What's A Person To Do?

• A graduate student wants to join a particular professor's lab. During her laboratory rotation, the professor attempts to initiate a sexual encounter. The graduate student rebuffs his advances, but still wants to join the lab. At the end of the semester, she finds out that she has not been chosen to join the lab and another student who has apparently accepted the professor's sexual advances has been hired to work in the lab. The student approaches another faculty member for advice.
• A male employee works in a laboratory in which he is the only man. Conversation in the laboratory often turns to issues surrounding childbirth, day care, and complaints about male behavior. The male employee feels unwelcome and harassed and asks the faculty member who runs the lab to do something.
• A professor and his research associate attend a professional meeting out of town and have a one-night sexual encounter. Both are in long-term relationships and they agree that the affair will not continue when they return to campus. What should the professor do next?
• After years of being casual acquaintances, a senior female professor approaches an assistant professor and asks him to have an affair with her. The following year, the assistant professor's tenure case will be reviewed by the divisional committee on which the senior professor serves. The assistant professor rebuffs the advance, but is unsure what else to do.
• A dean, known for his violent temper directed toward both men and women, has requested that a female professor chair a college committee. She meets with him to explain why she must turn down his request and he becomes enraged, saying that her reasons are unacceptable and that there will be consequences for her action. As she is leaving his office, the dean pushes her through the doorway and slams the door.
• A TA meets a student from his class at a local bar and asks the student for a date. The student declines and she leaves the bar. The next day the TA calls the student at home and asks her out again; she declines again. The student is uncomfortable with the TA's advances and goes to one of the professors in charge of the course. After hearing the first sentence of the complaint, the professor says he does not want to know anything bad about his TAs and asks the student to leave. The student then approaches the other professor involved in the course and shares the event. The second professor listens respectfully, but says there is nothing to be done because the event occurred off campus and what TAs do on their own time is their business.
• A professor returns exams to students in his class and comments to each of the women in the class that he gave them lower grades than the men because he didn't believe that girls could do math. The women in the class, finding that their grades do not reflect their performance, ask the professor to change their grades and apologize for his statement.
• A student athlete is struggling to pass a course. He regularly visits his professor's office for extra help. The professor is very helpful and friendly and often talks about topics unrelated to the course, and then he asks the student to teach him how to lift weights. When the student refuses, the professor becomes angry and says he won't provide extra help to the student anymore. The student, afraid of failing the course, talks to the TA in the course. The TA approaches another professor in the department for advice.
• The radio in the weight room at a campus facility is set to a station of continuous talk about topics that include women's body types, bra sizes, sexual activity, and driving habits. Both men and women find the station degrading to women. Since the radio dial is inaccessible to users of the weight room, they have made three verbal requests to the facility's staff to change the station. The volume has increased, but the station has not changed.
• A professor who supervises a female employee comments to her that her greatest asset is her pretty smile. On another occasion he tells her that he keeps her around for her bright eyes. The employee feels demeaned and undervalued for the work she performs and approaches the professor with her concern.
• Every time a female graduate student wears a skirt to the lab where she works, a male postdoc announces the event by shouting, "Legs!" for the whole lab to hear. Whenever the student enters a crowded room for a meeting or seminar, the postdoc loudly offers her his lap if she can't find a seat. The graduate student is humiliated but afraid to do anything because she is depending on the postdoc to teach her techniques she needs for her research. She approaches her major professor for help.
• A departmental administrator works late hours every evening. After everyone else has left, a male staff member enters the office where she works, turns off the lights, closes the door, and stands near her desk in the dark and talks to her. The administrator, uncomfortable and afraid, goes to a faculty member she trusts to ask what to do.
• Two students who work part-time in an office on campus are having trouble getting along in the office. Their supervisor interviews each of them. Both report that they used to be great friends and often went out for beer together after work. The male student asserts that the tension resulted from his rejection of the female student's sexual advances. He claims that ever since he rejected her, she has said nasty personal things to him and about him to other members of the office staff, creating a hostile work environment. The female student says that the tension resulted from the male student's condescending attitude and disrespect for her work. She claims that the other student belittles her and denigrates everything she does in the office. What should the supervisor do next?