Whether new federal rules governing how to resolve cases of on-campus sex crimes will, as many critics fear, prompt some victims to stay silent about being assaulted is yet to be shown. Nevertheless, in the lead-up to an Aug. 14 deadline to comply with those regulations, many colleges and universities, as well as attorneys, acknowledge that navigating these rules will be challenging.
At Widener University, administrator Alison Dougherty is aiming for a framework that encourages students to report sex crimes against them and for credibly deciding whether those allegations are true. It will, Dougherty said, be a considerable undertaking.
“The regulations set a baseline. They’re a bare minimum. They’re definitely a paradigm shift,” Dougherty, associate vice president for human resources and coordinator of federal Title IX anti-sex discrimination programs on her Pennsylvania campus, told Diverse.
“The reality is that these new rules will create barriers to reporting,” added Dougherty, who has worked on campus crime issues for the Obama White House and the U.S. Justice Department. “We’re really looking at what options there are … that don’t make this process adversarial and that keep it fair to all parties involved.”
U.S. Education Secretary Betsy Devos’ overhaul of protocols for adjudicating allegations of on-campus rape was outlined in a 2,003-page report that she and supporters of the revamp argue, in part, makes matters fairer for the accused. Among proponents of the changes are the Independent Women’s Forum, which says they “restore due process on campus,” and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which spent a decade championing several of the new rules.
Under normal circumstances, implementing such sweeping new campus regulations can take a year or more, Widener’s Dougherty said. Short of more expansive planning, as an interim move, she likely will appoint and have trained a single hearing officer, rather than a panel of them, to handle sexual assault allegations arising among Widener students. And although college faculty and staff no longer must report to campus officials any knowledge they have of a student-related sex crime under the new rules, Dougherty said she hopes her colleagues won’t be so hands-off. That’s precisely the kind of complacency that could lead an assaulted college student — old enough to be deemed an adult but not always with an adult’s understanding or wherewithal — not to divulge an assault, she said.
Like Dougherty, Kris Macomber, a sociology and criminology professor at North Carolina’s Meredith College, predicts that fewer assault victims, going forward, will report what transpired. “For one,” said Macomber, whose published research has explored sexual violence, among other topics, “harassment will change, making only on-campus harassment covered under Title IX, which is problematic because a significant number of assaults happen off campus [in] fraternity houses, bars and off-campus
