So I'm Kim White. I'm a Title IX Investigator in the Office of AA/EEO
and Title IX. We're in 317 Foy Hall. Foy Hall is the
one that has like Chicken Salad Chick and Panda downstairs. We are upstairs on
the third floor so if you get on the elevator...
third floor, bam, we're right there. We handle all of the complaints that deal
with harassment or discrimination based on protected class all the protected
classes you know like race, sex, gender national origin, disability, veteran
status all the protected classes but today we're just gonna be talking about
sex and gender and our Title IX Policy.
Okay, so Title IX comes from the Education Amendment Act of 1972 and it's pretty
straightforward it says that educational institutions that receive federal money
shouldn't discriminate against people on the basis of sex so this is K through 12
and colleges and universities so guess who gets federal money...
Auburn. Guess who wants to continue to get federal money...
Auburn. So please don't discriminate against people on the basis of sex. It's
just not a nice thing to do and also we would like to continue to get federal
money so we've got this pretty basic paragraph here don't discriminate
against people on the basis of sex. That sounds pretty straightforward but we
know that things go to court and we get better definitions of what that actually
means and then 1972 we get this act - don't discriminate against people on the
basis of sex...got it. Then in the 1980s the court cases were focusing more on
athletics and there was a big difference between men's sports and women's sports
on campus. They were very unequal so the courts were looking at those and saying
well it looks like women aren't getting equal opportunities on campus so that's
where we got a lot of our women's sports programs is through these court cases so
a lot of times when people think of Title IX they think of women's sports.
Then in the 90s, the court cases were dealing more with sexual harassment and
the court said that if you're coming to school
cool and you're worried about being sexually harassed all the time that's
probably going to interfere with your education. That's not giving you an equal
opportunity to get an education so they held that sexual harassment is a form of
discriminating against people on the basis of sex and then in the same vein
in the 2000s, they were focused more on sexual assault and they said that sexual
assault is a form of sexual harassment which is a form of sex discrimination
and then in 2011, things changed for us big time. The Department of Education
issued some guidance and it said a lot of things but one of the big things was
you know they were warning schools that hey this act has been around since the
70s you need to take it seriously you need to have your own processes to deal
with sexual misconduct so a lot of what we talked about today may also be a
crime but it's not enough for a school to say, "hey that sounds like a crime, take
that to the police," and just wash our hands of it. No, we have to have our own
in-house process to address complaints of sexual misconduct. The courts have
also held that Title IX also protects employees so we'll get into that in
little more. Okay, so our policy is really called the Policy on Sexual and
Gender Based Misconduct and Other Forms of Interpersonal Violence. That is a
really long name so most people just call it the Title IX Policy or the Sex
and Gender Policy. It changed about a year ago. It used to be where we do kind
of a preliminary investigation and then if it was students involved they would
go to Student Conduct in front of a hearing panel and have a hearing there
but we've changed it to now it's all in-house. They come talk to us, we talk to
both sides, talk to witnesses they suggest, we look at evidence that they
offer and then we write a report. They get to see what each other said, what all
the witnesses said, they get to respond to that but they're not in front of a
hearing panel so it looks a lot less like court because we are not court.
We're an administrative process and so people who have experienced sexual
misconduct can choose to use our administrative process and the legal
process, or neither or both, but there are reasons that people would want to use
one or the other because there's different purposes, there's different
definitions and different timelines so for example
there's a criminal definition for rape and it has several elements. One can be
force that overcomes earnest resistance whereas our policy talks about sexual
assault and affirmative consent so there are two different definitions. We're also
looking at different rules of evidence and different burdens of proof so you
know if you go to court a jury is looking at beyond a reasonable doubt
that's like a really high burden because someone can be thrown to jail, thrown in
jail, they can be sent to death row in some states there are huge, huge
consequences. Our standard is preponderance of the evidence because
we're an administrative process. We're looking at is it more likely than not
that someone violated our policy because we have important consequences, you know,
we can have people fired or suspended or expelled and those are big consequences
but it's different than you know jail and things like that.
