An average Title IX case can take anywhere from one to six years.
This has to do with the state in which a student is located and what the “statute of limitations” is for that state, according to Know Your IX.
If a senior in college got raped, they would potentially have to wait until they’re 27 to see any kind of justice come from the school.
Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in educational institutions that receive federal funding.
With new changes being proposed from the current administration and the Department of Education, Title IX cases could become even longer, more stressful and more legally involved.
The pressure, the time and the constant stress of what direction the government will take laws and regulations for Title IX programs in higher education are never very steady.
Society has a magnifying glass over cases of sexual misconduct. The era of the MeToo movement has given people the space to open up and that means any disregarding of cases of sexual misconduct is constantly under discussion in the news.
The Chronicle of Higher Education has conducted 502 investigations of colleges for possibly mishandling reports of sexual violence. There are still 305 open. Most cases come from schools like Cornell University, Princeton University, Stanford University, Kansas State University and Indiana University in Bloomington.
Title IX coordinators and officers are continuously adapting and preparing for any change that could come with how they handle cases of sexual misconduct on college campuses.
North Central is no different. In fact, in the past few years, there have been a lot more conversations happening around cases of sexual harassment on campus.
From fliers to Twitter threads, North Central has been forced to take a hard look at not only potential acts of sexual misconduct on campus but how we choose to acknowledge and deal with them.
It’s a conversation that is happening all around the country as colleges grapple with the normalization of sexual violence, but has become a very prominent and hyperlocal issue.
Mary Carter, a student who was sexually assaulted by a North Central student and continues to go through the Title IX process, said that colleges are stereotypically bad at dealing with sexual assaults on campuses. She said all colleges can be doing better, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Originally, she went to the Naperville Police Department, which dropped her case but then picked it back up in August once they felt there was more evidence. Her attacker was arrested and suspended indefinitely on campus. After the court case was closed, the Title IX officer reached out to Carter.
She was thankful that Gordon reached out to her after the court case. Any small discrepancy present during the investigation would be used against her during the court proceedings.
“A lot of universities will conduct the investigation at the same time. I never thought about how it could hurt the victim in this situation,” said Carter.
North Central has a team of investigators with no conflict of interest looking over her case. She is still getting weekly updates about the state of her investigation and how it will punish or not punish her attacker.
“When I had my interview with the police I didn’t get to say everything I wanted to say. I was cut off a few times and was asked questions that led my story in a different way. It made me feel like I wasn’t able to give my full two cents,” said Carter.
Title IX cases can be long, traumatic and draining.
In her Twitter thread that gained traction in May with around 500 likes, Carter wrote, “I was asked to go on the stand and give an impact statement, and then I was cross-examined. His lawyers tried to make a fool out of me, but I was granted some partial restitution for medical expenses anyway. I DID EVERYTHING RIGHT, AND THE WHOLE THING STILL TOOK 25 + MONTHS.”
According to RAINN, the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization, 11.2% of all students experience rape or sexual assault on campus. At the same time, only one in six college-aged female survivors will receive assistance from a victim services agency.
Will that 1 in 6 figure stay the same or will students just spend years having their cases investigated?
An article from the New Yorker in 2019 titled “Assessing Betsy Devos’s Proposed Rules on Title IX and Sexual Assault” discusses some of the new proposed changes that DeVos and the Department of Education are proposing to unveil.
“Worst of all, the new regulations say that schools are in violation of Title IX only if they know of sexual-misconduct allegations and are deliberately indifferent to them— an exceedingly low expectation that appears designed to allow schools off the hook.”
Among the proposed changes are live hearings, the choice regarding the “preponderance of evidence” standard, a new definition of a hostile environment and a change to the process of investigations.
While some schools have already found loopholes in the process, many of the regulations could favor the school over the victim.
The changes were supposed to be launched in the fall, but there is still no sign of implementation. There is a list of comments that are still being processed. Right now, Title IX is structured using an investigation style, but a lot of these changes would break this existing structure.
Rebecca Gordon, the Title IX coordinator at NCC, said that she has some concerns about the upcoming changes.
“I’m very concerned that the model that they’re going for is going to look like a courtroom. The whole point of this is that it’s a college policy it’s not a criminal investigation, but it’s becoming more criminalized in terms of what our policies are expected to be,” said Gordon.
By making the process into a courtroom style hearing, it will create an entirely different environment for the reporting process.
Both parties would have representatives of their choosing, which could be anyone from a friend to a parent. There’s a lot of stress given to cross-examination, which may not be as healthy of an option when it comes to getting justice.
