The strange and disturbing behavior of Kevin "Kip" Harmon has pissed me off in more ways than one. It's bad enough that a creep in an administrative position used his status to pursue female athletes – clearly creating an unsafe learning environment – but what is really insulting is that it looks like the university and his other employers allowed it to happen.

 It seems that the university has always wanted to ignore this problem, and I think their unwillingness to deal with him early on makes them accomplices in the whole sordid mess. As former Associate Athletic Director and School Board Elect, Harmon thinks he can resign from his positions and all will be forgotten; no liability, no love lost. The problem is, this had been going on for years, and we are just now starting to figure out how deep it gets.

 According to a police report filed Oct. 13, it was over a year ago that people in the UAF Athletics Department started to get suspicious of Harmon. They had Human Resources conduct a two-hour staff meeting to teach everyone about sexual harassment and how to report it. The general consensus at that meeting was that the sexual harassment training was needed because of Kip Harmon. Some emails he had sent to people in the Athletic Department were collected after the training and given to Human Resources, but, apparently, nothing ever came of it. 

Holding a sexual harassment awareness meeting was a cop out. It did not directly address the problem, and couldn't even be considered a slap on the wrist. They should have fired his ass immediately upon hearing about these inappropriate, predatory actions. There is absolutely no excuse for compromising the safety of our campus. Period.

 I'm outraged that Harmon was allowed to keep his position at the Athletic Department, a position that put him in direct contact with our lady 'Nooks. These women should not have been subjected to such treatment, and it is obvious that with the minimal support they had from the university, relying on their own wits was the only way to avoid his frequent advances.

 What's even more ridiculous is that the same thing happened at the Red Cross when Harmon worked there. A woman, who referred to Harmon as "a shady character," became uncomfortable after he emailed her and she brought it up with the administration. Though the Red Cross allegedly has a file on this incident, there was no action taken.

 The only thing that stopped this was a brave individual who was so disturbed she decided to file a police report. The police did an excellent job contacting numerous witnesses who had received emails from Harmon, and they compiled a 24-page report detailing the years of odd behavior. Grounds to file criminal charges were not found, and the case was again referred to Human Resources.

Harmon resigned before any action could be taken against him.

I can understand why people want to forget about this like it was a big, bad nightmare. Believe me, we've all had enough of Kip Harmon's antics. But the point here is not to burn him at the stake, though I'm sure a few people would love to.

 This is a most extreme example of inappropriate activity by a UAF administrator, and it was allowed to continue for at least two years. It makes me wonder if smaller, less obvious harassment issues are going on all the time, and we just don't know about them.

 The real question is how bad do these things have to get? How many women have to go through this before we start to listen to them?

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