Articles
NPR: 12,000 CHICKS FOUND ABANDONED IN POSTAL TRUCK RASIE CONCERNS ABOUT ANIMAL SHIPPING
NPR: espn’s new streaming app could replace cable for some but may end up costing them more
The Wash: Young people aren’t sure their votes matter
With changes on the horizon, Title IX may not be as equitable as it should be
BY LYDIA CALITRI
When Amelia Bolstad reported that a student was harassing her to American University Public Safety in October 2016, an officer told her that the Office of Title IX would be reaching out to her. She said that the Title IX officer told her that if she wanted to pursue a case, the process would involve months of communicating back and forth with both parties and witnesses before the student could be punished.
“She was telling me more of how it was going to affect her if she had to go through the process rather than what it would do to me,” Bolstad said.
Bolstad initially declined and asked for a no-contact order from the Dean of Students to keep the student away from her. When he continued to pursue her, she said Title IX reached out to her again, telling her that if she didn’t file a report, the University wouldn’t be able to help her. She filed but later dropped her case with Title IX.
“[Title IX] definitely didn’t treat me fairly because they just made me feel like a burden,” Bolstad said. “It was clear that they didn’t want to do anything for me. And I remember that it was really terrible.”
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 is a civil rights statute that was passed to ban discrimination on the basis of sex in educational settings, including sexual harassment and assault. In 2011, the Obama administration released the “Dear Colleague” letter explaining how schools would enforce the law. Included in the letter was the “preponderance of evidence” standard, meaning during the case review, the respondent, or student accused of assault, would be found responsible if the evidence showed it was more likely than not that they committed misconduct.
In November, Betsy DeVos, the secretary of the Department of Education, released a proposal of reforms to Title IX that would roll back many of the Obama administration’s guidelines. Upon its initial release, the proposal was met with criticism from students, administrators and sexual assault advocacy organizations claiming that the new guidelines would make it more difficult for students to report sexual harassment or assault. However, B. Ever Hanna, the campus policy manager of End Rape on Campus, an advocacy organization that offers support and education services to sexual assault survivors on college campuses, said that the Obama era guidelines weren’t completely effective in giving both parties equal treatment.
“I’m not sure if Title IX has ever been a law of equity,” Hanna said. “The process was more accessible and more people were covered under it. More schools were starting to think about how they needed to protect students from sexual violence previously under the Obama administration, but it still was not a law of equity.”
DeVos’s proposal included a standard for “clear and convincing evidence,” which requires a higher level of proof for the complainant, or accuser, to prove. Additionally, complainants would also have to prove that the sexual harassment was “severe” enough to get in the way of one’s education, meaning that the incident would have to impact their attendance and grades before Title IX could help them.
“Any one-time instance of sexual harassment is not going to be enough to count,” Hanna said. “That’s really alarming because we know that being sexually harassed in any way is not good.”
The proposal would also limit reporting based on where the harassment occurred, meaning any incidents that occurred off campus would not be considered for a Title IX investigation. Regina Curran, American University’s Title IX officer, said in an interview that most of the cases that the Title IX office investigates occur off campus, and that changing this standard could hurt reporting numbers, which have increased steadily since 2006.
“They’re saying we’re going to exclude stuff that happens off campus and that can absolutely reduce the number of folks who are able to get some sort of resolution here,” Curran said. “We can still provide support measures to all of those folks like academic support, housing support, no contact orders, but that we couldn’t offer a grievance process or investigation process.”
This change in guidelines could deter students like Christina Nguyen from reporting their cases. Nguyen, a sophomore at American University, said she filed a case with the Title IX office in the fall of 2017 after an incident occurred at an off-campus party. Although going through the process helped her get a no-contact order, she said it took at least four months and the respondent wasn’t punished.
“I would never make another case because it took so long,” Nguyen said. “And just hearing about other people talk about Title IX, I’ve never had someone be found guilty, and even when people were found guilty nothing bad happens to them.”
The proposal also plans to eliminate the single-investigator model. Under this model, which is used at universities nationwide, both parties meet with a university’s designated investigator separately to explain their experience, bring in witnesses and present evidence of the assault or harassment.
“All of our communication is equitable,” Curran said. “All of the notices go out at the same time. They all contain the same information so I make sure there’s no document that one party gets that the other party doesn’t get in exactly the same manner.”
Despite efforts made to keep the exchange of information equal, Viren Kiridena, a sophomore at American University who went through the Title IX process in the fall of 2018 as a respondent, said in an interview that the investigator model “kept him in the dark” about information that the complainant exchanged with the investigator before the hearing process began.
“They don’t tell you any information about what’s going on, and I followed up and I called [the Title IX officer] to ask if there’s any way I could know what this was about before I come in...but they didn’t really respond,” Kiridena said. “You’re told that you did something wrong and you have no sort of context. I was just kind of panicking.”
While Kiridena was going through the Title IX process, he was not able to access his transcripts or register for classes. He also said that the complainant was able to submit new evidence and bring in witnesses when the case was wrapping up, which drew out the process.
