Reporters' Notebook: Gender issues come to life for reporters

and ALISSA KAYE The candidates were too close for comfort, but their workers wanted to get closer and more comfortable with us. As female Daily Pennsylvanian reporters covering a senatorial race which heightened the country's awareness of gender issues in the workplace, we never thought we would ddpersonally experience sexual harassment right in the candidates' backyards. Unfortunately, we were wrong. Throughout the senatorial race, Democratic challenger Lynn Yeakel constantly highlighted her concern for women's issues and reminded voters of Republican incumbent Arlen Specter's role as a Senate Judiciary Committee member in last year's Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill Supreme Court hearings. In turn, Specter defended his actions during the hearings and stressed his strong voting record supporting women's issues. But in spite of both candidates' insistence on equal standing in the workplace -- on the distinction between work and play -- when it came down to their respective election night parties, complimentary wine and beer drowned out all the political rhetoric. Campaign volunteers from both camps made sexual advances on each of us in an ironic twist on the "Year of the Woman" idea. Had we been male reporters with short hair, we wondered afterwards, would a certain male volunteer at Specter's headquarters have insisted on moving his chair closer before he pushed hair out of our eyes? And would he have grabbed our notebooks from our hands so he could write down his name and number in case we wanted "a date . . . or concert tickets because I sell them?" Would two of Yeakel's male campaign volunteers have so avidly pressed to let them buy us drinks? And had we been men, would a male Yeakel campaign worker have had the opportunity to indelicately fondle the locket dangling between our breasts? And would two male volunteers -- and College Republicans from our own University no less -- who were sloppy drunk have followed us around Specter's victory party, saying, "Can I hit on you more? Why don't you like me?" It was horrifying then, and it is mortifying to recall it now. The campaigners' behavior cannot help but cast a shadow of doubt on both candidates' professed concern for gender issues. Maybe it's just guilt by association, but as the proverbial saying would have it, "actions speak louder than words." As we see things, it shouldn't make a difference whether a reporter is wearing a jacket and tie or a skirt and blouse. Journalists should be able to objectively cover the events at hand . . . without having to worry about others' hands on them.

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