Content warning: this article contains mentions of sexual assault. Note: The names of survivors in this story have been changed to protect their identity.
“It takes more energy to punish the person that hurt you than it does to do nothing about it.”
After filing a case with Title IX in March, Rachelle Doe expected the whole process to be finished by the time the semester had ended.
“I ended up going through two to three different advisors,” said Rachelle, “one of whom I found on my own time, two others were provided by Emory.”
Due to a lack of time, her own advisor resigned, forcing her to turn to Emory’s resources. She submitted witness testimonies and wrote personal statements, as well as waiting for the respondent to collect his own evidence.
Rachelle was not the only one to file a case against her perpetrator; she said two other survivors and herself each wrote each other down as witnesses to “help each other with the variety of cases” that would be introduced to the Title IX office.
She described an evidence collection process lasting multiple months, which was further disrupted by “administration changes” in the department.
By the time summer rolled around, nothing had been resolved. Rachelle’s case dragged into the new school year. But by then, she felt discouraged and frustrated.
“I continued to participate, but was definitely responding a bit slower, because I had already submitted [all the information].”
“The head of the department was constantly changing,” she said. “It was really confusing to know whether my case was taking so long because of that or because of [the office’s] arbitrarily high case number.”
Rachelle waited almost two years. “Eventually, I stopped participating,” Rachelle said.
Unfortunately, the traumatic and drawn-out experiences of survivors with Emory’s Office of Title IX is nothing new.
In the ideal world, college is a community, a point of academic departure and excellence. For Emory women, gaining the right to attend higher education didn’t occur until 1953. Equal education necessitates equal protection and safety. But women must beware of the Red Zone, the three months from the start of the semester to Thanksgiving break when over half of college sexual assaults occur.
Reaching Emory’s Title IX office requires a stroke of good luck, since the office is constantly shifting personnel. Add in the Department of Education (DOE)’s investigation into Emory’s compliance with federal Title IX regulations and getting in contact with anyone who has been with the department for more than a year is next to impossible.
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In 2019, Emory faced a compliance review that exposed concerns from the DOE, such as “ambiguity concerning the handling of allegations of sexual misconduct,” as well as “confusion as to where students should submit complaints.” Though the review focused on gaps in incidents that occurred from 2013 to 2015, the report identified issues with communication inconsistencies between both the respondent, the complainant and the Title IX office; respondents experiencing delays in the process; and a failure to provide progress reports for each case.
The haunting reality is that issues described in this review nearly a decade ago are the same ones survivors tell us today.
Without evidence, prosecuting becomes far more complex. Last month, Rachelle withdrew her complaint. Nothing was happening, Rachelle said, Rachelle said. Repeatedly telling her story to new advisors — who were empathetic to her pain but clearly had little power in the administrative process — was traumatic.
“I think my grievances lie more within the bureaucratic process of Title IX and less [within] the administrators that are only there to help students at sort of a lower level,” she said.
The advisors would eventually inform Rachelle of the perpetrator’s penalty. “I found out that the worst punishment that my offender was likely to receive would be a sex ed course, which most Emory students are already required to take when they come to school.”
“I felt less safe reporting than I would have if I hadn’t reported,” she said. “I would still have had to see him.”
In an email to the Wheel, the Title IX office said it commensurates sanctions with the “severity of the policy violation,” and officers take “aggravating circumstances into consideration when recommending sanctions.”
In the eyes of Title IX policy, sexual assault isn’t enough for severe punishment, and the potential for recidivism warrants only a reteaching of safe sex and consent that was violated in the first place.
Given that speed is key in sexual assault investigations, the length of the Title IX process is intolerable. The more time that passes, memories fade and evidence disappears. Collecting DNA samples within 72 hours is imperative to persecuting a perpetrator. While bathing, changing and cleaning up are often the first steps taken by survivors, many of these activities could wash off any evidence and decrease the likelihood of accountability.
Certainly, in order for Title IX or the Emory Police Department (EPD) to be able to address the case accordingly, such details are legally necessary. The trauma of reporting such incidents however, can dissuade survivors from coming forward. Clara Roe was one survivor who felt left out by the process.