“I feel like their whole process creates needless anxiety for the students involved,” Kiridena said. “Even when I got the results of being found innocent, it doesn’t mean much to me now because of how long it took.”
Instead of the investigator model, DeVos’s proposal calls for a cross-examination model which would allow the hearing and questioning process to take place in front of both parties at the same time.
“Regarding cross-examination as requiring a situation where a survivor has to be re-traumatized and has to kind of lay out what happened and try to get people to believe them, this is a way of messaging that the survivor is never to be trusted and that we must prove things before we help survivors,” Hanna said.
After the proposal was released, the Department of Education issued a 30-day comment period for the public to submit comments for the final draft of Title IX reforms that ended in January. Advocacy organizations like EROC campaigned to inform college campuses about the proposal and organized workshops about how to submit comments. According to Hanna, over 100,000 comments were submitted, with about 4,000 of the comments coming from EROC’s efforts.
“In the movement, we are continuing to talk a lot about this with us and coalition partners of ours who also work in sexual violence and try to anticipate what the final rule is going to look like and really keeping an ear to the ground to get a heads up on when the administration is going to release their final rule,” Hanna said.
Bolstad and Nguyen said that their experiences with Title IX could have been improved if they were provided with external resources. Bolstad said that after she dropped her case with Title IX, she filed a case in D.C. court and was responsible for finding her own legal representation.
“Once I didn’t want to go through Title IX, they just told me that AU couldn’t help me,” Bolstad said. “The public safety officer who was going to come to court with me no longer could, so I literally had to go to court alone. I feel like if they provided resources besides Title IX if they don’t want people to go to Title IX that would really help.”
As the Department of Education reads through comments submitted for the final draft, Hanna hopes that they take into consideration the concerns of sexual assault survivors.
“I think it has yet to be a law of equity,” Hanna said. “I talk with people about Title IX every day and I remind people that it is a civil rights law, it’s not a criminal law, it doesn’t require anyone going to jail it...It basically says no one should have to experience sexual violence to go to school.”
This piece was previously published on my Advanced Reporting class website.
BY LYDIA CALITRI
In her first congressional appearance since the Democrats took control of the House, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen was met with criticism as she encouraged Congress to support efforts to increase security at the southern border.
Nielsen told the members of the House Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday that the rise in human trafficking and drug smuggling at the southern border have created a “legitimate national emergency” and that the best way to effectively address these issues is to crack down on illegal immigration. She also said that President Trump’s request for a border wall was necessary to achieve this goal.
“We need a barrier,” Nielsen said. “We cannot take operational control at the border without a barrier.”
Many Republicans on the committee favored the construction of a border wall to prevent drugs like opium and fentanyl from entering the country. Nielsen told the committee that last year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) seized “enough fentanyl to kill every American twice over.” Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss., said that drug trafficking will continue to increase in record numbers if a wall isn’t put in place.
“Without a physical barrier, it would be all but impossible for us to secure our border from those people seeking to introduce the poison that we know…from entering our southern border,” Guest said.
Human trafficking was another concern that Republicans brought up to Nielsen. Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., asked her to consider the number of rapes and assaults that could be prevented if our border security cracked down on human trafficking.
“How many women does it take to be raped before this really is a crisis?” Green said.
Democrats on the committee demanded that Nielsen address the treatment of migrants, particularly families with children, that have been separated at the border. Under the zero-tolerance policy that former attorney general Jeff Sessions put in place in May, the Department of Homeland Security could direct family separation so the parents could be prosecuted. Although Nielsen said that she advocated for keeping families together, she justified Sessions’ policy for enforcing penalties on those crossing the border illegally.
“The consequence of any adult going to jail in this country is they are separated from their child,” Nielsen said. “The point of [the policy] was to increase prosecutions for those breaking the law and not accept any class of aliens.”
Democrats panned Nielsen for upholding the zero-tolerance policy, which allowed children to be kept in detention facilities at the border while their legal status is processed. Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., repeatedly asked Nielsen if she knew whether children were still being put in “cages” by Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), but she failed to give a straightforward answer.
“I saw the cyclone fences that were made as cages, and you did too,” Thompson said. “All you have to do is admit it. If it’s bad policy, then change it, but don’t mislead the committee.”
Green said to the committee that the photos of children in these detention centers that surfaced last year were from the Obama administration and were being used to turn the public against Trump’s policies.
“This isn’t about just the safety of children,” Green said. “This is about slamming the president.”
Rep. Nanette Barragán, D-Calif., slammed Nielsen for allowing border patrol agents to turn away asylum seekers. Although Nielsen claimed that asylum seekers would not be turned away at ports of entry, Barragán said that while visiting the border on Saturday, she witnessed border patrol agents telling a Honduran asylum seeker to leave.
“Either you are lying to this committee, or you don’t know what’s happening at the border,” Barragán said.
Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., asked Nielsen about her plans to address DACA recipients and those with temporary protected status. Nielsen said she supported granting legal status to DACA recipients, but she would not support a bill to give them a pathway to citizenship.
“We can’t handle that situation without handling the situation that brought them here to begin with,” Nielsen said.
Protestors for Families Belong Together, a grassroots movement to reunite migrant children with their families, were a prominent presence in the hearing room. A group consisting of about a dozen women, some with toddlers and infants, had white baby onesies pinned to their clothes to show support for children detained at the border. The group was removed by a police officer during Nielsen’s opening remarks.
Some committee members called for a bipartisan solution on border security issues. Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Ariz., said that the committee tried to pass an immigration reform bill in November that would also provide funding to improve border security, but the Democrats did not support it. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-TX, said that partisanship was to blame for the bill’s failure and called upon Congress to take action.
“It’s Congress that’s failed to act to solve this problem,” McCaul said. “Until Congress acts to solve the problem, we are going to continue to have this constant problem on our border.”
This piece was previously published on my Advanced Reporting class website.
Protecting Title IX: how activist organizations are responding to proposed changes
BY LYDIA CALITRI
When Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos released a series of proposed changes to Title IX in November that would narrow the definition of sexual harassment and alter the hearing process, activist organizations immediately took action to oppose the changes.
Shiwali Patel, the senior counsel for education at the National Women’s Law Center, said that if these proposed changes are finalized, schools would be required to dismiss reports of sexual harassment, including sexual assault, that occur outside of educational activities as well as reports that aren’t severe enough to meet the more narrow definition of sexual harassment. She also mentioned that school employees such as professors and coaches would be able to ignore sexual harassment reported to them. She said that these changes could lead to underreporting and further traumatizing victims, making it more difficult for them to pursue their education.
“If [the changes] are final, we are concerned that eventually what this would do is make schools less safe,” said Patel. "It doesn't take into account the reality that the impact of sexual assault is not going to impact one more or less because of the location."
After the proposal’s release, the Department of Education issued a 60-day comment period for the public to suggest changes. During this comment period, NWLC worked with educational institutions, members of Congress and other civil rights organizations such as End Rape on Campus and Know Your IX to share information about the proposal and encourage them to submit comments. They also used Twitter and Facebook Live events to educate the general public and shared video tutorials online on how to submit handwritten comments. Patel said that over 100,000 comments were submitted to the Department of Education for review when the comment period ended on Jan. 30.
“We’ve been really active in this whole Title IX fight to make sure we could do everything that we can so that these rules don’t become finalized as they are written because they would weaken protections for survivors,” said Patel.
Advocacy organizations like the Network for Victim Recovery of D.C. focused on getting students involved during the comment period. NVRDC, which provides forensic medical exams, free legal services and emotional support for sexual assault victims, offered Title IX training to college campuses so students knew their rights before submitting a comment. Naida Henao, the strategic advocacy counsel for NVRDC, said that their goal was to help students understand the changes and get them to take action in whatever way they felt comfortable.
“We really focused during this comment period on equipping people with the information that they needed to have pervasive advocacy efforts,” said Henao. “We thought our job mainly being as translators, breaking [the proposal] down and helping people be able to digest the material in a way that then they could feel empowered to put their own spin on their advocacy efforts.”
Despite the thousands of comments the proposal received during the initial comment period, the government shutdown made information sharing difficult for student activist organizations. Keke Debebe, co-director of Students Against Sexual Violence at American University, said that the organization planned an event in the fall semester for students interested in submitting comments to the proposal, but it fell through because the Department of Education shared little information about how long the comment period would be open during the shutdown. She also said that the Department of Education re-opened the comment period on Feb. 15, but only for 24 hours.
“It was kind of a huge letdown, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t going to stop our activism,” said Debebe. “If anything, it’s probably going to drive us forward.”
SASV works closely with the university’s Health Promotion and Advocacy Center to put on events that bring awareness to students’ Title IX rights. Debebe said that that the organization is in the process of planning events for Sexual Assault Awareness Month in April, the biggest of which is Take Back the Night. During Take Back the Night, students march around campus to show their support for sexual assault survivors. After the march, students gather together at the Kay Spiritual Life Center where sexual assault survivors have the chance to share their experiences with others. Debebe, who attended Take Back the Night for the first time last year, enjoys the event because it inspires students to take action on an issue that affects college campuses across the country.
“It’s this huge event designed to not only bring awareness to the fact that survivors are on campus, but also as an empowering activity to show that we are here and these issues do affect us,” said Debebe.
In addition to Take Back the Night, SASV is also planning educational events like Title IX and Tacos, an event that informs students on the basics of Title IX law while providing free food. Debebe said that students in general don’t really know what Title IX is, and informing students of their rights will better help them understand the impact of the plans that the Department of Education has proposed to make.
“It’s important for students to know their rights and by understanding their rights, they can understand that when someone is trying to take some of them away, they know what’s actually happening,” said Debebe.
This piece was previously published on my Advanced Reporting class website.