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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Sometimes, A Kiss Is Just A Kiss, New School Rules Say

The Washington Post

The Education Department made it official Thursday: The famous kiss that Johnathan Prevette, a first-grader in North Carolina, planted on the cheek of an unsuspecting classmate last year was in fact just a kiss - not grounds for sexual harassment.

In new guidelines released for schools nationwide, the department urged educators to consider the age and maturity of students and to use “judgment and common sense” when deciding whether an incident among students is harassment, or merely inappropriate.

The guidelines do not specifically mention Prevette’s case, which drew worldwide attention after he was suspended from school for a day and banned from an ice-cream party, but generally cites it as the kind of incident that is not harassment.

“In order to give rise to a complaint … sexual harassment must be sufficiently severe, persistent or pervasive that it adversely affects a student’s education or creates a hostile or abusive educational environment,” the guidelines state. “For a one-time incident to rise to the level of harassment, it must be severe.”

School officials in Lexington, N.C., the small town where Prevette attends school, swiftly retreated from punishing him, but his kiss raised new debate among educators across the nation about setting the bounds of appropriate behavior for students.

The department’s guidelines, which were published Thursday in the Federal Register, do not establish precise ages or precise situations to judge student or faculty behavior. Rather, the guidelines present general scenarios for schools to consider.

For example: A coach hugging a student who made a goal, or a kindergarten teacher’s consoling hug for a child with a skinned knee would not be considered sexual harassment, according to the guidelines. But a teacher’s repeatedly hugging and putting his or her arm’s around students under “inappropriate circumstances” could be.