We're also looking at different timelines so I know when you watch Law
and Order or something like that they catch the perp in the first five minutes
and then by the end of the show they're in jail forever, appeal rights are
exhausted, everything's done. It's all in a nice little package but in real life
it takes years and years and years for things to make their way through the
legal system and that is a really long time if you're sitting in class with
someone who has harassed or assaulted you or if you're in the same residence
hall as someone who has arrested or assaulted you or you know if you're
working with someone who has harassed or assaulted you so we try to have an
expedited process. We try to get things done in 60 days. That can't always happen
because you know we have to be thorough and sometimes there are breaks and
finals and things like that we try to be sensitive to people's schedules but we
do try to do this as quickly as we can while still being thorough and fair just
so the process is not hanging over people's heads for longer than necessary.
Okay, so our policy and procedures protect students from sexual misconduct.
They also protect employees. It's a consent based policy so we'll be
talking about consent. It sets out the procedures that we follow when we get a
report of sexual misconduct and it sets out the definitions for things that we
prohibit so we're not going to get very detailed into procedures because they're
pretty detailed. The thing most people need to know is the very beginning so
when we get a report of sexual misconduct the first thing we do is make
sure the person is safe and their medical needs are taken care of and then
we offer to talk about options and resources and accommodations, how they
can report, different things like that so that's usually the first
step of the process that you would need to be aware of as responsible employees.
Okay, our first definition for prohibited conduct is sexual or gender based
harassment and this is unwelcome sexual advances requests, for sexual favors, or
other conduct of a sexual nature, or harassment based on gender, sexual
orientation, gender identity, or gender expression when one of these three
bottom bullets is present so you've got to have one of the top two and then one
of the bottom three so it's either a term or condition of education or
employment or it's the basis for education or employment decisions about
that person or the conduct is so severe or pervasive that it creates a hostile
environment so like I said we deal with all the protective class based
harassment discrimination complaints and a lot of people come into our office and
they'll say that "my boss or my professor is a jerk to everyone regardless of sex
or any other class" and that is awful and I hate it and I'm so sorry and I've
been there but it's probably not a Title IX issue if it's not based on sex or
gender but we can help get you pointed in the right direction and we're going
to talk about these three bottom bullets more. Okay.
It's unwanted conduct of a sexual nature and you think that's pretty
straightforward but you would be surprised the people that come into our
office and say "how could that be taken as sexual" so we have to go into it in a
little more detail so this can be verbal or written conduct.
Things like commenting about people's clothing or their bodies, making sex
jokes, sexual innuendos, things like that so this can be tricky because hopefully
you're all friendly with your co-workers and your students and it's fine, you know,
to be friendly and to compliment each other but you know it's one thing to say
"hey Kim nice shirt" it's another thing to say "oh girl I like the way that shirt
hugs your curves." We know there's a difference like we're at work, we're at
school. You've got to keep things professional
and keep it on the professional line of things. This conduct can also be physical
or nonverbal so physical conduct can run the game up between just hugging or all
the way up to sexual assault. There's a wide range in there and I like to give
Auburn examples when possible so several years ago we had reports of an
employee offering students massages so this employee was not a massage
therapist or masseuse or anything like that. It was just wrong so that person is
no longer at Auburn so that is unwanted conduct of a sexual nature of the
physical variety so we also have nonverbal sexual harassment things like
looking someone up and down, derogatory gestures, masturbation or
things like that. Okay, the bottom three bullets Quid pro Quo harassment means
this for that so this is when someone in a position of authority abuses that
authority and makes someone else submit to sexual conduct as a term or condition
of their education or employment so this is like saying "hey sweet thing let's go
get a drink and you'll get an a on that test" or "oh you turned me down for date
so now you're not going to get that good research assignment." Something like that.
