Discussing Sexual Misconduct Education at Stuyvesant

Note: This article discusses non-graphic themes of sexual misconduct.

Freshman biology classes, both AP and Modern Honors, occasionally swap weekly lab periods or frees for guidance push-ins. During these presentations, either a guidance counselor, Big Sib, or both discuss important topics such as time management skills. Sometimes, however, these presentations cover sensitive topics, such as sexual misconduct. 

The spring semester “Boundaries and Consent” push-in was first suggested by students before the coronavirus pandemic. “It was a bunch of students that were noticing these issues in the school, and they wanted to do something about it, so they reached out [to guidance] on their own, and then created these slides and took data themselves. We've incorporated that into the guidance push-ins since then,” senior and Student Union (SU) Chief of Staff Fin Ying said. 

The guidance department took the student initiative seriously. “We started recognizing that there were other topics that needed to be addressed,” Assistant Principal of Counseling Casey Pedrick said. “The students felt it was important for us to have presentations on sexual misconduct, [for] students who may experience it to know who to go to, how to react, how to handle it, as well as putting out warning to any students who may conduct sexual misconduct. It was born out of student feedback.” Thus the initiative began, and the SU continues to collaborate with the guidance department to update it each year. 

Still, there are many changes that students wish to see. For Girl Up President and senior Honora Muratori, whose club is dedicated to gender equality in Stuyvesant and beyond, a major grievance with the current sexual misconduct presentations is that they often aren’t interesting for students. “The reality is that a slideshow presentation isn’t super effective and my first thought was ‘how do we make the people who are not going to take this seriously care?’” Muratori stated.

Sophomore Rona Wassercug echoed this sentiment. “People were not very attentive, [and] people were doing homework or on their phones,” she commented. Though guidance counselors typically walk around the room to ensure engagement, they often can’t eliminate lackluster participation.

This disinterest typically stems from the delivery of the presentation, rather than its content. “There’s nothing wrong with the actual topic, it was just the participation,” sophomore Zedol Chughar explained. “The students weren’t engaged and that made it feel like no one really cared, but I know that [they] probably cared, they just didn’t in that moment.”

After all, some students feel compelled to complete work or have side conversations to make up for their “lost” free period. “I would just hear people say, ‘I have a guidance push-in today, it’s taking my free [period] away,’” sophomore Ia Sofocleous described.

In some cases, however, students—especially male students—make insensitive comments during the presentation. “The boys are the ones who make the sexual assault jokes more than women; they always say, ‘I’m going to touch you,’” sophomore Wenni Lu said. 

These jokes make the classroom environment feel unsafe for many, including often-overlooked male victims of sexual misconduct. “The number [of male victims] is so much higher than people claim. I think the lack of awareness makes it harder for boys to come forward, and [...] girls, I think, have more of a community that would encourage them to come forward,” Sarah Kornhauser, a guidance counselor who oversees the creation of the push-ins, said.

These immature reactions have detrimental effects. “It does create a burden on male victims, because of the stereotype of how men are ‘supposed’ to be brave and strong and not show their weaknesses. There’s a lot of mixed responses from the male side, and so I guess that’s why male victims don’t feel recognized and fear judgment,” Lu added. Victims of all genders deserve to feel safe to seek support.

Both guidance counselors and student presenters acknowledge that students don’t want to participate aloud, whether it be out of discomfort or disinterest. “The students ask few questions. They just are passively participating, not actively participating,” Kornhauser said. 

To combat this issue, student presenters often ask students to turn-and-talk with a partner instead of sharing with the class. “We do try to be more respectful about just whether or not they’re comfortable talking about these things, so they can do partner or small group discussions, so that they're still kind of [talking about] these ideas,” Ying said. Ying believes that because the presenters are students, freshmen are encouraged to participate, ask questions, and reach out for support. “The fact that we have the students doing the presentations already makes it a little bit easier for the younger students to approach us. And then from there, all the student leaders make sure that we don’t cross any boundaries,” they said.

Though student presenters are often more approachable, hearing the experiences of real survivors would likely be more powerful for students and encourage empathy. “[Muratori] has been reaching out to actual survivors and victims who can speak about [sexual abuse] and who are willing to speak about it,” senior and Girl Up Vice President Carson Lava said. “It starts with having someone who is more knowledgeable on the topic who can approach it in a way that is delicate, but also comes from a genuine source, and it doesn’t just feel like [guidance] has to get it out of the way, [then it] doesn’t have any impact on the students because they’re not really listening.”

Students who have recently experienced guidance push-ins about sexual misconduct, such as sophomore Evelyn Lifton, agree. “I think people might take [the presentations] more seriously or they might be more emotionally affected if they see how these kinds of issues affect people in the real world,” she said.

Beyond a lack of engagement, presentations also miss information, overlooking crucial aspects of sexual harassment and abuse conversations. “[Teachers] don’t actually talk about the reality of the experiences such as being under the influence or the very gray area of what can count as assault [or] harassment,” Lava said.  

For example, the guidance presentations don’t address sexual abuse between a victim and someone that they know, like a friend or relative, which can be especially challenging to navigate. “We don’t talk about those circumstances. It’s really difficult, and these slides put the pressure on the victim to say no, but we don’t talk about the times when they can’t [...] and there are so many other factors that come into play,” Lava added. 

Though counselors are allowed to discuss these topics, their main goal, due to the presentations’ limited time and scope, is to give an overview of sexual harassment and inform students of how they can seek help. “We're trying to give a broad overview and really drive home the point of, here’s the places and people you can go to to make a report or to seek out support within the school. When we do this presentation, there’s always a little uptick in students who come to talk to the counselors about some things that either they [or a friend] have experienced,” Pedrick said. 

