The female upperclass student didn't feel threatened--she just felt like he was "crossing the line."

After experiencing a number of incidents that she characterized as sexual harassment, she decided her House deserved a heads-up.

But who to talk to? Her House sexual assault/sexual harassment (SASH) tutor?

"It didn't even cross my mind," she says.

Instead, she approached a senior tutor to discuss the incident--someone she already knew.

She says her House SASH tutor isn't visible enough.

"If I really wanted something done, I'd go a level higher," she says.

While Harvard prides itself on its Houses--where tutors are the first line of interaction between students and the administration--this decentralized system has its disadvantages.

The College handles about four or five sexual assault cases in a typical year, and may face many more which go unreported, according to Associate Dean of the College Karen E. Avery '87.

And while the issue began to attract campus attention in the wake of two highly publicized sexual assaults, some say the current tutor-based system does not have enough resources or administrative support to deal with sexual harassment.

"People don't think it matters," says Kaitlin S. McGaw '00, co-chair of the Coalition Against Sexual Violence. "It needs broader institutional support."

Training the Tutors

The College has already made some changes to its SASH advising system in response to the demands of the coalition.

The coalition has become prominent over the last few years, gaining visibility when two members of the Class of 2000, Joshua M. Elster and D. Drew Douglas, were publicly accused of rape last year.

One of the coalition's main worries: that the SASH training wasn't long enough, and that because it came in monthly installments with different speakers, tutors could potentially be confronted with issues for which they were unprepared.