It seems fitting that a book dedicated to sexual harassment should be published at a time when there is a national call to make schools safer places for all students. In Classrooms and Courtrooms, Nan Stein provides a working definition of sexual harassment, an introductory assessment of its prevalence in schools, and an overview of the legal issues schools face concerning sexual harassment. Classrooms and Courtrooms reveals the confusion that exists regarding what sexual harassment is and what to do about it in the nation’s schools. The details and explanations of sexual harassment from research and legal perspectives create the foundation for an informative book, while the inclusion of student voices sharing their experiences with and understanding of sexual harassment makes the book compelling.

Stein discusses a variety of surveys that have focused on sexual harassment — specifically, three national surveys, six state-level surveys, and others focused on individual schools, conducted since 1993. She names three themes that have emerged: 1) sexual harassment is often public, 2) the targets often respond by either standing up to the harasser or telling someone, and 3) school officials often trivialize the importance of sexual harassment complaints. Stein calls for additional research to address the limitations of existing surveys. She identifies a lack of longitudinal studies following cohorts of students, studies that explore the experiences of students of color in schools, evaluations of interventions to reduce sexual harassment, research that examines the experiences of students with disabilities, and studies that investigate the relationship between harasser and target. While Stein acknowledges the limitations of current surveys, she concludes that sufficient evidence indicates that sexual harassment is a problem in schools. For example, in a 1993 American Association of University Women survey, 83 percent of the girls and 60 percent of the boys surveyed reported having received unwanted sexual attention in school.

This book provides an introduction to the complexity of court decisions on issues pertaining to sexual harassment. One avenue for people who have experienced sexual harassment in schools is filing a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights. Title IX is the federal law applied to instances of sexual harassment (though not specifically written to deal with this issue), and individual states have their own distinctive laws. Stein observes that court rulings have differed by circuit — with decisions from some circuit courts (i.e., the Fifth and Eleventh Circuits) typically in favor of the school district, while decisions in other courts (i.e., the Third, Seventh, and Ninth Circuits) have favored students’ claims. Disagreement between decisions, Stein proposes, has resulted partly because sexual harassment is still being defined and is not yet clearly understood.

Using research from Scandinavia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States, Stein also explores the relationship between bullying in earlier grades and sexual harassment in later grades. She emphasizes that the target and harasser can be of the same gender and that both girls and boys can be targets of sexual harassment. In addition, she discusses inappropriate applications of sexual harassment terminology to behavior that is not actually sexual harassment, including a discussion of sex discrimination versus sexual harassment. In this book, Stein defines sex discrimination as discrimination on the basis of sex, while sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination that results in a hostile environment for the target individual(s). She also delves into how concerns about sexual harassment affect students’ First Amendment rights. The examples in this book prompt the reader to question how familiar school personnel are with the signs and existence of sexual harassment in schools and how prepared they are to deal with its occurrence. For instance, Stein provides examples of school officials ignoring the sexual harassment of boys, or expecting targets to deal with their harassers directly instead of having the school deal with them.

In the 1999 ruling on Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court established that schools are accountable for student-to-student sexual harassment if they are aware of the harassment and do not intervene. The cases that arise in schools often are not clear-cut, and educators must arm themselves with information in order to deal with occurrences of sexual harassment. Classrooms and Courtrooms is a comprehensive introduction for administrators, teachers, and school board members who must familiarize themselves with this issue. As Stein states, "We need to move discussions of sexual harassment from the margins to the mainstream — into the classroom" (p. 112).

A.M.