Sacramento State has implemented a new sexual misconduct policy in order to curb the occurrences of inappropriate sexual behavior among students.

Dissatisfied with the extent of Title V, the existing behavior code, campus personnel have worked for almost five years to bring changes that would make it easier to ensure the safety of the student population.

“We’ve taken it a step further. We saw gaps, so we instituted this policy,” said Leonard Valdez, director of student conduct with Student Affairs. “We think this is much more encompassing and, for our interests, much more useful for the issues that come before us.”

The definitions of the policy include sexual assault, sexual battery and sexual harassment, which would already be punishable under existing code.

New categories within the policy include stalking, indecent exposure, voyeurism, unwanted obsessive contacts, obscene correspondence (which includes letters, e-mail, and/or pornographic attachments), sexual slander and a new definition of consent.

The policy also includes how to deal with cases of harassment on the Internet.

Valdez said inappropriate behavior came forth based on the use of technology like MySpace. He added there were cases of slander against students via Internet.

“In other words, something like ‘You’re gay!,’ and throwing that out to the entire community… there were things like that going forward, victimizing students, and we, as an institution, needed some way of addressing it.”

Valdez said the policy only applies to students ?” not staff or faculty.

Another change in policy deals with student organizations.

“There was an instance where last year a student group was communicating through its members certain things about someone outside of their group,” Valdez said. “Now, with this policy, we can address the entire organization as opposed to individuals within the organization.”

Valdez said this part of the policy has already been used this semester in about five cases.

Stalking was a needed addition to the policy.

“What Title V didn’t cover were areas such as stalking,” Valdez said.

Jessica Heskin, advocate and educator for Violence and Sexual Assault Support Services, said it’s good that the new policy addresses stalking.

“One could argue that it might have fallen under the old policy of ‘physical harm’ or ‘threat of physical harm,’ but with stalkers, a lot of the time there is no direct threat,” Heskin said. “They don’t say, ‘I’m going to kill you,’ or, ‘I’m going to hurt you,’ but they’re texting you 50 times a day and they’re calling you 45 times a day and they’re following you to class. -We had no policy on that,” Heskin said.

Heskin explained that once there was a case where a woman broke up with her boyfriend, who wasn’t happy about it. The boyfriend, she said, then made a Yahoo! account in the woman’s name and sent e-mails containing sexual explicit material to her parents and friends.

“He came up with some very sexually explicit narratives, and then e-mailed them to her parents and friends, saying ‘I engaged in all this really lewd stuff,’ which of course she never did,” Heskin said. ” So, OK, is this against the law? Not really. Is it against university policy? Not specifically. Is it harassment, did it cause this woman stress? Oh, yeah it did.”

Heskin said with the new policy the university can address issues like this.

“Because of this new policy, we can say, ‘You’ve violated university policy’ and we can seek student discipline sanctions,” Heskin said.

Some students, however, are more wary of the new policy.

“I think it’s a good idea, but I think it could be taken too far. If things are taken too seriously, things that weren’t meant to be taken seriously,” said junior Alysia Henderson.

“In the case of jokes between friends, if someone finds out and takes it personally when it wasn’t meant to be that way, I think that people could find reason to accuse other people who aren’t actually guilty of anything,” Henderson said.

“I can’t even anticipate the kinds of things that will come forward,” Valdez said. “I’m just thankful that I think we have enough latitude that we can start dealing with some of these things.”

Tom Roberts can be reached at [email protected]