These middle-schoolers have seen sexual harassment and are learning how to stop it

When asked what sexual harassment means, adults have enough trouble. Try asking middle-school children.

"Please stand if you've ever heard a joke that puts down someone based on gender," shouted out Shaun Hayes to an 8th-grade classroom at Kansas City's Central Middle School.

The entire class, 20 boys and girls, sheepishly rose.

Most stood again when Hayes asked: Have you heard someone call another person gay? Have you seen anyone touched in ways disrespectful?

A few even stood to confess they've posted sexually explicit remarks on social media, and Hayes smacked his hands together to applaud their honesty.

"Eighth-graders!" he boomed. "If you stood for any of these statements, you have seen or heard or committed sexual harassment yourself."

Hayes works for a program called Green Dot, now a year-round feature that the Metropolitan Organization to Counter Sexual Assault is sponsoring at a handful of middle schools.

MOCSA believes that a culture of sexual harassment takes root in childhood, if not early childhood. So Green Dot curricula around the country have, over a decade, spread from being exclusive to one college — the University of Kentucky — to taking hold in high schools, to finding their way into earlier grades.

And given the #MeToo explosion, as Central 7th-grader Lexus Worley noted, why wouldn't we bring 13-year-olds into the conversation?

"I think they do know what sexual harassment is, because it's all over," Lexus said.

Green Dot teaches that all pupils can do their part in halting it. For example, by saying, "That's not cool" and walking away.

Or, if you're a bystander, by changing the topic: When a friend in the hall taunts a girl about her butt, switch the subject to music or sports. Or tell a teacher about unwanted touching you've observed.

Such are the tenets of what the program calls "bystander engagement," which stresses how witnesses to harassment can either foster the culture or help change it.

Don't laugh when a kid calls someone, or something, gay. Don't lash out, either, as it may escalate tensions and reinforce the harasser's power play.

Harassment is all about power, so ignoring the behavior is OK.

Yet for that awkward age, advice such as "don't laugh" can be difficult to grasp.

"If it's funny it's not harassment," one 8th-grader told Hayes.

From headlines to conversations

The awkward age may nonetheless be the best time to start talking about sexual harassment, said Haleigh Harrold, MOSCA coordinator of prevention.

"It's about at age 13 when people start making choices that are going define them as adults," she said. "Middle school is where you see the highest rates of bullying. And when we're talking bullying, we're also talking sexual harassment."

But how to begin the discussion?

Debbie Coe of Prairie Village felt speechless whenever her 7th-grade daughter watched the news these last few months. Beyond film mogul Harvey Weinstein's alleged attacks, beyond the many indiscretions of politicians, the girl took a particular interest in the criminal proceedings against Olympic gymnast doctor Larry Nassar.

"If I couldn't find the right words to talk to her, I figured other parents would have the same difficulty," Coe said. (Parents of 13-year-olds know: Practically all conversations are difficult.)

So Coe last month reached out to Becca Anderson, the Green Dot facilitator at Indian Hills Middle School, to host a "Moms and Daughters" discussion at the offices of Bash Real Estate, where Coe works. The event drew about 40 girls from several middle schools.

Young teens don't care to hear speeches from parents, Coe reasoned.

"They want to talk with each other. And they'll listen to a professional who's younger and cool ... like Becca." She's 28.

Tapping private donations, Indian Hills launched Green Dot in 2016. Since then, amid hundreds of notices sent out to explain the program, Anderson recalled only one parent who objected.

In Missouri schools, Green Dot instruction is funded by grants from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.

What Dot stands for

The "dot" in Green Dot sums up a bystander's choices when observing someone's unwanted advances — even a hug might make the receiver uncomfortable, pupils are told — or when hearing inappropriate comments of a sexual nature.

D: Do something yourself.

O: Others can help (although an anonymous note to school counselor, which MOCSA floats as an option, surely will be regarded by many students as snitching).

T: Talk about something else.

A bystander likely will choose a response that fits that person's comfort level. For a shy pupil or one new to the school, "if you don't laugh and just walk away, that can be a positive response," said MOCSA's Harrold.

Because Green Dot programs are rather new to the nation's middle schools, results are hard to measure. But a 2017 study of 13 Kentucky high schools participating for at least five years witnessed reductions in harassment, stalking and dating violence compared to 13 schools that didn't take part, according to results published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Funded by the Centers for Disease Control, the research found only slight changes in a high school's culture during the first two years of students' exposure to Green Dot curricula. Years three and four are when the instruction appeared to take "dramatic" hold, leading to a roughly 20 percent overall drop in reports of sexual violence and misconduct, the study said.

Key to the program's fate in middle school is bringing aboard student leaders — the kids who have influence among their peers. Green Dot corrals 10 percent to 15 percent of the student body into leadership training sessions that teach principles of conduct that allow those pupils to set examples for others.

At Central Middle, 8th-grade leader Allen Brenson sat down with his fellow basketball players to hear his case on how to respond to bullying and sexual harassment. And because he is the team's star point guard, "yes, they listened," he said.

"It's getting serious. These days you see it all over the news."

But given the forms of sexual aggression to which they're exposed on Netflix, Pinterest and popular music, Green Dot's goal is daunting, said Central Middle counselor Chris Moore.

"Some of our leaders of government are setting the worst examples," she said.

The brightest middle-schoolers recognize that.

Lexus, the 7th-grader, stammers like most everybody when asked what is and isn't sexual harassment. But she'll settle on this definition: "It just feels wrong."

This story was originally published March 8, 2018 at 4:44 PM with the headline "These middle-schoolers have seen sexual harassment and are learning how to stop it."