What You Can Do to Support Survivors on Campus

This blog post was written by Samantha Weeks and Natalie Shafer, interns with the BARCC Legal Advocacy team. 

In May, the federal Department of Education issued deeply concerning new Title IX regulations that go into effect August 14. Schools around the country are now scrambling to revise their sexual assault and harassment policies to satisfy the new rule’s requirements. While the new regulations are problematic, there are still things we can—things you can do—to support survivors on campus. 

BARCC recognizes this as a crucial time to provide guidance to schools and to urge them to make up for the new rule's failures in their own code of conduct. We created and sent comprehensive recommendations to universities in our service area outlining ways they should provide greater protections to survivors than are now required by the new rule. 

Below we share the key recommendations that students and other concerned school community members can make to schools. But first, we want to briefly explain the purpose of Title IX and why the new regulations are so harmful.

What is Title IX?

In 1972, Congress passed Title IX of the Education Amendments, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex under any federally funded education program or activity. To implement Title IX’s antidiscrimination mandate, the Department of Education has issued regulations and guidances throughout the years explaining schools’ obligations under the law. 

Title IX is an important protection for student survivors of sexual harassment and violence because it requires educational institutions to take steps to stop the harm and restore the survivor student's equal access to educational activities and programs. 

What are the problems with the new Title IX regulations?

The new regulations conflict with the purpose of Title IX and force schools to adopt policies that are harmful to survivors. The new regulations make it easier for universities to ignore sexual harassment, severely limit the conduct that schools must respond to, create a difficult grievance process that will likely  keep survivors from reporting, and ultimately make educational institutions less safe. 

Universities have an obligation to protect the safety of all students and to ensure equal access to education under not only Title IX, but under other laws, such as the Violence Against Women Act, the Clery Act, and the Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act. 

What you can do

Students and other community members who want to encourage schools to protect students from sexual harassment and violence can ask their schools to do the following:

• Address all incidents of sexual misconduct no longer recognized by the new Title IX regulations by using your school's code of conduct and a grievance process that uses the preponderance of the evidence standard and does not require cross-examination.
• Respond to sexual harassment under Title IX or other school procedures by taking prompt and effective steps aimed at ending the violence, eliminating the hostile environment it created, preventing its recurrence, and remedying its effects.
• Adopt a more trauma-informed Title IX grievance process, including establishing rules of decorum to govern hearings, offering the option to both parties to agree to waive cross-examination, using the preponderance of evidence standard if not prohibited by the regulations, and aiming to complete the process within 60 days. 
• Provide survivors with supportive measures (such as one-way no-contact orders and transcript adjustments) regardless of where or when they were harmed and even when not required by Title IX.
• Provide trauma-informed training about sexual violence for all personnel involved in addressing and investigating sexual misconduct.
• Create a rigorous standard of review to follow when outsourcing the tasks of updating the school’s sexual misconduct policy and training staff on the new regulations.
• Prohibit the use of mediation and arbitration in cases of sexual violence, dating and domestic violence, and stalking. 

Even better: ask them to incorporate all of our recommendations. 

Additional resources

Here are some more resources for advocates to check out:

• Know Your IX’s What Should My School Be Doing Toolkit and their Hands Off IX Toolkit. The Hands Off Title IX resources include a petition students can send to their college or university pressuring them to maintain the safest and fairest policies that are legal under the new regulations.
• End Rape on Campus created a breakdown of the new Title IX regulations and what they mean for student survivors’ rights. If you want to learn about other relevant laws, such as the Clery Act and the Campus SaVE Act, visit “The Laws” drop-down menu on endrapeoncampus.org.