Here are three new efforts about street harassment, one led by Finnish police and two others led by students in India and New Zealand.
Finland (via Sputnik News, “Finnish Cops Can Now Write Tickets for Sexual Harassment”):
“According to Hufvudstadsbladet newspaper, police in Finland have recently been given the power to issue fines for perceived sexual harassment.
‘We’ve attempted to find a quick solution to the problem. The existing threshold for sexual harassment complaints is pretty high, but perhaps we’ll be able to decrease it if police will be able to act immediately,’ Helsinki police chief Lasse Aapio said.
A patrol officer doesn’t require any special permission other than the victim’s statement in order to fine a suspect, as sexual harassment is usually pretty obvious, he added.
‘The fines would also help to more easily identify perpetrators, which can sometimes be quite problematic if a crime was reported too late. A police officer issuing a fine may also immediately suggest a victim to officially press charges,’ Aapio pointed out.”
India (via the Time of India, “Project by school kids focuses on issues of equality”):
“The classroom is dark. Plastic hands and broken bottles protruding from large stands brush your body as you walk down a winding path covered with yoga mats. Expressionless faces stuck on the mats stare at you while the cat-calling adds to the discomfort. It is similar to the harassment a woman faces when she walks through a dimly lit street. And that’s the whole aim of the exercise. For the walk through the maze ends with a short, informative slide presentation on street harassment.
The maze and presentation were part of a creative project done by class 7 and 8 students of Kids Central, Kotturpuram, to create awareness among parents about street harassment by making them ‘encounter’ it as they walked through the maze.”
New Zealand (via the New Zealand Herald, “Reign of abuse on Otago streets”):
‘Unacceptable and insidious” harassment by Dunedin students has hit breaking point and the University of Otago needs to take action, residents say.
Otago bioethics PhD candidate Emma Tumilty co-signed a letter with 10 other people who live and work in the student precinct, calling on vice-chancellor Harlene Hayne to act…
Former Otago student Jessie-Lee Robertson said she had suffered verbal abuse – including an incident last week. She was in her car with her dog on Albany St when a van load of young people pulled up next to her. “[They] opened the sliding door of their van and said, ‘If that dog wasn’t in your car, I’d rape you’.”
The most shocking part, she said, was that it happened while she was in her car. She had already begun avoiding the main streets of “studentville” for fear of abuse, but did not expect it on the road.
Mikayla Cahill, a third-year student, had also been harassed in the student quarter several times, most recently last week, Orientation Week.
Detective Senior Sergeant Kallum Croudis said there was a consistent stream of “complaints about criminal behaviour of a sexual nature” in Dunedin, and a “small spike” of those kinds of complaints during Orientation Week.
Police took the complaints seriously, especially after learning “some very poignant lessons about sexual violence”…
Professor Hayne acknowledged the importance of educating students about harassment. She responded to Mrs Tumilty, saying she had “no tolerance whatsoever for this kind of behaviour”.
The university, she wrote, was working on developing “two educational programmes for Otago students” – one for students in residential colleges that would begin next semester, and another to start next year as part of the Orientation education programme.”
