Harassment Policy: Community Service Experiences

A. BACKGROUND

It is the responsibility of each person on campus to respect the personal dignity of others. Alvemia has always encouraged its students, faculty and staff to celebrate in the diversity of the College and to immediately confront any expressions of harassment within the community based on differences in sex, race, religion, disability or ethnic background. Your Community Service Experience will be taking you outside of the Alvernia Campus Community. The Agency in which you will serve has been carefully screened by the College and the sponsoring Agency has affirmed its complete agreement with the policy of showing no tolerance for any form of harassment. The Sponsoring Agency has agreed to hold all members of its institutional community to the same high standards of respect and dignity essential to the mission of Alvernia.

B. DEFINITIONS

Sexual Harassment is one example of forbidden harassment and has been defined by the College as unwanted sexual attention, intimidation or advances that are made:

a. either explicitly or implicitly as a term or condition of academic or employment status or advancement;
b. as a basis for academic or employment decisions;
c. which unreasonably interfere with an individual's work or academic performance; and/or
d. which create an intimidating, hostile or offensive work or academic environment.

C. RESOURCES

Alvernia does wish to make known to all of the participants in approved Volunteer Experiences that there are available resources and procedures for resolving any instances of harassment, including sexual harassment, which might be confronted by program participants within the Alvemia Community, or while in the institutional community of the Sponsoring Agency.

1. Information, Counseling and Support

If you, as a participant in a Community Service experience, believe that you may have been the victim of harassing conduct, and you wish to seek information and/or counseling about the incident or incidences giving rise to this concern, you should immediately contact the appropriate person:

a. Instructor of course if the project is course related
b. The Director of the Community Service Program
c. The Vice President of Student Development

and request a confidential counseling session. In order that your concerns will be immediately addressed, you should make this contact within ten (10) days of the occurrence.

If your concerns can be addressed at this first counseling session, and neither you nor your counselor feel that the incident rises to the level of harassment, the matter may be concluded without further action. If, however, after the counseling, you wish to proceed with a formal Complaint regarding the perceived harassment, you may take advantage of the formal Complaint procedure.

2. Formal Complaint Procedure

Any participant in a college volunteer experience who feels that he or she has been the subject of harassment of any kind may, after participating in the initial counseling session, file a Complaint in writing setting forth the material facts of the incident. To facilitate the contemporaneous investigation of the incident, the written Complaint should be filed within ten (10) days of the informal counseling session. The written Complaint should be directed to and addressed by the Vice President of Student Development.

Upon receipt of the Written Complaint, the Vice-President of Student Development will initiate an investigation concerning the Complaint. The investigation will include the contacting of the Sponsoring Agency, as well as others identified as being witnesses or having first hand knowledge of the alleged behavior or incident.

Following an investigation and a completion of appropriate corrective measures, if warranted, the College will so advise the person filing the formal Complaint.

Reflection

"A bridge between experience and theory" is the role that John Dewey assigns to reflection. Experience alone is not an education nor is theory by itself an education. Experience becomes educative when critical reflective thought creates new meaning and leads to growth and the ability to take informed actions.*

*John Goinulock, ed., The Moral Writings of John Dewey
(New York: Prometheus Books, 1994), xxxvi.

Reflecting on the service experience is a vital component of the learning process.

"I did my service at DaySpring Homes. It made me realize how fortunate I am."
- Josh Martin

"When I did my service at PAL I got to interact with many of the inter-city children. I realized that helping these children means a lot because if we don't help them who would, PAL is like a second home for some of these children and I enjoyed doing my service there."
- Tatum Lodish

"During my service at St. Peter's Elementary School I have realized the importance of volunteering my time for others and how a couple hours a day can change other people or even their future."
- Joseph McLaughlin

Updated: September 7, 2005

Your comments are welcome.