About half of all seventh through 12th grade students reported that they were sexually harassed during the last school year.
According to a report released Monday by the American Association of University Women, of 1,965 students surveyed across the country, 56 percent of girls and 40 percent of boys said they had been sexually harassed. Of those respondents, 87 percent said the harassment had a negative impact on them.
The U.S. Department of Education defines sexual harassment as any "unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature." This includes actions like making sexual jokes or gestures, creating or displaying sexually explicit images, and inappropriate touching or requests.
The majority of respondents who said they had experienced sexual harassment said it was verbal. Thirty-three percent of students said others had made unwelcome sexual comments, gestures or jokes to them, and 18 percent said they had been called gay or lesbian in a negative way.
Two percent of students said they had been forced to perform sexual acts.
Phyllis Erney, a guidance counselor at Kanapaha Middle School, said school officials see sex-related issues start to occur when students enter seventh grade.
"When they move up from sixth to seventh grade, their hormones start kicking in and they start paying attention to the opposite sex," she said. "We end up with a lot more drama and we start to have boy-girl issues."
As a result, Kanapaha Middle counselors gave seventh grade classrooms counseling sessions this week on sexual harassment, teaching students the differences between "flirting and hurting."
Erney said counselors encourage students to talk to a trusted adult or to see a counselor if they are being harassed.
According to the study, only about 9 percent of students who said they had been harassed said they told a school official about the incident.
Pamela Garcia, a guidance counselor at Santa Fe High School, said there were three reported incidents of sexual harassment during the first nine weeks of the 2009-2010 school year at Santa Fe. Last year, there were four. This year, there weren't any.
Garcia said she thinks online harassment is becoming more prevalent - a trend that is more difficult to avoid as well as prevent.
Though 44 percent of students said they experienced harassment in school, about a third said they were harassed online, via pictures, texts, Facebook messages or rumors that were spread.
Catherine Hill, co-author of the study, said online harassment can be particularly troubling for students.
"E-harassment is invisible to others," she said. "It's very invasive. It can be 24/7. It's hard for teachers and parents to know what's going on."
Students who said they had been sexually harassed said they often didn't want to go to school, felt sick to their stomach and had trouble studying or sleeping.
"[Sexual harassment] can be a challenging topic to talk about," Hill said. "It's much more comfortable to talk about bullying. But this is a question of how students are treating each other in schools that is incredibly important for us to address."