This is really an abuse of authority it's like a old-school, madman level
abuse of authority so people usually aren't goofy enough to flat-out say
things like that but we can imply it from the circumstances. A more common
complaint is hostile environment and this is when the unwanted conduct is
sufficiently severe, persistent, or pervasive that it creates a hostile
environment and it interferes with someone's ability to get their education
or to do their job so you notice it says severe, persistent, or pervasive. Any one
of those will do and this doesn't have to be a power imbalance situation. This
can be from a subordinate, like a student could harass you or one of your
professors could harass you or even just visitors to campus so we had an example
of this where a vendor was on campus and was cat calling our students so now that
vendor is no longer allowed on campus so that's an example but a single incident
can be severe enough that it creates a hostile environment. For example, sexual
assault. If you're sexually assaulted one time that's probably sufficiently severe
that it's going to interfere with your work or school whereas things that are
on the other end of the spectrum you know comments or like touching light, you
know, hugging or patting or something like that. It may have to happen more
times to be a hostile environment so but those small things can build up over
time and they can become so persistent or pervasive that they interfere with
someone's work or school. Okay, so we're looking at whether the behavior is
subjectively and objectively offensive to a reasonable person so not only was
the person who received the conduct offended but would a reasonable person
also be offended. Not someone who has really thin skin or not someone who just
doesn't give a rat. You know, just someone kind of in the middle. A
hypothetical reasonable person. So the gender of the people involved isn't
relevant. We have plenty of cases of women harassing men and of same-sex
harassment and we take all those reports seriously and this bottom bullet is
important because even if conduct happens away from campus it can still be
a policy violation so if you are downtown and a student harasses you or a
professor harasses you or anyone harasses you and then you come back onto
campus and you see that person...well you didn't magically forget about it because
it happened off campus and now you're on campus. No, you may still have to look at
them and wonder "ugh is this going to affect my grade, is this going to affect class"
and so even if it didn't happen on campus if it's having an adverse effect
while the persons on campus it can still be a policy violation. Okay.
Our next definition is sexual assault and like I mentioned it's different from
the criminal definition of rape. This is sexual contact or sexual intercourse
without affirmative consent so it can happen from force or ignoring someone's
objections, causing someone's incapacitation, or taking advantage of
another person's incapacitation so for affirmative consent we're looking for
explicit communication of mutual approval to engage in those specific
actions so it's important to remember that consenting to one form of sexual
activity doesn't necessarily mean someone is consenting to another form. It
doesn't always have to be verbal. We know most times people don't sit down ahead
of time and like talk about what they will and won't do and what they do and
don't consent to but we're looking for words or actions, would a reasonable
person think this person was consenting to the sexual activity and we understand
this in other areas like we know if I come out to you and I stick out my hand
and you stick out your hand well you know you didn't say yes you may shake my
hand but I could reasonably infer that you were okay with that handshake. I
can't make a reasonable assumption that you're also down for that full body
massage that offered you. We know that one thing does not necessarily mean
another, that one form of sexual activity is not a blank check for all forms of
sexual activity and the big thing is the absence of a no is not a yes so I know
when I was in school all the posters said no means no. That was the big
tagline but now we're looking at affirmative consent and we're looking at
what was the yes. What lets you know that person was okay with engaging in this
behavior. Okay, I have a video that I love. It's pretty short. Please let me
know if you can't hear it.
If you're still struggling with consent, just imagine instead of
initiating sex you're making them cup of tea. You say "hey would you like a cup of
tea" they go "oh my god, I would love a cup of tea, thank you." Then you know they want
a cup of tea if you say "would you like a cup of tea and they're like "I'm not really sure" then you
could make them a cup of tea, or not, but be aware they might not drink it and if
they don't drink it then, and this is the important part, don't make them drink it.
Just because you made it doesn't mean you are entitled to watch them drink it
and if they say "no thank yo"u then don't make them tea, at all.
Just don't make them tea, don't make them drink tea, don't get annoyed at them for
not wanting tea. They just don't want tea, okay.
They might say "yes please, that's kind of you" and then when the tea arrives they
actually don't want the tea at all. Sure that's kind of annoying as you've gone
to all the effort of making the tea but they remain under no obligation to drink
the tea. They did one tea. Now they don't. Some people change their mind in the
time that it takes to boil the kettle, brew the tea, and add the milk and it's
okay for people to change their mind and you are still not entitled to watch them
drink it and if they're unconscious don't make them tea. Unconscious people
don't want tea and they can't answer the question "do you want tea" because their
unconscious. Okay, maybe they were conscious when you asked them if they
wanted tea and they said "yes" but in the time it took you to boil the kettle, brew
the tea, and add the milk they are now unconscious. You should just put the tea
down. Make sure the unconscious person is safe and, this is the important part
again, don't make them drink the tea. They said "yes" then. Sure.
