What does the university do to prevent sexual assault?

It can take on a variety of guises.

You can’t walk down the hallway of your workplace without facing a barrage of gender-based harassment. An ex-partner won’t stop texting and calling you, and you start to worry he’ll act on the threats he’s made in the past. Maybe you went to a house party, only to wake up in a stranger’s bed, unable to remember how you got there.

Sexual misconduct, which this university defines as including sexual harassment, sexual assault, intimate partner violence and abuse, sexual exploitation and sexual intimidation, exists in many college students’ realities.

Nearly 1 in 5 undergraduate women report experiencing sexual assault or rape since entering college, according to the White House. The majority of rape and sexual assault victims are women between the ages of 16 and 24, and between 10 and 50 percent of women from ages 18 to 24 report dating violence – the highest incidence in any age demographic.

In an effort to change its handling of incidents like these, this university created a sexual misconduct policy, which expanded pre-existing sexual assault and misconduct policies in fall 2013 to clearly define and articulate the issue.

Since then, this university established an Office of Sexual Misconduct and Relationship Violence, hired a Title IX director and investigator and rehauled the policies and procedures relating to the investigation process — all at a time of “hyperfocus” on the issue of sexual assault and harassment, said Stephanie Rivero, assistant coordinator of CARE to Stop Violence.

Part of this onslaught of changes is in response to federal regulations under Title IX, striving to comply with the legislation. The others come from the university’s own initiative.

“My goal is to do the best we can possibly do as a university,” said Catherine Carroll, the university’s Title IX director. “Compliance is the bare minimum. We want to move beyond that, make it the safest, most responsive place it can be.”

History of the policy

Title IX is brief — just less than 50 words long:

“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”

Essentially, in its concise language, the legislation says every student, regardless of his or her sex, has a right to equality of education — a right that applies to every university and institution across the country that receives federal funding.

In interpretations of the law, university obligations were expanded to include the creation of an environment free of both sexual harassment and assault, in addition to domestic violence, dating violence and stalking, as they affect students’ access to education based on their gender, said Josh Bronson, assistant director of the Office of Sexual Misconduct and Relationship Violence.

This information is not new.

“The legal framework stretches back to the ’90s,” Carroll said. “The challenge has been that, for at least a decade, schools haven’t really done anything they’re supposed to do.”

A recent shift, though, which Carroll attributes to the current presidential administration, has brought renewed attention to the subject. A “Dear Colleague” letter sent in 2011 “freaked people out,” Carroll said, as it signaled to universities and institutions the federal government was taking the topic seriously and focusing on the issue.

In May, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights released a list of 55 colleges and universities under investigation for violations of Title IX, specifically in the way that they dealt with sexual misconduct complaints.

This university was not on it.

Existing university resources

Last year, CARE to Stop Violence, the university’s confidential resource on the campus for survivors of sexual violence, saw its highest number of new clients.

Generally, the office sees around 70 to 100 new clients during a school year. Last year, it had an estimated 145 – a spike that comes as more people seek resources and support, Rivero said.

“It’s been really wonderful, within the past year, really, to see the shift in federal laws, that are saying we need to do more about [sexual misconduct],” Rivero said. “It’s really empowering for a lot of people. The rise in numbers doesn’t mean more assaults are occurring, it means more are coming forward.”

The CARE office functions as both an educational resource and an advocacy center. The director and assistant director, along with four advocacy interns, also handle walk-in clients, dealing with them on a case-by-case basis.

In addition to CARE, students can report incidents of sexual misconduct to the Office of Student Conduct or the Office of Rights and Responsibilities unit of the Department of Resident Life. This university’s health center offers counseling services, the Help Center offers anonymous hotlines, and resources are available to survivors looking to talk. A poster campaign targeted the issue of sexual misconduct, asking students in residence halls: “Got consent?” in a play on the “Got milk?” campaign.

“To its credit, the university has done a good job in trying to get the message out about sexual misconduct, whether it’s through CARE, Resident Life or the Office of Student Conduct,” Carroll said. “Each body was figuring it out on their own and doing a pretty good job of it, recognizing the importance of the issue.”

Greek life targeted its own community, addressing its specific role in the issue of sexual violence, with the Ten Man and Ten Woman Plan, headed by university graduate student Jessica Bennett.

Under the program, 10 chapter members from interested fraternities and sororities are paired with a facilitator for a semesterlong commitment to once-a-week discussions. This year, 14 groups from IFC and PHA are participating — a record number for the program.

“There is a spotlight on Greek life within the issue of sexual assault and there is a lot of concern about the role of our community,” Bennett said. “But this could also be a powerful way to change the culture and influence the entire university. The Greek community doesn’t have to be on the defensive. If we could tap into that potential, we could make campus safer, be proactive in change.”

Both the Ten Man and Ten Woman Plan and the educational programs facilitated by CARE peer educators will continue under the new Title IX office, Carroll said. The office will provide suggestions to each group in both message and content and hopefully expand their student reach over time, she said.

Looking forward

In the months and years to come, continuing changes will shape the campus and alter the way incidents are handled.

In the coming weeks, a mandatory sexual misconduct education program will go out to all students. Similar in structure to AlcoholEdu, this educational tool will brief students on the basics, so they know what they can get from the university in terms of support and help, as well as explaining policy details, Carroll said.

Afterward, an awareness campaign, “The Rule of Thumb,” will roll out, focused on what consent really means.

All faculty and staff members will receive online training for sexual harassment next semester. In the future, officials hope to expand bystander intervention programs.

And educational components aren’t the only part of the process that will change – thanks to the new role of the Title IX office, the hearing process will look different in future cases.

Before the creation of the Title IX investigator position, the university judged cases involving sexual misconduct with a hearings panel, similar to any other of conduct code violation.

This style of hearing, similar to what schools had been doing nationwide, is not ideal for cases involving sexual misconduct, Carroll said.

“There is so much context, so much history that goes into our analysis of these cases,” Carroll said. “When you get into sexual violence, there’s so much sex-based and gender-based discrimination. Officials could bring in biases without even realizing they’re doing so.”

In addition to potentially unfair rulings, the old format often meant that the accuser and the accused were forced into the same environment — even the same room — which could re-traumatize a victim or lead to undesirable interactions.

To mitigate this concern, the university will implement a new procedure for hearings, pending approval from the president’s office, Carroll said.

Within this remodeled process will be the “critical” role of the Title IX investigator, she said. In the single-investigator style, a trained administrator is responsible for interviewing both the accuser and the accused, eliminating the need for lawyers on either side. The investigator gathers the physical evidence, interviews witnesses and writes a report that is then presented to the hearings board.

Finally, the Title IX office will track and collect data to follow potential trends within the university community. All reports of sexual misconduct incidents will “filter” back to the office, streamlining the information-gathering and ensuring observation of potentially harmful situations.

“Say a student walks in, for example, and says she was sexually assaulted at a fraternity house over the weekend. We’ll say OK, and start an investigation,” Bronson said. “If another student goes to Res Life and another goes to Student Conduct and say an incident happened at the same fraternity house, then we’re going to hear about it. We’ll have connected the dots much more quickly than the university would have in the past.”

This university, with about 38,000 students in addition to faculty and staff, is not a small community.

And, as with any pool of 38,000 people, you’re “bound to have sexual harassment, sexual assaults, sexual intimidation or domestic violence,” President Loh said.

But with the nation’s renewed attention on the issue, heightened awareness and what officials describe as a culture shift, changes are being made.

“It’s a very important problem,” Loh said. “We have to measure it, we have to have the right procedures, we have to prevent it from happening, we have to have training and we have to impose sanctions.”