Campus Sexual Harassment as an Individual and Community Level Problem

Sexual harassment is currently the most prevalent problem on college campuses. Although campus sexual harassment has been studied, most research only focuses on the individual survivor rather than including the greater campus community into the study. Existing research fails to address the role of campus communities and how individuals perceive the campus climate around them. The purpose of this study is to obtain prevalence rates for different types of sexual and gender-specific harassment among undergraduate students at Bucknell University. The present study measures factors related to campus sexual harassment using the Administrator-Researcher Campus Climate Collaborative Survey (ARC3) and additional measures of sense of community, online harassment, and gender-specific system justification. Through the incorporation of these measures, the goal of this study is to gain a well-rounded understanding of perspectives pertaining to sexual harassment as an individual and community level problem. It was hypothesized that participants would report more harassment from students than faculty/staff; rates of sexual harassment would be higher among women as compared with men; women would report higher rates of sexual harassment by men; rates of harassment victimization would be higher among minoritized races/ethnicities, and highest among the LGBTQIA+ community; those reporting harassment would report lower gender-specific system justification; and those reporting harassment would report a lower sense of community engagement. Through analyzing the data using frequencies, chi-square analysis, and t-tests, some of the hypotheses were supported