Virtus Training is No Joke

Sister Harriet came down to our class last week on Monday and Wednesday to guide us through Virtus training. We watched two different videos on sexual harassment and had discussions after to discuss how the videos made us feel and what we took away from the video's various messages.

Sexual Harassment is a topic that people don't usually feel comfortable talking about, and I was impressed with both the videos we watched and the way our class handled themselves during the discussion after.

What sticks out in my mind is the fact that they interviewed both the sexual harasser and the victim. I could never imagine someone being able to say, "if I could I would do it again," when asked if they were given the opportunity to sexually harass someone. But in a way I am glad that I got to hear that because now I know that I can't be too naive to the fact that people like that exist in this world. It's not something that you can go around assuming all the time, but I think that if I ever truly saw warning signs I would look further into it, rather than just brushing it off.

Scandals:

Recently everyone has heard about all the different scandals nation wide regarding sexual harassment, but no two are more common in the northeast than the Penn State and Syracuse University scandals. You could go on and on for days arguing about whether or not Paterno has any fault in this matter but to make things simple here is my opinion in short. Was he obligated by law in Pennsylvania to pursue the investigation of the case when he first received word, no. Morally however, he should be held to a little higher standard in my opinion, being someone who is so influential to young people and is seen as a leader. Simply put, that is my opinion. Reading up on Sandusky's charges it seems that 10 people have charged him with sexual assault and this friday he will be receiving the names of those 10 people. To let something like this go on for so long you can't blame just one person, I am sure there are many people who are at fault at Penn State, but like I said before sexual harassment is something that is hard to talk about.

I have not been following the SU scandal very much but I do remember reading this article back in November and thinking that the guy who wrote it was crazy. Dimitry Loselevich writes, "Is what Fine did really worse than Bernie Madoff cheating thousands of investors out of billions of dollars? What about Muammar Gaddafi ordering the bombing of a plane and killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew members?" I couldn't believe that he even hinted at the fact that what Madoff and Gaddafi did were "worse" than what Fine had done. Sexual Harassment doesn't always leave physical scars but it destroys someone emotionally. To me that's as bad as it can possibly get. 


I could go on for days about this probably so I will save you the time reading and end there.