But unconscious people don't want tea. If someone said yes to tea, started
drinking it, and then passed out before they finished it, don't keep on pouring
it down their throat. Take the tea away, make sure they're safe because
unconscious people don't want tea. Trust me on this. If someone said "yes" to tea
around your house last Saturday that doesn't mean they want you to make them
tea all the time. They don't want you to come around to their place unexpectedly
and make them tea and force them to drink it going "but you wanted tea last
week" or to wake up to find you pouring tea down their throat going "but you
wanted tea last night" but if you can understand how completely ludicrous it
is to force people to have tea when they don't want tea and you're able to
understand when people don't want tea then how hard is it to understand it
when it comes to sex? Whether it's tea or sex, consent is everything and on that
note I'm going to go make myself a cup of tea. Okay. I love it. It's
a cute video but it's a little simplistic. I know that there are stages
between heck yeah I want tea and being passed out so we're looking at is
someone incapacitated. Are they not capable of making voluntary, informed
decisions about whether they want to engage in sexual activity so we look for
common signs of incapacitation, slurring trouble walking, things like that to
determine if incapacitation was present because I'm gonna tell you something
that may surprise you so our students drink and they do it regardless of
whether they're 21 and some of them have fake IDs. I know you're very shocked,
right? Underage drinking is a problem. It's a problem at most schools but if
someone is in our office about a complaint of sexual misconduct that's
not what we're there for. We're not going to tell their parents they were drinking
underage, not going to tell the police they were drinking underage, we're not going
to take their fake ID so if a student comes to you and says they've
experienced sexual misconduct but they really don't want to report it because
they were drinking underage at the time, please tell them that is not the concern
when they come to our office. That's not what we're there for.
The next definition is sexual exploitation. It's a pretty broad
definition as you can tell by the many bullets but it's causing someone's
incapacitation or compromising their ability to give affirmative consent so
that would usually be paired with sexual assault so someone would be under
investigation for sexual assault and sexual exploitation or allowing third
parties to watch sexual activity, voyeurism, recording or photographing
sexual activity without consent, or sending those images around without
consent, prostituting another person, or intentionally exposing someone to an
STI so the one I like to point out is the disseminating or posting images of
sexual activity without consent because you know sometimes in the legal system
if everyone's of age and you voluntarily take photos of yourself and send them to
someone else you know there's not a whole lot you can do but if they're
Auburn people we can say "hey if you send those images out without consent then
you can be sanctioned" so we can address that if they are Auburn people. We have
people that will try to blackmail students with compromising photographs
so that one comes up pretty regularly. Okay, the next definition is intimate
partner violence. Back in my day it was called dating violence and domestic
violence but this is violence that's between people in a intimate
relationship so that can be dating, marriage, they have a kid in common,
something like that so this can pair with any other prohibited conduct - so
if there's a sexual assault between people who are in a relationship
it'd be an investigation for sexual assault and intimate partner violence
and so we have factors that we look at to determine whether one of these
relationships is present because students now don't really date you know
they don't really call it that they're hanging out or they're talking or
they're Netflix and chilling or something like that
but we have factors that we look at to determine if this relationship is
present and in situations like this they can go to the Justice Center and ask for
a protection from abuse order. It's what people think of as a restraining order
but they can apply for that from the Justice Center.
