Some professors uneasy about obligation to report sex assaults
Eric Swanson has taught physics at the University of Pittsburgh for 16 years.
In that time, he has served as a mentor for many of his students. Like most senior faculty, he supervises undergraduates’ research, discusses their ideas, and advises them on their future studies and careers. He becomes close with those young people, and sometimes, they’ll open up to him about something personal.
If a student approached him about a sexual assault, though, he would have to interrupt before he or she said too much.
According to guidelines approved this summer by the University of Pittsburgh, a faculty or staff member who learns about a case of assault or harassment must report the incident to the Title IX office.
Though the Title IX office would likely only launch an investigation against the victim’s wishes if the case suggested a threat to students’ safety, faculty cannot guarantee victims confidentiality. If a student wants to speak privately, the professor might direct her toward a professional or pastoral counselor. With schools across the country under fire for their handling of sexual assault cases, universities want to ensure that their staff do everything possible to protect victims and track down perpetrators.
Recently, allegations that Penn
State football coach Joe Paterno and others had ignored complaints about Jerry Sandusky’s abuse of young boys for decades raised concerns that school employees had turned a blind eye toward the crimes. Professors like Mr. Swanson worry, though, that requiring faculty to report assaults might discourage students from coming forward.
“Someone comes to your office ... it’s typically done under an assumption of trust, of confidence,” he said.
Mr. Swanson voted against the new guidelines at a Faculty Assembly meeting on May 10. He has since changed his position, after coming to believe that the policy might serve a greater good, but maintains reservations about how the guidelines will affect students’ willingness to report. The University of Pittsburgh, like other schools that require faculty to report assaults, bases its policy on the Office of Civil Rights guidelines for “responsible employees,” outlined in its 2014 Questions and Answers on Title IX and Sexual Violence.
The OCR designates a “responsible employee” as one “who has the authority to take action to redress sexual violence; who has been given the duty of reporting incidents of sexual violence or any other misconduct by students to the Title IX coordinator or other appropriate school designee; or whom a student could reasonably believe has this authority or duty.”
Those individuals must report incidences of alleged sexual violence to their school’s Title IX coordinator. A school’s failure to comply with reporting obligations could result in a violation finding following the investigation of a complaint or a compliance review, according to a spokesperson for the Department of Education.
The Association of American University Professors (AAUP) has argued that that designation does not, and should not, apply to university faculty. In May, the association published a report titled “The History, Uses, and Abuses of Title IX,” which argued that requiring faculty to report assaults constitutes an overly broad interpretation of federal policy, and “disregards compelling educational reasons to respect the confidentiality of students who have sought faculty advice or counsel.”
The OCR does not specify whether its “responsible employee” designation applies to faculty. According to the Department of Education, individual schools must make that determination.
Penn State and Carnegie Mellon both designate faculty as “responsible employees. The Pennsylvania State System does, too, but it asks faculty to append a statement to their syllabi stating that they would not report an account of an assault disclosed in the context of a class discussion or assignment.
Katie Pope, Pitt’s Title IX coordinator, said the university made the decision to designate faculty as “responsible employees” under the assumption that its students generally believe that faculty would have the authority to redress assault. According to Ms. Pope, the university developed its guidelines after consulting with a committee of faculty, students and staff.
“Although some faculty members expressed reservations about the requirement to report sexual misconduct to the Title IX Office, the responsible employee role is truly an opportunity to strengthen the trust students put in our faculty and staff, because it will provide direction and support for next steps,” Ms. Pope wrote in an e-mail.
Still, some faculty disagree. “[The policy] is really chilling to the idea of a student trying to get some help from the person they know,” Marianne Novy, an English professor, said. Ms. Novy and others had reservations about the guidelines but sympathized with the university’s desire to help victims and to meet federal reporting standards.
“How do we provide accuracy in reporting without saying to a student, ‘Look if you walk through the office door and say anything, I have to report it?’” Michael Spring, an associate professor of information science, said. Although Ms. Pope said that both faculty and students will receive information and training on the new policy in the fall, some worry that the reporting guidelines might confuse both parties.
Alex Jones, the director of Pitt’s computer engineering program, expressed concern that some of his colleagues might not understand the nuances of Title IX policy.
“There are so many things they have to know and have to keep in their brain space in addition to trying to be researchers and do community service,” he said. Jayne Lester, a senior who helped organize Pitt’s anti-assault “Break Out Campaign,” did not know about the reporting requirement.
Ms. Lester noted that some of her friends who had been assaulted did not even report their assault to their doctors, fearing that their names would be released. (In fact, medical practitioners are only required to report the abuse of a child or elderly person, under Pennsylvania State law.)
Those who support the guidelines, though, see such confusion as a reason to take the responsibility of dealing with an assault out of a professor’s hands. “We’re not expert at what to do with that [information],” said James Dewar, the vice chair of Pitt’s Department of Family Medicine.
Victims, he said, should be guided toward “people who deal with this on a dayto-day basis.”
Pitt students Jillian Bunis and Lizzie Schnarr, both ‘Break Out’ participants and members of Students Engaging in Conversations about Consent and Sexuality, support the policy. Ms. Bunis believes that other students would, too, if they knew more about the Title IX office.
“When you meet Carrie [Benson] or Katie [Pope] or Kristy [Rzepecki], they’re like the friendliest faces,” Ms. Bunis said, referring to Pitt’s Title IX officers. “[They’re] who I would trust with anything.”
Administrators, faculty and students alike acknowledge that even the best-intended policy can be difficult to map onto real-life interactions. Under the Pennsylvania State System reporting exception, for instance, if a student told her creative writing professor that the assault described in her story actually happened to her, the student and professor would have to clarify whether the disclosure constituted an extension of the student’s project, or a formal report.
According to Valerie Mercado, Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s Title IX coordinator, situations like that can cause some ambiguity.
“We’re just dealing with ... humans here,” she said.