Anti-abortion exhibit as sexual harassment?

[Frank Cross]

This occurred right outside my window.  The display was enormous, with ten
foot tall dead fetuses.  I think that both the sexual harassment and
(probably) police brutality angles are dubious.  I'm not sure that either
claim really has much support from anyone.

There is an interesting twist to this story.  The University has a free
speech zone created to avoid random displays all over campus.  That zone is
populated by pretty amateurish protests.  I wondered why the anti-abortion
display was located some distance away.  This was an expensive,
professional display.  I was told (but don't know for a fact) that the
Administration did not want this display in the free speech zone, which is
right next to their offices in the main tower.  They didn't want pictures
of the display next to the trademark tower.  Had the display been in the
free speech zone, it would have received more attention and much more
protest.  Where it was located, the on-site protests were surprisingly small.




At 01:32 PM 3/13/2001 -0800, you wrote:
>     Any thoughts on the following story, either on the police brutality
>question (which unfortunately is pretty fact-intensive), or on the sexual
>harassment angle?
>
>
>
>  Ryan Pittman, "U. Texas President Criticized for Handling of Exhibit",
>Daily Texan, Mar. 1, 2001 (available on LEXIS, University Wire):
>Complaints of police brutality and sexual harassment have been lodged
>against the University of Texas administration this week as a result of its
>controversial decision to allow an anti-abortion exhibit to go up near the
>center of campus last week.  Several members of the UT community have
>called upon UT President Larry Faulkner to publicly apologize for what they
>call "administrative mismanagement of the situation," with at least one
>faculty member currently pursuing legal action against the University.  The
>exhibit, sponsored by the UT student group Justice For All: Students for
>Bio-Ethical Justice in conjunction with the national Justice For All
>anti-abortion organization, included graphic images of aborted fetuses on a
>three-sided, 18-foot high display located outside Gregory Gym.  Mia Carter,
>interim director of the Center for Asian-American Studies and outspoken
>critic of the exhibit, said she is "discussing the possibility" of legal
>action against the University for its role in an altercation between her
>and a UT Police Department officer Feb. 20.    The use of amplified sound
>on campus other than in designated areas is not permitted under UT policy.

>"The extent of force directed against a crowd of non-violently protesting
>faculty and students was outrageous and needs to be accounted for in
>substantial, not just merely rhetorical, ways," Carter said, referring to
>the altercation between her and the UTPD officer as well as additional
>reports of police "shoving people to the ground."  . . .     "Police have a
>right to use force when it is necessary."  Among the dozens of other
>complaints lodged by students and faculty against the administration is a
>claim by Yvette Rosser, doctoral candidate in the department of curriculum
>and instruction, that the administration is guilty of sexual harassment by
>allowing the graphic display to produce a "hostile working and learning
>environment for women."  "What was paraded as an issue of freedom of
>speech, masked in the rhetoric of the First Amendment, was without question
>a cruel and insensitive spectacle that could in fact be considered a case
>of preplanned, University-sponsored sexual harassment," Rosser wrote in a
>letter to Faulkner and several other administrators.    Rosser said she
>wants the administration to publicly admit it was wrong in permitting the
>display to go up as well as an apology from Faulkner.  But Faulkner stood
>by the administration's decision to authorize the anti-abortion groups'
>exhibit, saying that his first concern was upholding the First Amendment
>rights of those wishing to speak on campus.    "I don't see how we can
>apologize for upholding the Constitution of the United States."  . . .
Frank Cross
Herbert D. Kelleher Centennial Professor of Business Law
CBA 5.202
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX 78712