Clara experienced an assault in her first semester of college. Instead of reporting to Title IX, she chose to go to the EPD, where she knew she could anonymously open up a case against the individual. She’d been informed that going through Title IX would require her to stand in front of her perpetrator and publicly relive her trauma in front of a three-person panel consisting of faculty and trained graduate students.
“When I ask[ed] for help,” said Clara, “It was, ‘call the police.’” So she did. While Clara remembers the man on the phone being nice, the conversation was “really direct” and required her to repeat exactly what had happened, where she was touched and to verify those statements over and over.
Clara said EPD took her statement, filed away her case and never contacted her again.
The lack of clearly outlined steps to reporting a Title IX case on the website further deterred Clara.
“I looked up how to do this … Maybe [the process] did something and I was not updated, but I don’t know how to check.”
Another incident occurred later. But after finding out the process was not anonymous, and a hearing would result with the perpetrator present, Clara was steadfast in not going through with Title IX; she didn’t want to retell the story and go through everything she did without progress being made.
For some survivors, it’s this precise idea of going to a hearing that discourages them from going to the Title IX office.
“In order to get anything to happen,” Clara said, “You have to be able to have a connection…and hope that they believe you.” No one ever communicated with Clara if the perpetrator was notified about the accusation. To her knowledge, no witnesses were interviewed and no evidence was gathered.
The EPD’s statement to the Wheel said that “during the course of an investigation, [EPD] will gather and examine evidence and interview any potential witnesses.”
Needless to say, Clara’s experience did not follow the course of action outlined.
“I have a [case] number, but I don’t even know what I’d do with it at this point,” she said.
The Title IX office said in a statement to the Wheel that the department “seeks to resolve every investigation and any subsequent adjudication process within 120 business days from the receipt of a Formal Complaint.”
The testimonies from Rachelle and Clara contradict Emory’s own policies, destroying not only the integrity of the office itself but also the faith of students in the process.
Over and over again, the University’s Title IX office has proven their inability to protect both the accuser and the survivor, signaling a greater problem with the University’s prioritization – or lack thereof – of student safety.
The Title IX office at Emory has created a culture that disincentivizes survivors from reporting their experiences, which leads to severe underreporting and under penalization of sexual assault. Clara’s past encounter with Emory’s process became the reason she chose not to report a second assault that happened to her in the spring semester. Emory’s 2022 Annual Security and Annual Fire Safety Report totals eight instances of rape, seven of fondling, five cases of dating and domestic violence and 12 cases of stalking in 2021 — a serious underestimate given that 1 in 5 women experience attempted or successful sexual assault during their time in college. Granted, this shouldn’t come as a surprise, given that a 2017 analysis of campus sexual assault data reports 77% of campuses claim there were no incidents of sexual violence.
“Of all the schools I’ve worked with [on sexual assault cases],” said Lisa Anderson, the executive director at Atlanta Women for Equality, “Emory is the worst by far.”
Emory doesn’t just fail survivors; it also disregards students accused of sexual misconduct. In fact, the University is currently facing a federal lawsuit involving its alleged mishandling of a former law student’s Title IX case. The complainant was not only unable to receive a law degree, but she also alleged that Emory was engaging in gender-based discriminations. The student was forced to pass the bar in a different state.
According to the complainant, Emory “compromise[d] her chances to pursue a successful career as an attorney by knowingly falsely identifying her as a sexual misconduct perpetrator in her academic records.” In a statement to the Wheel, the Title IX office was unable to comment on the lawsuit and stated that “sexual misconduct of any kind is not tolerated at Emory.”
Anderson, the attorney involved in this lawsuit, works pro bono on all these cases. Along with her nonprofit Atlanta Women for Equality, she provides free legal assistance to women involved in sex discrimination cases.
“To be denied the opportunity to study at Emory because of what the Title IX department does and for [my clients] to have to transfer because their lives are hell, is sad,” Anderson said.
She became an attorney after her advisor raped her while she was in graduate school, determined to fight for the protection of women in institutions which are supposed to keep them safe.