Okay, the next one is stalking. This is the course of conduct directed at
someone that would make someone feel fear or experience substantial emotional
distress. This is a course of conduct, it's more than one action. It can be
things like following someone around, blowing up their phone, leaving them
gifts, watching them, things like this. This is the one that students will joke
about you know like when I work Camp War Eagle. I everyday have several people
say " haha this person's been following me all day" because you know they go around
in the little groups but this one gets really scary, really fast when you're on
the other end of it and we've had a big uptick in this and actually cases of
women stalking men electronically so we've had problems with that and a
problem with Find My Friends. They use it to follow each other around so we have a
problem with that so an Auburn example is we once had a lab and there were two
students sitting over on one side and then the next class period they were
over here in the back and the next one they were over there. They were just kind
of following each other around the room and the GA teaching the class was like
"maybe it's not a big deal, maybe they know each other" and then when the
students comes up and turns in A paper and says "I don't know why he keeps
sitting by me. It's freaking me out. I don't know him." So the GA reported that
to us you know not everything is you know an immediate expel everyone
involved situation but we were able to step in separate them, say "hey please
don't sit by he,r please don't talk to her" and kind of calm things down and
that was a good example of an Auburn employee paying attention and reporting
things that they should have reported.
Okay, retaliation and complicity. These usually also pair with
other prohibited conduct but people should not be retaliated against for
coming to our office to file a complaint or for participating in the process so
if they're a witness. Retaliation is any adverse effect against someone, something
that would discourage a reasonable person from participating in the process
so even if a person isn't found responsible for the original thing we
were investigating but they retaliate against a witness this is its own
separate thing. They could be found responsible for retaliation.
This usually shows up when you know we do an investigation and we write a
report and then one party or the other
calls the witnesses and says "I saw what
you said about me I'm going to make your life miserable" so even if we didn't find
them responsible for the original thing we were looking into this is its own
standalone prohibited conduct. This also comes up in the employee situation when
students report things to employees and then they don't report it to Title IX
so we've had situations where students have told a professor or GA "hey I was
sexually assaulted, please don't tell anyone" and then that person doesn't tell
anyone and then the students grades start slipping and maybe they, you know,
get an F, maybe they get kicked out the program, something like that and then
they come to our office and they say "hey I told you I was sexually assaulted and
you kicked me out of the program. That seems like retaliation" and maybe it wasn't,
maybe it had nothing to do with the sexual assault but it's important that
if someone discloses sexual misconduct to you, that you report it to us so that
if you know someone is going to get bad grades or something like that that we
can walk you through the process, that we can make sure that we've offered
them accommodations, offered to get them to counseling, things like that wait so
we can make sure we've done everything that we can for them and make sure that
the adverse action is in no way related to the sexual misconduct and the last
one is complicity so this is helping someone commit prohibited conduct. It's
kind of like aiding and abetting and so there would usually be two
people under investigation for that so how does Title IX affect you as GAs?
So you're protected as students and employees so like if there's a Venn
diagram of students and employees, there you are in the middle so you've got
these protections but you also have responsibilities so you should not be
discriminated against on the basis of sex or gender but you should also not
discriminate against other people on the basis of sex or gender and you need to
report sexual misconduct when you hear about it. So you're a GA and you're an
authority figure. You're an Auburn employee and so you've got to remember
that and make sure the people around you don't feel like they're being sexually
harassed and don't feel like Auburn is the place where that's promoted because
they are looking up to you to set an example even if you're close in age to
the students in your class, you're still the authority figure and
they're looking to you to behave properly so never flirt with ask out, or
consensually date someone in your lab or class. Period. This is, every semester
pretty much we have to fire someone for this so I'm not playing. We have a
policy called the Intimate Relations Policy and it says you cannot engage in
or pursue a romantic or sexual relationship with anyone you teach or
supervise so I know they're a good-looking people at Auburn but there
is no one so good-looking that you can't wait until they're out of your class. If
you see them on Tinder, swipe left and if you've got questions about whether a
certain relationship is prohibited you can call and talk hypothetically and we
can kind of walk you through that the problem with this is like even if it's
consensua,l you say it's consensual, at the time they say it's consensual,
well then things go south and then they come to us and they say "well of course I
went along with it, they're grading me. What was I gonna do?" So that's the
problem with this but really this is serious so also please avoid
sexual jokes or discussions that aren't relevant to the course material so I
know that sometimes they are relevant like if you are in the English
department and you are teaching Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and you don't
talk about sex I don't know how you did that. That's impressive.