“One particular case I was exiting with the responding party, he had apologized to me ‘I’m so sorry you had to read the things that I texted.’ It’s like this public shaming and I don’t think that’s productive. This is about whether or not someone violates a policy,” said Gordon. “I don’t believe that cross-examination is the end-all way of determining credibility. We determine credibility by the way someone’s account of what occurred hangs together, how it’s corroborated by other independent forms of information …”
Lisa Long, who serves as a Title IX deputy coordinator, said that some of the changes can make the process a lot harder for students seeking justice. Students would have different levels of access given financial benefits.
“I think it has the potential to be more traumatizing for both the reporting and responding parties,” said Long. “I think it may privilege students who have more resources because you can hire attorneys. It has implications of the kind of access some students may or may not have to what they need and it makes everything much more public.”
The level of vulnerability that would come with things like cross-examination (possibly even involving parties’ parents) would be diminishing the accessibility of Title IX investigations schools have been working toward over the years.
Carter said that after her conversation about the investigation, she was able to read the typed transcript and edit it to make it more accurate. While this is already a policy at NCC, it would be included in the new changes.
Would this process be taking a jab at all the work that movements like MeToo have had on institutions?
“Whether it’s a more restrictive or less restrictive policy or the burden of proof is being changed to higher or lower … it’s difficult to know how things are going to turn out,” said Long. “Any policy changes that make folks who report feel more vulnerable is not a good direction to go in necessarily.”
Often times, Title IX cases and investigation processes can feel concealed, private and difficult to talk about.
Gordon said that while there has been this growing conversation, the most important aspect of this dialogue is coming to her. This could help create change in the way the overall process is run.
An article from The Chronicle of Higher Education in September titled “Life Inside the Title IX Pressure Cooker” discusses the high turnover rate of Title IX coordinators.
“Many colleges have had three, four, or even five different Title IX coordinators in the recent era of heightened enforcement, which began eight years ago.”
For a victim to come forward, there needs to be an atmosphere of trust. Since the Dear Colleague letter in 2011, schools have been working to investigate reports from students more vigorously.
Would students willingly trust someone in a position that is seemingly in a never-ending rotating door?
“The Title IX enforcers described living in a constant state of uncertainty, in which new federal guidance, state laws, or court rulings could abruptly upend the status quo. Fearing that one tiny misstep could lead to a lawsuit or an investigation by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights,” said Brown.
In a constantly evolving atmosphere for sexual misconduct, regulations seem to be always in the air and at any moment likely to change.
“You do see a churn even when a coordinator leaves a position in this region, there’s people going to different institutions. It is a highly stressful job, but I have to say with the right institutional support, you are able to manage that stress,” said Gordon.
NCC continues to work on their program. Right now Gordan said the model includes 22 to 23 trained staff members who have over 50 hours of training in order to help strengthen non-biased decision making. Even then, regulations can make it hard for students to get the justice they need.
“I used to work in Chicago and I didn’t have any cases even though students were willing to go forward, even if police had investigated and thought they had a strong case, they didn’t make it through felony review. It’s a very high bar, the state attorney has to feel confident that they can win the case,” said Gordon.
Students coming forward can often result in not much action.
“I wish that NCC was taking it more seriously when other people were making complaints about him. I think it’s unfortunate that I couldn’t come forward sooner. I think that if I had all of this evidence that this is a pattern for him,” said Carter.
As issues continue to occur and gather conversation about sexual misconduct in higher education, it raises the question if all schools have an equal footing to deal with these cases.
An article from The New York Times from October titled, “She Was Raped by a Classmate. She Still Had to Go to School With Him” describes the case of a high school senior girl who was forced to be near him every day in school.
“Universities and colleges in the United States have developed extensive procedures for handling sexual abuse among students, although the rules have been criticized by victims’ advocates and those who believe the rights of the accused are not being protected. But thousands of secondary schools across the country appear to be far less prepared.”
For high school, 7.4% of students reported being forced into sexual intercourse when they did not consent.
The relevance and application of Title IX regulations extend beyond higher education, which makes it even more vital for it to be accessible to all students and talked about with all students.
NCC would be restricted from the new regulations and would make the school have to start over in working and reworking what is effective in Title IX cases.
“We have to comply with federal law otherwise they could take away our federal funding. Which would be bad,” said Long.
As potential changes continue to be developed, it’s important to keep the environment and culture of coming forward alive.
“I wish that people would talk about it more. That’s why I will never stop talking about it,” said Carter.