“I want my kids [my clients] to have what I didn’t have,” Anderson continued. “I want them to have a voice, not just to be written off as crazy … for them to know that it’s not their fault, and they are entitled not to be raped and that there are ways to fight back.”
While Title IX might be the foundation of gender equity in education, Anderson said, the Clery Act is crucial in helping people exercise their rights. Universities abide by both, with clearly written policies and procedures, involving a transparent disciplinary process and an adequate opportunity on both sides to defend their case. Somehow, while being an elite institution, Emory failed. Despite having the opportunity amid a lawsuit and an investigation by the DOE to recognize their shortcomings and make necessary changes, Emory refuses to correct them.
According to Anderson, Emory’s Title IX office demands irrelevant and often triggering information. Some office administrators act in intimidating manners toward survivors, like engaging in accusatory questioning, “basically [as if] the survivor is on trial,” Anderson said in an interview with the Wheel. Under current regulations, the accused are able to file counter-complaints with seemingly illogical claims that somehow receive the same weighted consideration as the complainant’s report. Further, it refuses to grant the necessary parties timely access to information that each member of the allegations are legally entitled to have. The Office aims to resolve cases in 120 days; in reality, some cases can go on for several months. When the office withholds information, like an addition to the case by the respondent, the complainant is confronted with the addition at the hearing and is not given enough time to follow through and disprove it, Anderson said.
For example, one of the cases Anderson is working on now has been ongoing for the last three years; another case required “unquestionably relevant” information that Emory denied the complainant access to, forcing Anderson to make an appeal for knowledge well within their rights. Under Title IX, Emory must provide each party with all the information they know about the case. Though deliberate indifference, a school’s inaction when confronted with new case information, can lead to lawsuits, Emory continues to do so regardless.
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Neglecting cases doesn’t make Emory special; it makes them a bureaucracy. But not changing an obviously flawed system (since 2013 when Emory was first investigated by the DOE), makes going to school here outright dangerous. We blindly walk around campus, knowing the number of people with Title IX allegations above their head probably far exceeds what will ever be reported — all because the reporting process is so inaccessible. This is not to condemn survivors who chose not to report; filing a complaint about what is likely the most traumatic event you’ve ever endured is not easy. It means putting that story out there for someone else to perceive, to freely pass judgment. It’s an act of sheer courage and bravery, attempting to keep the rest of the community safe and signaling that the University does not let perpetrators of sexual violence go unpunished.
The difficulty of the process is partially due to the personnel changes undergone by the Title IX office over the last couple of years. Numerous people, including Deputy Title IX Coordinator Harriet Ruskin, have noted the shifts. The lag in these investigations can be partially attributed to these changes, Ruskin said. For new employees, onboarding quickly and navigating high caseloads during the Red Zone can prove difficult, and it necessitates some degree of compassion. We need to understand how much pressure the Title IX office is under, from the student body, the University and its seeming inability to comprehend federal laws. The current federal investigation into Emory is filed through the Clery Center by Anderson in conjunction with the DOE, Anderson told the Wheel. But for an entire department to be virtually unreachable because of the constant change in Title IX coordinators is beyond unacceptable.
Sexual Assault Peer Advocates (SAPA) Vice Presidents Braden White (24C) and Angel Li (24C) echoed this sentiment.
“We have to beg the Office of Respect to talk to us,” said White in an interview with the Wheel. “The Office of Respect and Title IX both struggle with retaining employees … it is nearly impossible to build a relationship because the turnover is so quick.”
The office attributed the turnover to the pandemic in an email to the Wheel, “Like other departments across the country, Emory’s Department of Title IX experienced staffing changes during the pandemic,” the Title IX office said.
No matter how much advocacy organizations, such as the Center for Women and SAPA, are willing to help students gain access to the resources they need, it is fundamentally impossible if the University keeps pressing reset on its office.
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While the Title IX office faces justified criticism, we must be clear the advisors are not at fault; it’s an institutional issue. Working in the Title IX office isn’t easy, and not acknowledging that would be a great fault in this piece. Fairness and equity are careful lines the office has to toe in an effort to protect all members of the Emory community. According to Ruskin, one of the most important things they try to emphasize is “mak[ing] the best decision at the time [to be] sure students are supported.”
