Around 80 professionals from several Oregon universities came to Portland State on Friday to attend a daylong conference addressing student sexual misconduct on campuses in context of Title XI.
PSU hosted the annual Oregon University System Best Practices Conference titled “Promoting a Student-Centered Response to Sexual Misconduct.”
Around 80 professionals from several Oregon universities came to Portland State on Friday to attend a daylong conference addressing student sexual misconduct on campuses in context of Title XI.
PSU hosted the annual Oregon University System Best Practices Conference titled “Promoting a Student-Centered Response to Sexual Misconduct.”
The conference was designed to help campus leadership assess and develop institutional policies and practices.
Saundra Schuster J.D., partner with the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management, was the keynote speaker for the event. She discussed strategies schools need to take to tackle sexual misconduct issues, emphasizing that gender-based violence is both a barrier to students’ ability to pursue higher education and an endemic and epidemic on college campuses.
Schuster believes that schools are too concerned with “protecting their own image” and therefore choose to be deliberately indifferent. Many myths of date rape have caused schools to have ineffective resolution strategies and are not able to prevent the issue adequately.
She outlined suggestions for institutional leaders addressing the issue. “College policies need to reflect the law as well as college culture,” Schuster said.
She also stressed that schools need to avoid re-victimizing students. “Our job is not to pick a side but to protect the integrity of the process,” Schuster said. “If we get put on a notice, we investigate.”
She covered the “Four Absolutes” of dealing with sexual misconduct, which includes investigating what occurred, taking prompt and effective action, remedying the effects and preventing the reoccurrence of the action.
“The school has an obligation to protect you and protect other people,” Schuster said to students on college campuses.
Much of what was covered was how schools can do a better job of giving students and their friends information they need when sexually assaulted.
Schuster noted that many of the university websites do not have direct links to information students can access online. “You have a three-click chance for students to get the information,” she said. “Students aren’t going to go looking for a brochure; they’re going to be using their smartphones.”
As an example, she highlighted PSU’s website as a great example where information for student-centered response to sexual misconduct can be found in three clicks or less. Schuster believes strongly that all schools need to do the same in order for students to know where to go and what to expect when assaulted. Reporting is more complete when students have the information they need, Schuster said.
A heated discussion surrounded the topic of “responsible employees” and who on campus has the responsibility or authority to report sexual misconduct.
Michele Toppe, dean of student life at PSU, showed concern with the subject. “It makes me nervous to have such a loose definition of employees on a campus with such permeable boundaries,” she said.
Whether student employees have the responsibility to report cases of sexual misconduct and how private and confidential the information needs to be in that case is a question that remains to be answered. According to Schuster, it is up to the institution to define the role of the student employee in such cases, and it really is difficult to assign these responsibilities.
The conference continued with a moderated panel of members representing four Oregon universities. Each representative spoke about their current role in improving student accessibility to information regarding sexual assault response.
Representing PSU was Executive Director of the Office of Global Diversity and Inclusion Chaz Lopez and Director of Conduct and Community Standards Domanic Thomas.
The conference was well received by attendants, many of whom voiced their support for discussions about this issue between universities.
“Sexual assault and harassment is a problem, and many people do not know where to turn when something like this happens to them,” said PSU senior accounting major Nicole Hess. “There needs to be more awareness and workshops to train people to be more comfortable in identifying victims and for a victim to report.”
International Student Life Advisor Sarah Kenney attended the event and agreed. “I think that it’s imperative that events like these happen,” she said.
“People are scared to say anything,” Hess added. “But it needs to be known that it is safe to report the incident and the perpetrator.”
