For behavior not covered under the Equal Opportunity and Nondiscrimination Policy.
General Harassment and/or Bullying
General harassment and/ or bullying is behavior that is not motivated by an individual's protected characteristics, but which degrades or shows hostility or aversion towards an individual which:
- Has the intent or effect of unreasonably interfering with the individual's work, living or learning environment
- Has the purpose or effect of creating an intimidating, hostile or offensive working, living or learning environment ("hostile environment")
- Otherwise adversely affects an individual's employment, living or learning opportunities.
- Has the purpose of causing another person to experience a reasonable fear that he or she will experience unauthorized social exclusion, humiliation, intimidation or the unlawful use of physical force
The College of St. Scholastica considers the following types of behavior to be examples of general harassment or bullying:
- Behavior that is threatening or inflicting of physical or psychological harm upon any person (See Violence within Community Relationships Policy)
- Has the purpose of causing another person to experience a reasonable fear that he or she will experience unauthorized social exclusion, humiliation, intimidation or the unlawful use of physical force
- Unwelcome physical contact or isolation that places someone in fear or apprehension of immediate harm.
- A pattern of behavior where an individual willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly follows another in his/her course of daily activities in such a way that the person's actions can reasonably be found to interfere with another person's ability to perform his or her regular duties or cause that person to feel frightened, intimidated, harassed, threatened or molested.
- Invasion of privacy or unauthorized taking and use of facts, information, and/or property not in the public domain that a reasonable person would desire to keep from the public eye.
- Intimidation through written or physical conduct directed toward an individual or individuals that unreasonably interferes with his/their full participation in the College community or that is intended to create or may be reasonably determined to have created a threatening or hostile environment.
- Spreading malicious rumors or gossip about another person.
- Manipulating the workload of another person in a manner designed to cause that person to fail to perform his or her legitimate functions;
- Slandering, ridiculing or maligning a person or his/her family; persistent name calling which is hurtful, insulting or humiliating; remarks that would be viewed by others in the community as abusive and offensive; use of nicknames after being warned that the nickname is considered by the victim to be offensive; constant criticism on matters unrelated to a person's job performance or description or on matters that cannot be documented;
- Engaging in social or cyber-bullying via mail, email, text message, phone, or voicemail; deliberately interfering with mail, email, text messages, phone, voicemail or other communication.
Reporting General harassment/bullying
General harassment/bullying when involving student conduct toward other students should be reported the Dean of Students. General harassment/bullying when involving employee conduct toward other employees or student conduct toward employees should be referred to Director Human Resources or Dean of Students.