However, many students are still hesitant to reach out for help. Reluctance surrounding approaching school staff about sensitive topics is an issue that Principal Yu’s recently formed Advisory Council, a group of students that gives feedback to Dr. Yu, is trying to solve. “One of the major [problems] that we do bring up is [...] talking to administration or talking to faculty, and the hesitancy and discomfort around that,” Ying said.

A part of what causes such hesitancy is guidance counselors’ obligation to contact parents if they learn that a student is in danger or has been harmed. “Students sometimes preemptively don’t want to tell the guidance counselor anything because they can’t guarantee where the information is going to go. I think a way that students should think about it, though, is that [...] if a parent knows that I knew that their child has been victimized and I didn’t share it, that’s not ethical,” Kornhauser said.

The obligation to share such information with parents is something guidance counselors are upfront with. “I really want my students to feel like they can talk to me, but it’s not 100 percent confidential here, and it can’t be, especially if someone’s been victimized. A student can decide how much they want to share with me. I can then say, ‘The limits of my confidentiality are here. So you don’t have to tell me more if you don't want to,’” Kornhauser added. From there, guidance counselors may refer students to more confidential outside resources, like therapy.

The guidance department’s main goal is to help students feel safe and supported. “While I can understand the hesitancy in a student wanting to come forward, I, on the other hand, hope the student can understand us wanting to create as big of a support network as possible for them,” Pedrick explained.

Though student presenters and guidance counselors make it clear that their doors are always open and provide links to hotlines, there are other valuable local resources that could be highlighted in these presentations. “I think a lot of [...] programs through the nurse’s office that deal with aftercare [...] if you are sexually abused aren’t publicized enough. They have some posters up near the nurse’s office, but I do wish that the administration would make that more clear and try to destigmatize it a little bit more,” Muratori said. 

Stuyvesant participates in the Connecting Adolescents to Comprehensive Healthcare (C.A.T.C.H.) program, which, aside from visits to health classes, isn’t widely publicized to the student body. The program, which offers more sex education, condoms, birth control, and pregnancy and STD tests to students, is beyond helpful for victims as they navigate the aftermath of their abuse. Knowing and spreading awareness of this information is crucial to getting victims the help and support that they need. “Even if you haven’t been explicitly assaulted, every woman, every girl has gone through some sort of uncomfortable situation that they can relate to about this,” Lava said. “So it’s really important for [...] not even just the freshmen [...] to be aware of where they can go to and what actions they can take to potentially make a difference.”

Support through the guidance office and programs like C.A.T.C.H. is essential, and it must come hand-in-hand with consequences for the perpetrator. Muratori believes that the guidance presentations lack information on consequences for offenders, which can make it more difficult for victims to weigh their options when navigating the aftermath of misconduct. After all, many victims fear that their abusers will not be held accountable. “A lot of people who have been sexually harassing [students] have not been held accountable, and I think that a lot of that [creates a] fear of coming forward,” Muratori described. “On a logistical level, our school does not do a good enough job communicating what you’re supposed to do if something happens.” She added, “I think that if that is something that is added to the slides, even if it helps one person know what to do, I think that would be a great success.”

Lava concurred, stating, “People, if they’re not going to respect boundaries, they respect consequences. They respect that something might happen to them. As unfortunate as that is, that is the way we have to deal with it.” 

What isn’t shared with students during the sexual misconduct push-ins is that Stuyvesant, like all NYC Public Schools, follows the disciplinary measures detailed in “Citywide Standards of Intervention and Discipline Measures, the Discipline Code and Bill of Student Rights.” The bill outlines certain actions of sexual harassment and assault and their respective consequences, ranging from parent outreach to suspensions of over 90 days.

Presenting the consequences for sexual violence feels increasingly important for students following the 2024 presidential election of Donald Trump, who has faced over 25 sexual assault allegations. “I think in general, teenage boys are comfortable with talking about women in really disgusting ways, and that’s not helped by the fact that Trump talks about women in those ways and he managed to get the most important job in the United States,” Lifton said. 

Many women and girls feel that an abuser in the highest position of power sends the wrong message to perpetrators and victims around the country. “We’re normalizing abuse culture in a way that I don’t think we’ve seen in a really long time,” Muratori said. “Our most powerful leaders [...] have faced these allegations. I think we need to set a different precedent, even if it’s within Stuyvesant, that this is not something we allow, this is not something that people can get away with.”

Stuyvesant takes the consequences of sexual misconduct very seriously, and their guidance presentations are far from their only method of combating sexual misconduct. “This presentation represents what the Student Union wants to share with students. This doesn’t represent Stuy policy [or] how guidance counselors do things. So making this presentation is very important, and improving it is crucial because it’s how we’re presenting it, but they’re not exactly connected,” Kornhauser said. “The workshop is a small piece of the protection and support puzzle, there should be a lot more that’s happening at Stuy than that.”

With global politics making issues of sexual misconduct more important than ever, it is a crucial time to reflect on our own education surrounding sexual violence and harassment at Stuyvesant. “I hope this workshop opens the conversation up a lot, [...] it sounds like kids are looking for more thorough discussion of this topic. So it might really need to be reworked,” Kornhauser said. 

Those not directly involved in working with guidance on implementing these changes still have a crucial role to play in improving our classroom environments and more. Actively listening and being respectful are the bare minimum during these presentations. Through these attitude shifts, advocating for increased education through speaker events and awareness of support systems and consequences, we can work together to make Stuyvesant a safer community for all.