However, the Title IX office — and Emory — as a whole should be held accountable for its lack of transparency, and even to an extent, the high rates of turnover that causes many students to flounder and not even know where to report their case.
Ruskin works as an advisor at the Goizueta Business School after previous jobs as an investigator and a hearing panelist. As with all the other deputy coordinators at each of Emory’s schools, she serves as a liaison between the students and the office. Ruskin is responsible for forwarding information of any disclosed sexual harassment incidents to the Title IX office to follow up directly and to make sure the student receives any support services they need. For instance, action steps might include starting an investigation, or switching schedules and living conditions to avoid seeing the accused. Mutual No Contact orders are also offered to survivors as another supportive measure.
Even just listening to Ruskin describe the process is confusing. From the complaint to the investigation to the potential hearing, trying to protect and support both parties can be an almost irreconcilable task. Emory is trying hard to “consider both parties during processing,” Ruskin said, rather than forcing one person to immediately rearrange their lives to uproot previous habits.
“I don’t know how to do Title IX,” Clara said again and again.
But the Title IX office is working on it. A recent change the office has made is having lawyers involved not only as advisory positions, but also to be able to defend each party at hearings. While Ruskin has not been a part of any cases with these changes, the shift to having lawyers on hearing panels should give the department more leeway and a faster turnaround time. Before, the hearing panels — consisting largely of staff and faculty members as well as trained graduate students — took longer due to the difficulties of schedules and making sure they didn’t coincide with the panelists’ other full-time jobs. The office hopes this change will speed up the process and bring more survivors to justice.
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The Title IX office cares. After working at Vanderbilt, Emory’s new Title IX Coordinator Nicole Babcock returned to Emory with the goal of communication and accessibility. It’s crucial to remember that the Title IX office is tightly bound by the law and federal regulations; cases are heard and investigated by the office based on what both parties are saying, evidence or witness testimony and guidance from the Title IX regulations. The DOE investigation makes it clear that communication is imperative to having a fair trial. But what good is communication when the directors keep leaving a year after implementing changes, and survivors are still trying to get in touch with the one person who was supposed to know about their case?
We want to have sympathy for the office. We do. We desperately want to believe that caring about students and wanting to make them feel safe and supported as they go through emotional trauma, is enough. But it’s not. At least one case has gone unresolved for two years. Coordinators and case advisors seem to vanish yearly.
Each interview started similarly. When we talked with people from the Center for Women and Anderson, brief introductions followed quickly with a summary of our article: learning more about Emory’s Title IX office, its history and its role in helping students report cases of sexual assault. Before we could even finish our sentence, our interviewees would chuckle, some would scoff and say, “good luck.” Survivors feel discouraged from reporting their cases because of prior experiences with the long, invasive process. Where was the office when this all happened? Perhaps busy onboarding the new employees all over again.
Training for sexual assault is also limited. First-year orientation at Emory and required ECS Emory Edge classes offer some degree of education, but the lack of continuous and stringent policies involving sexual misconduct leave people with major knowledge gaps. In fact, most people are unaware that while sexual misconduct reporting falls specifically under the Title IX office, the Office of Respect and the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion similarly have resources to help survivors. While Title IX reports do not have a limit, discrimination, harassment and retaliation complaints filed under the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion office do have a 180-day deadline.
While the complaint is mainly confidential, the accused is given an opportunity to respond to the allegations and witnesses may also become aware of the complaint. Emory’s website might highlight the sexual misconduct policies and the resources the University offers, but if those resources aren’t being used, are we just supposed to just laud their existence?
The fact of the matter is assaults happen. During her time as an advisor, Ruskin was most impacted by “how many situations [of sexual assault] are impacted by alcohol, drug use and consent.” Murky communication can cause harmful consequences, but maybe this would be an apt lesson not just for students, but for the Title IX office as well. The countless stories of sexual assault survivors dropping their cases and refusing to report harassment because they don’t know how to do it or because they know the system will fail them shouldn’t be excused anymore.
