This was all horrifying enough that the police, who often seem hesitant to pursue online harassment cases, got serious about unmasking and prosecuting the dude.
It encompasses inappropriate verbal behavior as well as physical behavior and statistics show that women are often the target of violence at work, including sexual harassment.
Yet speech codes persist in large part because university general counsels, often far more worried about the expense and bad press of a harassment lawsuit than the comparatively rare and inexpensive free speech lawsuit, have deemed it rational from a cost-benefit standpoint to censor.