although it was really interesting and informative, I do kind of regret watching it because during the interview it felt like we were just hearing what we already knew from the documentary. Despite this, I still really enjoyed and appreciated the interview.

In our interview, Gloria told us about her experience representing a majority of the women in the Bill Cosby case. Basically, this case is about a former television star who was convicted of sexual assault. Cosby was accused of rape, drug facilitated sexual assault, child sexual assault, and a few other charges by approximately 60 women. Gloria Allred represented 33 of the 60 alleged victims. Overall, interviewing Gloria Allred was an absolutely incredible opportunity. I am so thankful we got to do it because she is such an amazing woman who I now kind of look up to. In addition to her stylish pantsuit, she was such a cool person to talk to and I am so grateful!

Read more

On February 18th, my group and several others had the opportunity to meet with Rebecca at the Paley Center for Media for a workshop on women’s perception in the media. We were brought to a theater and discussed various issues around body image. We discussed many questions including, “What in your life impacts your body image?” After the discussion, we watched several clips relating to women in media.

The videos ranged from music videos, to commercials, to tv show segments. There were some clips we were all very familiar with like the music video for Britney Spears’ “Baby One More Time,” where Spears wears a sexualized schoolgirl outfit. There were also some unfamiliar ones like a segment from the 1965 sitcom, “Gidget.” In this scene Gidget (Sally Field) is objectified and manipulated by a group of boys on the beach.

We also compared two different female superheros from different times and their fighting styles. The first one was the 1970’s Wonder Woman played by Lynda Carter. She has an extremely sexualized and impractical uniform. When she fights, she pushes people and throws weak and deflectable blows. Even though she was the superhero, she was still just an aid used by the men that did most of the work. The second was Buffy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997). She turns gender norms on their head by saving a boy who says she can’t save him because she’s, “just a girl.” She has powerful attacks and gets hit back, something that never happened to Wonder Woman.

This workshop really showed how the portrayal of women in the media has an impact on people’s daily lives. It was a really fun opportunity to have a very important discussion that we don’t often have.

Read more

My group and I presented our slideshow on the topic of sexual harassment and assault (on the street and in the workplace) to the entire grade. We shared much of the research and statistics which we cultivated in an engaging manner and did a good job of getting our point across.

In the presentation, we shared many statistics on sexual harassment and assault. Here are just a few of them: “Out of every 1,000 sexual assaults, only 310 are reported to the police,” “only 25 out of 1,000 rapist end up in jail,” and “A majority of child sexual assault victims are between the ages of 12 and 17.”

Read more

My group and I had the wonderful opportunity to interview Kevin Samuelson who is the CEO of Infor and his Executive Assistant Laurie Forbes. We interviewed them on this topic because Infor recently had a sexual harassment case inside of their office. Kevin Samuelson and Laurie Forbes were very helpful because they helped us get not only a better understanding of sexual harassment in the workplace but why it happens.

During our interview we found out that in most cases of sexual harassment in the workplace it is a higher/more superior member harassing a new or a lower member. While we couldn’t ask very many questions about the case that took place at their office, we asked what we could. For me personally, I learned so much more and it was so much fun going into an office were we got to interview people about our topic. It was super interesting to get two people in the workplace’s opinions as well as new information. I am forever grateful to Kevin Samuelson and Laurie Forbes for allowing my group and I to interview them on this subject.

Read more

Me and my group decided to interview Kevin Samuelson and Laurie Forbes. Kevin is the Ceo of a company that had experienced an incident with work harrassmant. We wanted to see how this was handled, and just some details about how this happens, and how the power dynamic is a huge part of it.

Read more

On February 2nd, 2022, we had the honor of interviewing Kevin Samuelson, the CEO of Infor, and Laurie Forbes, his EA (executive assistant) about the topic of sexual harassment in the workplace. We attended an in-person meeting at the head quarters of Infor, where we were sat down in a conference room and recorded the entire interview. During the discussion, we reviewed the company’s zero tolerance policy on sexual harassment and what occurred when a case was reported. We discussed the power dynamic, how the offender was almost always a more senior employee, while the victim was a more junior one.

We are all very grateful towards both Mr. Samuelson and Mrs. Forbes for allowing us to come into their workplace and discuss this topic. It was truly an amazing experience to get yet another perspective on sexual harassment as a whole and to brainstorm even more ways to combat it. It was very important that we talked to someone who has had experience with sexual harassment, both as a bystander and as the person who administered the punishment to the offender. Everything that they explained to us about previous cases of sexual assault left me in shock. The fact that this is an issue in our society today and that countless people have to grapple with it on a daily basis is not okay. Something mush

Read more

On Wednesday, February 2nd, our group met with Allie’s father, Kevin Samuelson. As the CEO of Infor, he is aware of any sexual assault that happens in his company. He is very committed to making Infor a safe and productive environment.

Kevin mentioned that sexual assault is all about power, an older and more senior member of the company abusing a younger, more inexperienced one. He also mentioned that this dynamic is only increased when it comes to an older man abusing a younger woman. Although we cannot mention the details of the stories he shared, there have been several cases that he told us about. It seems to happen with one harasser multiple times and then it is (hopefully) found.

This interview was very helpful and gave us a lot of information on sexual harassment in the workplace.

Read more

On Thursday, I presented with my social justice group about our topic. We had read a few articles on the issue of sexual harassment and assault. I was excited to share because I was proud of our research. My group did a good job on presenting and showing the severity of the facts we had found.

In the presentation, I shared the following personal reaction, “It’s important to me as someone who has been harassed on the street. I am also in multiple targeted demographics. This is a global issue. These alarming statistics aren’t as alarming when I think about all the stories I’ve heard and all I’ve seen in 14 years living in New York City.”

Read more

Last week in school my group presented their social justice project presentation 101. This was our first attempt at sharing initial research with our peers. I wasn’t very nervous at all because I did my reading and had worked on the slides. This was my personal reaction in our slideshow, “The statistics that were shown don’t shock or surprise me because I have been catcalled numerous times, was groped in front of my mom, and etc. I have never been more excited to work on project and my group is amazing.”

Read more