Barnard College Policy Against Discrimination and Harassment & Procedures: Discriminatory Harassment

Relevant Excerpt

Discriminatory harassment is unwelcome conduct that creates an intimidating, hostile or abusive work, academic, student residential, or co-curricular environment; alters the conditions of employment or education or unreasonably interferes with an individual’s work or academic performance on the basis of the individual’s actual or perceived membership in a protected class.

Harassment may include, but is not limited to: 

• verbal abuse, epithets, slurs, or negative stereotyping; 
• threatening, intimidating, or hostile acts; 
• denigrating jokes; 
• obscene comments or gestures; 
• offensive or derogatory displays or circulations (including electronic) in the work, academic, or student residential environment; 
• written or graphic material that disparages or shows hostility or aversion toward an individual or group 

Determinations of whether conduct is intimidating, abusive, or hostile will be based on objective and subjective factors, including the totality of the circumstances, as well as the nature of the conduct. A reasonable person in the complainant’s position is the standard that determines whether the conduct created a hostile environment. Unlike under Title IX, harassment does not need to be severe or pervasive to violate Barnard’s Policy Against Discrimination and Harassment.