Intent vs Impact

I've come to realize that although a person's intentions are important to factor in when you judge their actions, they aren't as important as they used to be. After all, even though a person may want to help to friends work out a problem, they may make things far worse by helping where their help isn't wanted. I'm not going to go into specific examples in my life in case certain people ever find their way to my blog but I will elaborate on one example. A certain college friend of mine, one Ethan Olson, ventured onto the 5th floor of our dorm which is inhabited by all girls late on Saturday night. After a long night of fun, we decided to go visit some friends hanging out on fifth. One of our friends(female) went into the bathroom to go clean out her water bottle of the residue of a certain substance(alcohol) and Ethan, who had been taking funny pictures for several minutes, decided to take a picture of her washing out her water bottle. A little strange yes, but crossing no lines. Than, apparently a girl walked out of the stall that we did not know and walked past us to her room. Let me note that I considered this detail so unimportant that I hardly remembered it when questioned later. Let me also note that boys are not allowed in the girls 5th floor bathroom. The next day, Ethan received an email from the residence life director and the vice president of the college the next day saying he was required to have a meeting with them because of "sexual harassment charges". It turns out the girl walking past us considered our intentions to be sexually harassing and reported Ethan to the school. Upon entering the meeting, Ethan was cleared of all charges because of the ridiculousness of the accusations, but it just goes to show that Intent does not always result in the desired impact.