Twenty-three percent of female and 5.4 % of male college students have experienced violent sexual assault while in college. More than 4 % of all college students have experienced stalking while working on their degree.
Each university that receives federal funding has an office to contend with the harrowing reality of those statistics. From investigating allegations to recommending appropriate punishments for violators, Title IX offices serve an integral role in ensuring sexual discrimination does not interfere with any student’s ability to receive an education.
But it would be naive to assume the mere existence of these offices is sufficient to counter sexual assault and harassment on college campuses – especially at the University of California.
There is a shocking lack of regulation of the UC’s Title IX offices with regard to whether they investigate complaints, leading to a system that varies campus by campus. Additionally, these offices do not have the authority to determine the disciplinary measures doled out to those found to have harassed or assaulted someone, thus making the process inequitable for survivors.
To mitigate complaints that the UC’s systemwide Title IX Office and policies were insulated from student input, the University created the Title IX Student Advisory Board in 2018 to interface with students from each campus.
This board could be valuable for altering some crucial shortcomings of sexual violence and sexual harassment guidelines. But it has had little impact on SVSH because it is not inherently required to be engaged with the student bodies it supposedly serves.
The Title IX Student Advisory Board is itself an exclusive board that is often not in touch with student experiences. Because administrative offices and student government officials select members, the board lends itself to being an ideological bubble.
In other words, the advisory board has been another way for the UC’s Title IX Office to give itself a gold star for listening to students – another distant space created by the Title IX Office where policy is crafted far from students.
The board’s current members were selected by a committee composed of the systemwide Title IX coordinator, the student regent, UC Office of the President student affairs administrators, student representatives from the UC Student Association, the UC Graduate and Professional Student Coalition, and the student body presidents from each campus.
These representatives, by nature of their exposure to campus bureaucracy, are often predisposed to aligning with the Title IX Office’s policy. Be it by supporting the use of flimsy alternative resolutions like restraining orders to avoid committing resources to investigate sexual harassment complaints, or immediately accepting the reason the UC settles with those who violate SVSH policy, these individuals can find other minor ways to reform the policy that don’t get at the core of the issues.
It’s not that incorporating student voices is inherently problematic; rather, this particular board’s setup does not lend itself to actually challenging the office’s policy.
Additionally, the fact that the student body presidents of each university are a part of the committee increases the likelihood that fellow student government colleagues are appointed to the board, rather than independent students who have a passion for reforming Title IX policy and procedures.
But the University’s SVSH policy has serious flaws that continue to brew a toxic culture of silence among sexual harassment and sexual assault victims.
An advisory board that does not include members who have felt the struggle and inherent flaws of campus Title IX offices is not an advisory board that can actually reform the policy governing treatment of survivors. It’s easy to rubber-stamp the process and say there’s student representation, but it is quite different to listen to those who are victims of the process and don’t see just outcomes – which is far too often a reality.
Despite the fact that the advisory board and the systemwide Title IX Office are in regular communication, their collaboration does not lead to substantive reform since board members can be ideologically homogeneous with those in the office.
Additionally, these board members are responsible for educating and reaching out to students at their respective campuses to receive input. In theory, the student advisory board and Title IX Office would adequately incorporate student input into their reforms of the SVSH.
But without input from regular students, there is no sufficient check to ensure advisory board members are getting to the core of the issues in the Title IX policy.
Sexual assault and harassment are an unfortunate reality of many students’ college experiences. The way for Title IX administrators to combat that is to look outside their office, not inside it.