i/s Back Issues

Volume 14

No. 1  September/October 1998

Stopit Still Tackles Electronic Forms of Harassment

Joanne Costello

About six years ago, in response to the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas controversy and the growing awareness of sexual harassment, MIT and many other universities began to re-examine how they were dealing with issues of harassment on campus.

Information Systems had a particular concern. The advent of networked computers was giving rise to new forms of harassment. Individuals said things in electronic forums, email, or postings to bulletin boards that they would not say to someone face to face. IS technical staff, untrained in dealing with such situations, found themselves on the front line. The MITnet postmaster received pleas from individuals harassed by email to stop the flow of mail. Athena consultants and cluster patrol staff got complaints about offending images displayed on public terminals. To address these issues, IS pulled together a team and launched a campaign known as "stopit."

Getting Started At the outset, IS staff met with individuals on campus who routinely dealt with issues of harassment. One clear message from these meetings was that stopping harassment and the improper use of MITnet and Athena was sometimes more important than punishing offenders.

Two basic tenets guided IS as it decided how to respond to computer-related harassment:

  First, most "offenders" intend no offense and behave responsibly once they are made aware of how their behavior has affected others.

  Second, individuals need to know that someone in authority is listening to complaints and evaluating their behavior in light of MIT's rules against harassment.

The Stopit Campaign
IS realized from the start that education would be a critical factor in its stopit campaign. Students need to be aware that certain behavior and misuse of the Athena environment may constitute harassment.

To get the word out, IS publishes the MITnet/Athena Rules of Use in Welcome to Athena. Large posters in the Athena clusters point students to resources for dealing with harassment. This year, bookmarks outlining when to send mail to stopit are available in the Libraries and have been distributed by some offices at MIT.

The main option stopit gives complainants is to report incidents to <stopit@mit.edu>, a private electronic mailing list monitored by a few IS administrators who are authorized to deal with these incidents. IS also publicizes this as an address to report any type of improper use of the system or uncivil behavior. Even though the program grew out of discussions on how to handle harassment, it has always dealt with a far wider range of misconduct. All incidents are handled in a consistent manner.

Some Statistics
During the first year, stopit received 87 complaints. Nearly 60 percent of these were forwarded by the front-line staff. By far the single most common complaint was the existence of offensive backgrounds on screens.

During the past year, stopit handled 571 complaints. Most dealt with unwanted email of some sort, including harassing/threatening mail, chain letters, and misuse of the mail system to advertise events or sales. About half of these complaints were about unwanted mail, or spam, from outside MIT. Note: There is no magic wand for banishing spam. For the IS viewpoint on spam, see http://web.mit.edu/network/spam/

Spotting Trends
The email list serves as an archive and also spotlights trends in types of incidents. It helps the stopit team determine what kind of education is needed to decrease the occurrence of a particular type of incident and has allowed the team to create standard procedures, including stock answers for dealing with various forms of computer-based harassment.

For more information about stopit, see the Web page at http://web.mit.edu/stopit/

i/s Home |  i/s Back Issues |  Volume 14 |  No. 1