The whole book is sex, but if you're talking about like soil or geography or
tectonic plates or something, sex jokes should not come up. That's just not
relevant to the course material so if you need clarifications about that too
you can call and talk hypothetically. Okay, the big thing is you're all
responsible employees. Almost every employee at Auburn is a responsible
employee. The only exception are confidential employees like people at
the med clinic or student counseling, Safe Harbor, things like that so you have
an obligation to report sexual misconduct. It's an obligation. It's in
bold. It's not a "we'll see how it shakes out" it's not "uh
I don't know if I believe them." No, it's an obligation you have to do this so if
a student comes to you and says "hey I want to talk to you about something you
gotta promise not to tell..." you cannot promise them that. Hopefully you can stop
them and say "hey thanks for coming to me. I gotta let you know I have to report
certain things so you might want to consider talking to someone
confidentially first" and you can direct them to
Safe Harbor or to student counseling and I've got cards up here that you can have
to hand out to them if you want but if they go ahead and disclose something to
you tell them "thanks for trusting me with this. I've got to let you know I'm
gonna reach out to Title IX and tell them about this and Title IX is going to
offer to discuss resources rights options with you." They don't have to take
us up on it but we're going to reach out to them and offer. Also if you observe
something in your classroom or lab go ahead and report that to. Okay, also,
since you're teaching you have a duty to accommodate pregnant students so usually
where this comes up is with absences so even if you have a syllabus that says
something like "four absences. That's it. Period. No exceptions," you have to make an
exception for pregnant students who are missing class with the doctor's note due
to the pregnancy so if you think someone is taking too much advantage of this
policy please don't attack the student you know just let us know and we can
look into it and make sure things are being done properly. All right we've got
some good resources on campus. My boss is Kelley Taylor. She's the Title IX
Coordinator. She's also in 317 Foy. We also have Deputy Title IX Coordinators.
Lady Cox in student affairs and David Mines in athletics so if you're more
comfortable with them you can talk to them. We have Safe Harbor which has a
24/7 number and they're a confidential resource. We have student counseling.
They're also confidential and then for employees we have the Employee
Assistance Program and they refer people out to counselors in the community. On
campus we have our Department of Public Safety and Security. They're the ones
that send out the crime alerts they also have a daily crime log and an annual
crime report that's interesting to look, the Auburn City Police so if you
see an emergency happening call 9-1-1 also have the non-emergency
number up there and then this is important so if someone has been
recently raped or drugged and they want a forensic exam done they need to go to
the emergency room at the EAMC so not the med clinic on campus. They
don't do forensic exams because there are chain of custody issues with
preserving that forensic evidence so they need to go to EAMC to the emergency
room if they want a forensic exam. We also have a Title IX
website so it has our
policy, it has that list of resources, frequently asked questions, things like
that. It also has a "report an incident" button so you can report things by
clicking that it comes up with a form or you can call us, you can email us you, can
come by if it's during business hours but if you do this form it will let you
submit it anonymously but please don't since your employees we may need to
reach out to you to get more information so that we can fulfill our obligations
but just to wrap up, please remember that you're a responsible employee you have
an obligation to report sexual misconduct.
Make sure the person's safe. That's always the first thing. Let them know
you're not a confidential resource, you have a duty report things. Offer to send
them to a confidential resource. Like I said we've got those cards but if they
disclose something that sexual misconduct report it to the timeline
office don't assume someone else will report it a lot of times a student will
tell you something and then they'll say "you know what you're right I'm gonna go
report it right now" and then they don't so that's when things slip through the
cracks so don't just assume someone else is going to report it you go ahead and
report it and if we get multiple reports about the same thing we'll sort it out.
That's not a big deal so all right and that's all I have if
you have questions you can ask them or if you don't want them on camera you can
come up after and ask.
Thank y'all.
Subtitles by the Amara.org community
For more infomation >> University of Hartford student arrested for bullying roommate - Duration: 2:48. 
For more infomation >> Palo Alto Mulls Closing Down Portion Of University Avenue - Duration: 1:40. 
For more infomation >> Two Cal Poly fraternities under investigation by university - Duration: 0:34. 
For more infomation >> University fires Ragin' Cajuns softball coach Michael Lotief - Duration: 2:40. 
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét