We’ve all done it, signed into Blackboard, and seen the “Not Anymore” training required to start classes and you say,  “Oh god, not this again!”

Then you think what a horrible way to think about a serious topic, sexual harassment. The big issue comes from how we choose to implement this type of training. 

“That’s what I did. That’s what everyone does. I’m checking emails, playing it (Not Anymore) in the background, muting it,” sorority member Mia Taxin said. 

This type of training is extremely important because sexual harassment is especially prevalent on college campuses. Research by the National Sexual Violence Resource Center has shown nearly two-thirds of college students experience sexual harassment, a large number of victims being women. 

“… literally every time I go to a fraternity party on the weekends,” Taxin said, “I’m always getting touched in places I don’t want to be touched, getting cat-called down the street or a guy hugs you and he puts his hands in unwanted places.”

 Experiences like this demonstrate that harassment education is valuable, but we have to ask ourselves are students actually learning and retaining the information?

Online courses require high levels of motivation, self-regulation, and organization that I personally often lack.

Taxin explained that when sororities have harassment training they have to be completely involved in the training. 

“We were made to put our phones away, kind of unplug, and feel like humans, especially in our generation at this school, we would have such a short attention span if it was an online course,” Taxin said. “I highly, highly doubt people would take it as seriously as when you have professional people standing in front of you for two hours telling you, showing you images, watching videos, doing examples, giving you feedback. It’s way more interactive and personal, face-to-face, so I think it is a lot more effective.”

So how do we fix this problem? 

“Obviously we are paying them to be here and when we give them our money, this is a weird way of saying it, we’re putting our safety in their hands to be educated,” Taxin said, “I think when you buy a product, no matter what it is, you want to know all the information about it.”

These are our educational institutions and their job is to educate people, so why aren’t they providing an effective product?