A group of panelists last night met in Miller Hall for the 4th Annual Tufts Sexual Violence Forum, where they discussed recent changes made to the university's sexual assault policy that reflect a new interpretation of Title IX.
The revisions implemented in the summer follow on the heels of a complete overhaul of the policy just a year ago in the summer of 2010. The overhaul was a response to students' concerns about the previous policy's vagueness.
The panel was made up of a number of Tufts administrators, including Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman, Judicial Affairs Officer Veronica Carter, Tufts University Police Department Captains Mark Keith and Linda O'Brien, Director of the Office of Residential Life and Learning Yolanda King, Interim Title IX Coordinator Sonia Juardo and Violence Prevention Program Coordinator Elaine Theodore.
The panelists highlighted recent developments in the interpretation of Title IX, a federal gender−equity law prohibiting sex discrimination in educational programs and institutions.
Although Title IX is typically invoked in cases involving the allocation of funds to student athletics, the Office for Civil Rights this April published a letter in which it highlighted the need to expand the statute's interpretation to encompass cases of sexual violence and harassment.
"The text of the law hasn't really changed. It's always said that sexual harassment cannot exist — it was always just interpreted as discrimination in women's athletics," Juardo said. "In April this year, the Office of Civil Rights sent out a memo to everyone saying, "We want you to focus on Title IX broader than that … we want to start looking at sexual assault in particular."
The latest policy change reflects this new interpretation of Title IX, which includes sexual harassment as part of sexual discrimination, thus obligating colleges to respond to it, according to Theodore.
One of the most significant changes is the instatement of trained Title IX liaisons across all of Tufts' campuses, Jurado explained.
The Office of Equal Opportunity's website currently lists 10 employees on the Medford/Somerville campus as Title IX liaisons. These liaisons are available to receive and forward reports of sexual discrimination to the Title IX coordinator and to direct individuals to appropriate resources.
"We wanted to make sure that we had people everywhere who knew what they were doing and could respond to it." Juardo said. "The point is to make a face ... that could make reporting easier to people. It was really an issue of accessibility and visibility."
Another change to the policy concerns the role of the fact−finding body in campus sexual assault cases.
Reitman provided some historical context, explaining that up until 2009, the judicial adjudication protocol for all cases — whether involving academic integrity, theft or sexual assault — was to convene a student−faculty panel that acted as a jury.
This procedure for dealing with alleged sexual assaults elicited criticism and a call for change as many felt that forcing the two parties to address each other in the same room created a hostile environment, he further explained.
"To eliminate that hostile environment, we looked around at all the different practices," Reitman said. "We wanted to see what could be brought here in order to avoid lawyer involvement … and create a more user−friendly opportunity for everyone to get a chance to tell a story."
The university decided in 2010 to adopt a process used at Harvard University. Under this system, an investigator talks through the alleged assault with both the victim and the perpetrator, as well as witnesses, Reitman said.
Tufts at the time lacked trained personnel to fill the fact−finder role and had to hire an external investigator, according to Reitman. As part of the revised policy, the university reassigned this fact−finding role to the Office of Equal Opportunity and hired a Title IX coordinator within the office.
"We've always been involved in handling harassment mainly for employees," Juardo said. "In the last year, we've taken on those cases for students. We only take in the facts ... and direct it to the appropriate body."
Reitman noted that this was not a major procedural change to the policy.
"This year, we have people who are trained to do that kind of work. We still use the same fact−finding investigative models," he said. "There has been a tweak, but it is not a change in that model of significance."
