Minnesota State Colleges & Universities: 1B.1 Equal Opportunity and Nondiscrimination in Employment and Education

Relevant Excerpt

Discriminatory harassment
Unwelcome conduct or communication that is based on actual or perceived membership in a protected class, including stereotypes of protected classes, that has a negative effect or is likely to have a negative effect on the complainant or the workplace or educational environment. Harassment may occur in a variety of relationships, including faculty and student, supervisor and employee, student and student, staff and student, employee and employee, and other relationships with persons having business at, or visiting the educational or working environment. Discriminatory harassment includes, but is not limited to:

1. Oral or written conduct such as jokes, innuendo, slurs, name-calling, negative comments about cultural norms, circulating rumors;
2. Physical contact, battery, blocking movement;
3. Non-verbal derogatory gestures, stalking, interference with work performance;
4. Visual displays, including but not limited to, posters, drawings, screen savers, emails and texts with derogatory meaning, epithets written on complainant’s personal property or other symbols associated with particular protected classes.

Sexual harassment
Minnesota State further defines sexual harassment as a form of sex discrimination and discriminatory harassment. Sexual harassment is conduct or communication of a sexual nature that is unwelcome, that has a negative effect or is likely to have a negative effect on the complainant or the workplace or educational environment. Sexual harassment includes, but is not limited to:

1. Unwelcome sexual innuendoes, suggestive comments, jokes of a sexual nature, sexual propositions, degrading sexual remarks, threats;
2. Unwelcome sexually suggestive objects or pictures, graphic commentaries, suggestive or insulting sounds, leering, whistling, obscene gestures;
3. Unwelcome physical contact, such as sexual assault and sexual violence (as defined in Board Policy 1B.3), molestation, or attempts to commit these assaults; unwelcome touching, pinching, or brushing of or by the body;
4. Preferential treatment or promises of preferential treatment for submitting to sexual conduct, including soliciting or attempting to solicit an employee, student or other individual to submit to sexual activity for a benefit including, but not limited to, hiring, promotion, compensation, grades, or authorship;
5. Negative treatment or threats of negative treatment for refusing to submit to sexual conduct;
6. Subjecting, or threatening to subject, an employee, student or other individual to unwelcome sexual attention or conduct; and
7. Conduct which exploits the sexual characteristics of others including transmitting or the threat of transmission of photographs and or videos of graphic nudity or sexually graphic messages of others without the consent of the subject of the photograph, video, or message.

Note: Some of these examples of misconduct may also be subject to Board Policy 1B.3 Sexual Violence Policy.