Colleges work to improve #MeToo response
Panel in Houston addresses how to handle sex assaults, treatment of women
Universities’ failures to respond to reports of sexual assault and harassment have brought sharp criticism and major lawsuits nationwide, most recently at Michigan State University.
But Texas college staff this week said they are better positioned than other types of workplaces in preventing and adjudicating sexual misconduct. Waves of campus activism and federal regulations have forced universities to strengthen training procedures and add victims’ resources — while in other settings, the conversation launched by the #MeToo movement has just started.
“Universities have begun, belatedly begun, to actually lead the way in solutions to this cultural change,” said John Hutchinson, Rice University’s dean of undergraduates. “We need to seize on this moment to actually commit ourselves to a fundamental change in the culture of the country and the ways we think about how men treat women.”
Hutchinson’s comments came at a Monday panel in which U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, R-Humble, assembled congressional colleagues, Rice and Texas A&M administrators and advocacy leaders to talk about campus sexual assault.
Also this week, the University of Houston continued training faculty and staff on report-
ing sexual harassment and sexual assault under Title IX, the federal law that forbids gender discrimination.
Pressure has mounted on colleges to curb assault. Though they say there is more work to do, university staff say they have thought deeply about misconduct, implementing intricate educational programs for the tens of thousands of students, faculty and staff who work on their campuses.
“This whole array of services works — we know that,” Chris Kaiser, director of public policy at the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault, said at Monday’s panel. “We just don’t have enough of these services in the country as a whole.”
At Monday’s forum, speakers called for more data and better prevention programs, steps that they say would create broader change. Poe has proposed a bill that would require hospitals to have sexual assault forensic examiners available at all times or be able to provide patients the name and location of the closest hospital that can provide those services.
“Just focusing on colleges and universities is not enough,” Justin Onwenu, a Rice senior and a former student government president, said Monday. “This is a culture issue across the board. We need to set expectations for children, for adults, that standing by…is not acceptable.”
Rice offers pilot course
Hutchinson and Richard Baker, UH’s Title IX coordinator who led a training session Tuesday, both said preventive training also needs to take place outside of their own college campuses.
Baker said he has spoken at high schools and periodically informs businesses that employ UH students in internships for academic credit of the university’s sexual misconduct policy.
Hutchinson on Monday said outside groups, including high school teachers and staff, should learn about Rice’s new required course, Critical Thinking in Sexuality, which in five weeks of sessions dissects healthy relationships and sexual consent.
The course, which experts called one of the first of its kind, piloted last spring. Lessons covered communication, consent, domestic violence, stalking, harassment and how to intervene in dangerous situations.
“Students, in the absence of any form of sexual education and in the presence of (internet misinformation), are making wrong choices based on bad information,” he said.
Speakers this week stressed that colleges and hospitals still must improve their procedures.
Michael Rondini, whose daughter died by suicide after alleging that officials botched her rape report, spoke at Rice on Monday. Poe’s bill is named after Rondini’s daughter, Megan Rondini.
At UH’s session on Tuesday, Baker referenced the scandal at Michigan State. More than 250 girls and women accused Larry Nassar, sports doctor for Michigan State and USA Gymnastics, of sexual harassment, abuse and assault. Nassar was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison in the cases.
‘What would you do?’
Baker, speaking Tuesday to advancement administrators, researchers and other employees, outlined how to respond if a student or colleague said they were assaulted, stalked or harassed.
“Institutions of higher education continually come up as institutions that somehow have failed individuals,” Baker said to attendees.
“If I came to you and I reported that I was sexually assaulted, how would you respond? What would you do?”
The in-person training session was a new requirement announced by UH President Renu Khator in February. More than 10,000 employees — from research assistants and maintenance crew members to admission recruiters and faculty — will attend the session in addition to annual online training before the end of the semester.
Baker said after the session, his second of the day, that he has witnessed a shift in campus culture. He began at UH in 2011.
Now, he said, “from the beginning of any person’s employment, or the beginning of any student’s enrollment, we have this conversation regarding sexual misconduct. … I don’t think that corporate America has this same sort of investment from day one.”