It’s basic human decency. Whether we want to acknowledge sexual assault on our campus or not, it exists. It’s a repulsive idea, to reckon with that people on our campus could assault or rape someone. But it’s not going to go away, and Emory needs to stop living under the delusion that it will.
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The function of Title IX policies are complicated and nuanced. First introduced in the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause in 1972, Title IX protects against sex-based discrimination in education. In 2011, former President Barack Obama’s administration and the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) fought to add sexual harassment protections into the amendment.
Through these changes, OCR vastly expanded the definition of sexual harassment, outlining stringent policies for schools to follow; if not, they would be at risk of investigation. However, in 2016, former President Donald Trump ignored Obama’s guidelines and focused his policies instead on the liability of a school after sexual misconduct. The lack of clearly written due process procedures offer a loophole for accusers to bring university sexual assault cases to courts. Prominently, and perhaps most relevant for college and university campuses across the U.S. is Title IX’s protection of students under sexual harassment. The institutionalization of Title IX is supposed to serve as a shield over gender- and sex-based harassment, but pushing not only for live hearings in sexual assault cases, but also for a chance of cross-examinations on both sides, is painful and retraumatizing. Forcing survivors to face accusers causes them to relive their traumas and experiences all over again, increasing the risks for PTSD, anxiety and depression.
Further, mandatory reporting requirements have also been hotly debated. Faculty, staff and resident advisors (RAs) are considered mandated reporters and must disclose any sort of information that comes to them if it involves a potential case of sexual harassment. After her assault, Clara sought guidance from her RA, who directed her toward Title IX and EPD. However, some survivors of a traumatic experience might be unwilling to go to authority figures while still navigating trauma and mental health issues. Understandably, Title IX offices are unable to start an investigation or act on instances of sexual assault without someone coming forward, but at the same time, asking for trauma survivors to simply speak up is not effective. To prevent retaliation, the Title IX office relies on students to report cases so they can act. But shedding their instinctual fear of continued harm befalling them is a risk most survivors aren’t willing to take. The balance is nearly impossible to strike, but the current system doesn’t benefit anyone.
For law enforcement, one of the most challenging tasks is remaining impartial; in considering sexual assault as a crime, the burden of proof and the investigative process are arguably the most complex. Not allowing the accused a chance to defend themselves would directly contradict our idea of justice and due process. Title IX can’t be as empathetic as we want them to without forfeiting an element of fairness.
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“I don’t think I’ve ever had a client who hasn’t contemplated suicide,” Anderson said.
At some point, caring becomes a platitude: an acknowledgment of well-intentions and a veneer for inaction. Survivors put their lives and their dignity on blast to rebalance their lives and reclaim a sense of justice. But all the Title IX office seems to be able to do is indicate that they care. Reporting as an attempt to heal is perhaps a first step, but then the waiting starts. As all of us know, waiting is a battle where the bureaucracy wins every time. Rachelle removed her complaint because she got tired waiting for justice. Clara didn’t report further incidents because she didn’t want to relive the trauma. Students are graduating with open Title IX cases, but the office can’t find two minutes to return an email. Thoroughness in the process is a double-edged sword. It’s designed to be comprehensive but also allows the University to evade doing more than the bare minimum.
In the case of Title IX, such incompetence can be fatal. Students go to school each day to learn, not to count down the days to getting sexually assaulted.
Emory’s Title IX resources can be found here. The RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline can be found here. The Georgia Network to End Sexual Assault (GNESA) can be found here. Grady Rape Crisis Center resources can be found here. Day League resources can be found here.
Correction 10/17 10:35pm: This article originally said that sexual misconduct reporting happens under three offices, the Title IX office, the Office of Respect and the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, but while sexual misconduct can be discussed and resources from all three of these departments can be used by survivors, the reporting itself happens under the Title IX office only.
Correction 10/17 10:37pm: This article originally stated that survivors only have 180-days to report an incident of sexual harassment, but this deadline only applies to discrimination and harassment under the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policy which is not applicable to Title IX.
Update 10/23 6:23pm: This article originally did not include links to survivor resources.
Graphic by Ally Hom.
