An English instructor at Ball State has converted his freshman composition classroom into a sensitivity training seminar. Here's the short piece on him in the Ball State Daily News, under the headline "Instructor teaches harassment policies: Students act out scenarios to recognize improper conduct":

Instructor John Dobelbower doesn't just teach his students English--he also informs them about the realities of sexual harassment.

Dobelbower has taught his students how to recognize sexual harassment and what to do if confronted with it for the past five years.

"Freshmen can have problems understanding what it is and what to do if they feel victimized," Dobelbower said.

Thursday, Dobelbower engaged his English 114 class in an activity that would help to clarify sexual harassment.

Dobelbower put the students in pairs and gave each group a different scenario to act out. After each skit the class discussed why it was sexual harassment and then what the victim should do.

"Personally, the assignment helped make me aware of Ball State's policy on it (sexual harassment) and brought up new situations I hadn't thought of," freshman Corbin Blackerby said.

The university follows Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which banned student and faculty sexual harassment. Though it has been 31 years since it was enacted, sexual harassment is still prevalent.

It's not clear how such ideologically loaded consciousness-raising enhances writing skills, nor is it clear how acting out skits that illustrate Dobelblower's concept of harassment encourages critical thinking--sexual harassment is a complex concept with a complicated and vexed history, one that can hardly be covered adequately in a single classroom session centered more on politically correct proselytizing than on reasoned, historically informed discussion and debate.

What is clear is that Dobelblower, his students, and the writer for the student paper do not question either the "prevalence" of sexual harassment (which is largely the self-fulfilling prophecy of a sexual harassment industry that is invested in endlessly expanding the definition of sexual harassment) or the propriety of a composition teacher undertaking to enlighten a captive group of freshmen about matters far removed from those of sentence construction, thesis statements, and revision.

What is also clear: Dobelblower's students could charge their English teacher with sexual harassment under the very policies that he has brought to their attention. After all, he brought the issue of sexual harassment up in a classroom where it arguably does not belong; as the teacher, he made listening to--and acting out--his thoughts on the subject a condition of class participation; as such, any student who was made uncomfortable by this at the time, or who decides at some future point that she was uncomfortable, could well have him up on charges of abusing his authority and creating a hostile educational environment. BSU's Statement on Sexual Harassment is a tantalizingly flexible document, eminently given to such an interpretation. Among other things, it says that the "use in the classroom of sexual jokes, stories or images in no way germane to the subject of the class" may constitute harassment.