Discrimination: Any disparate treatment of an individual based on actual or perceived membership in a class protected by law or policy (hereafter, “protected status”) which has an adverse impact sufficient to alter the terms and conditions of an individual’s academic, employment, or other University status or opportunity.
Harassment (Hostile Environment): Unwelcome verbal, nonverbal, or physical conduct based on an actual or perceived membership in a class protected by law or policy when is:
- Sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter an individual’s working or academic conditions;
- Creates a hostile or abusive working, living or academic environment; or
- Is sufficiently severe or pervasive to limit an individual’s ability to participate in or benefit from an educational program or activity.
Factors that may be considered include the frequency and severity of the unwelcome conduct; whether it is physically threatening or humiliating; and whether it unreasonably interferes with an individual’s work or academic performance.
Retaliation: Intimidating, threatening, coercing, or discriminating against any individual for the purpose of interfering with any right or privilege secured by any state or federal anti-discrimination law or because the individual has made a report or complaint, testified, assisted, or participated or refused to participate in any manner in an investigation, proceeding or hearing under this Policy.
Other Sexual Misconduct includes:
- Dating Violence: Violence committed by a person who is or has been in a social relationship of a romantic or intimate nature with the victim.
- The existence of such a relationship shall be determined based on the reporting party’s statement and with consideration of the length of the relationship, the type of relationship, and the frequency of interaction between the persons involved in the relationship.
- For the purposes of this definition, dating violence includes, but is not limited to, sexual or physical abuse or the threat of such abuse.
- Dating violence does not include acts covered under the definition of domestic violence.
- Domestic Violence: A felony or misdemeanor crime of violence committed by:
- A current or former spouse or intimate partner of the victim;
- A person with whom the victim shares a child in common;
- A person who is cohabitating with, or has cohabitated with, the victim as a spouse or intimate partner;
- A person similarly situated to a spouse of the victim under the domestic or family violence laws of the jurisdiction in which the crime of violence occurred;
- Any other person against an adult or youth victim who is protected from that person’s acts under the domestic or family violence laws of the jurisdiction in which the crime of violence occurred .
- Stalking: Includes engaging in a course of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to:
- Fear for the person’s safety or the safety of others; or
- Suffer substantial emotional distress
For the purposes of this definition:
- Course of Conduct: Two or more acts, including, but not limited to, acts in which the stalker directly, indirectly, or through third parties, by any action, method, device, or means, follows, monitors, observes, threatens, or communicates to or about a person, or interferes with a person’s property.
- Reasonable Person: A reasonable person under similar circumstances and with similar identities to the victim.
- Substantial Emotional Distress: Significant mental suffering or anguish that may, but does not necessarily, require medical or other professional treatment or counseling.
Gender-based harassment, including unwelcome conduct of a nonsexual nature based on a student’s actual or perceived sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, and nonconformity with gender stereotypes.*
Sexual Assault means physical sexual acts committed when consent is not received or when a person is physically or mentally unable to give consent as defined by this Policy, including:
- Non-consensual Sexual Contact, including any intentional sexual touching, however slight, with any object or body part, performed by a person upon another person. Sexual Contact includes (a) intentional touching of the breasts, buttocks, groin, or genitals, whether clothed or unclothed, or intentionally touching another with any of these body parts; and (b) making another touch you or themselves with or on any of these body parts.
- Non-consensual Sexual Intercourse, including any penetration, however slight, with any object or body part, performed by a person upon another person. Sexual Intercourse includes (a) vaginal penetration by a penis, object, tongue, or finger; (b) anal penetration by a penis, object, tongue, or finger; and (c) any contact, no matter how slight, between the mouth of one person and the genitalia of another person.
Sexual Exploitation occurs when an individual takes non-consensual, unjust, or abusive sexual advantage of another; for their own advantage or benefit; or to benefit or advantage anyone other than the one being exploited, and that behavior does not otherwise constitute sexual assault or sexual harassment. Sexual exploitation includes, but is not limited to:
- Streaming images, photography, video, or audio recordings of sexual contact or nudity, or distributing these things, without the knowledge and consent of everyone involved;
- Voyeurism, the practice of observing others engaged in intimate of sexual acts without the persons’ consent;
- Knowingly exposing a person to a sexually transmitted infection or disease;
- Sexual intimidation, which means threatening behavior of a sexual nature directed at another person, such as threatening to sexually assault another person;
- Invasion of sexual privacy, including exposing one’s sexual body parts or exposing another’s sexual body parts; and/or
- Child pornography as defined in federal, state, or local law.
Sexual Harassment means unwelcome verbal, nonverbal, or physical conduct of a sexual nature when:
Quid Pro Quo
- Submission to such conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individual’s employment or academic advancement;
- Submission to or rejection of such conduct by an individual is used as the basis for employment or academic decisions affecting such individual.
Hostile Environment such conduct is:
- Sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter an individual’s working or academic conditions;
- Creates a hostile or abusive working, living or academic environment; or
- Is sufficiently severe or pervasive to limit an individual’s ability to participate in or benefit from an educational program or activity.
Factors that may be considered include the frequency of the unwelcome conduct; its severity; whether it is physically threatening or humiliating; and whether it unreasonably interferes with an individual’s work or academic performance.
Examples of conduct that may constitute sexual harassment as defined above may include a severe, persistent, or pervasive pattern of unwelcome conduct that includes one or more of the following:
- Physical Conduct:
- Unwelcome touching, sexual/physical assault, impeding, restraining, or blocking movements
- Unwanted sexual advances within the employment context
- Verbal Conduct:
- Verbal abuse of a sexual nature, graphic verbal commentaries about an individual’s body, sexually degrading words used to describe an individual
- Objectively offensive comments of a sexual nature, including persistent or pervasive sexually explicit statements, questions, jokes, or anecdotes
- Visual Conduct: Severe, persistent, or pervasive visual displays of suggestive, erotic, or degrading sexually oriented images that are not pedagogically appropriate.
- Written Conduct: Letters, notes, or electronic communications containing comments, words, or images described above
- Quid Pro Quo Conduct:
- Direct propositions of a sexual nature between those for whom a power imbalance or supervisory or other authority relationship exists
- Offering employment benefits in exchange for sexual favors
- Making submission to sexual advances an actual or implied condition of employment, work status, promotion, grades, or letters of recommendation, including subtle pressure for sexual activity, an element of which may be repeated requests for private meetings with no academic or work purpose
- Making or threatening reprisals after a negative response to sexual advances.