Critical Reasoning

Concerned about various forms of workplace harassment, a city attorney's office instituted a publicity campaign last year encouraging victims of such harassment to come forward and file reports of the harassment. During the year following the inception of the publicity campaign, the frequency of harassment reports filed with the city attorney's office tripled. The publicity campaign has therefore been successful, in that it has inspired more victims of workplace harassment to pursue their complaints.

Which of the following most seriously weakens the conclusion of the passage above?

A. The increase in harassment complaints has consisted almost exclusively of additional complaints of racial harassment; complaints of other varieties of harassment have not increased significantly.

B. Although the number of complaints has tripled, the number of complaints that have resulted in successful prosecutions or civil penalties for the harassers has not increased significantly.

C. Many individuals who have brought complaints within the past year were previously unaware that the behavior to which they had been subjected was regarded legally as harassment.

D. The publicity campaign has emphasized the fact that there will be no legal reprisals or other negative consequences for complainants whose complaints are deemed false or invalid.

E. The city attorney's office originally instituted the campaign in response to falling numbers of workplace harassment complaints.

Conclusion: The publicity campaign has been successful as the author draws a correlation between the campaign and the rise in number of harassment reports being filed with the attorney's office

A - This is irrelevant as it deals with the nature of complaints
B - This is talking about what follows after the complaint is filed. This is also irrelevant as the argument doesn't go that far
C - This supports the conclusion
D - This gives us another reason that may have helped the supposed victims of harassment to come forward with their complaints. It wasn't just the campaign, but the fact that it gives the supposed victim a chance to avoid being prosecuted for false filing a false complaint. In my opinion this gives mischief makers a chance to deliberately accuse another person of harassment. So this weakens the argument
E - Irrelevant. In a way it slightly supports the conclusion

IMO : D

What is the OA?