Art by Elspeth Riley 

More than 400 individuals gathered outside The Department of Education on Oct. 19 for the National Vigil for Campus Sexual Assault Survivors, to stand in solidarity with campus sexual assault survivors across the country.

The Vigil was organized in light of over 40 sexual assault allegations against Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein and addressed growing concerns about United States Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s recent repeal of the 2011 Title IX guidance.

The Vigil’s Facebook event description said DeVos’s new Title IX changes, such as changing the due process system to promote fairness in favor of the accused, are “attacking Title IX safeguards for students — protecting perpetrators and making justice even harder to achieve for survivors.”

Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, commonly shortened to “Title IX,” says that, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”

When these 37 words were first inked onto the pages of American law, their main purpose was to give female athletes the same opportunities as male athletes.

Since then, Title IX has grown into an emotionally charged issue that has transformed higher education.  

Arguments about Title IX’s impact on campus sexual assault cases sparked in 2011 when the Obama administration released a memo strengthening Title IX, referred to as a “Dear Colleague Letter.” It provided colleges with a set of policies and procedures to follow when investigating student-on-student sexual assault cases. The memo required colleges to use the least amount of evidence to prosecute alleged perpetrators of sexual assault.

The administration’s guidance memo came in response to complaints that colleges and universities were not investigating sexaul assault cases thoroughly and outlined university obligations in preventing and handling sexual assault and rape cases. Schools that failed to comply with the guidelines risked losing federal funding.

“The Obama era Dear Colleague letter did provide us with new hope and direction,” said Liliana Ascenci, the president of American University Students Against Sexual Violence.

According to Ascenci, the letter shined a spotlight on sexual misconduct on college campuses and created a national conversation.

However, the 2011 guidance was by no means perfect. Regina Curran, the new Title IX Officer at AU, said the Obama administration never asked Title IX officers for input when creating the guidance.

“There are reasons a lower level sexual harassment case would be resolved in an informal context” Curran said. “We might have wanted to focus on the education rather than punitive punishment.”

Even with its faults, Curran believes the Title IX Dear Colleague Letter took important steps toward securing protections for sexual assault survivors across universities.

“The Obama era guidance came because some schools were really messing up,” Curran said. “Schools started to do something in 2011 based on the Dear Colleague Letter.”

Then, on Sept. 22, 2017, Betsy Devos reversed the 2011 Dear Colleague Letter — outraging feminists, sexual assault survivors and activists that saw the Title IX guidance as necessary to their freedoms.

“Shameful. This decision will hurt and betray students, plain and simple,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-New York, tweeted. She has been a strong advocate for sexual assault.

In a new Dear Colleague Letter, DeVos outlined the reason for the repeal:

“Many schools have established procedures for resolving allegations that lack the most basic elements of fairness and due process, [they] are overwhelmingly stacked against the accused, and are in no way required by Title IX law or regulation.”

Shortly after DeVos released the statement, campus feminists, sexual assault survivors and activists argued that DeVos was supporting perpetrators and undermining the credibility of survivors.

“The whole basis of her logic is, ‘oh sometimes there’s false reporting’ but that’s very low,”  Asenci said at a Title IX coffee talk hosted by the Wellness Center. “Very few people are going to report falsely because of the experience of going through a Title IX investigation.”

Ella Whelan, a self-proclaimed libertarian feminist and author of Fun, Freedom and an End to Feminism, was dismayed by the response to DeVos’ decision to revise the legislation. Whelan believes the 2011 Title IX guidance fundamentally hindered the freedom of females on college campuses.

“There is this idea that women are under immediate threat when they get to university and are actively encouraged to feel worried about their encounters,” said Whelan speaking on the panel Title IX: Unsafe Spaces. “Under Title IX, women need to be protected like weak children.”

According to Whelan, statistics about sexual violence often over exaggerate the problem and are used to intimidate women.

She cited the Department of Justice’s 2007 Campus Sexual Assault Study statistic that “one out of five undergraduate women experience an attempted or completed sexual assault during their college years.” To Whelan, this was a form of “fear mongering.”  

The 2007 survey based its statistics on two Midwestern universities but was used in the “Dear Colleague Letter” to paint a picture of a wider problem across the United States. To Whelan, this misuse seemed like an intimidation tactic used to make college women fear sexual encounters and take away their sexual freedom.

However, other studies reporting similar numbers have recently been released.

According to the 2017 American University Palmer Study, 18 percent of AU students reported experiencing unwanted sexual activity during their time at the university and 32.8 percent of respondents experienced unwanted sexual activity in their lifetime.

For Whelan, programs like Empower AU, which educate incoming freshman and transfer students about consent and sexual assault resources, exacerbate the fear mongering. Whelan believes that these programs are meant to deliberately alarm students about the smallest of sexual encounters.

“The idea that women are allowed to have drunk sex and be a bit reckless is being undermined by this,” Whelan said of programs that teach students about the relationship between consent and drinking.

Sara Yzaguirre, coordinator for Victims Advocacy Services at the AU Wellness Center, believes Whelan’s statement expresses a common and fundamental misunderstanding.

Instead, Yzaguirre and Maya Vizvary, the Sexual Assault Prevention Coordinator on campus, teach that consent cannot be given when someone is incapacitated, throwing up, or cannot perform basic functions like walking.

“Sixty percent of sexual assaults that happen in college have alcohol involved so it is a really important topic to discuss and not to shy away from,” Vizvary said.

Vizvary also noted that the Office of Advocacy Services for Interpersonal and Sexual Violence avoids victim blaming when talking about alcohol and sexual violence.

“The overlap between alcohol and sexual assault can get really hairy because people feel like it’s victim blaming so, we make sure to talk about how oftentimes the perpetrator is using alcohol to justify that behavior,” Vizvary said.

However, some debate whether it is fair to deem one person responsible for sexual assault if both parties are intoxicated and others question whether universities are even capable of handling these types of sexaul assault cases.

“When serious cases of rape and sexual violence do occur, the idea [is] that it would be solved by a crazy bureaucratic Kangaroo court on campus with people who really aren’t trained,” Whelan said.

The “kangaroo court,” she refers to is an unofficial court that convicts people of  crimes without sufficient evidence. Think the Salem witch trials.

However, AU’s Title IX response protocol is set up to try to guarantee convictions with sufficient evidence, not in an impromptu kangaroo court. Through every step of the Title IX process there are checks and balances meant to ensure a fair outcome.  The protocol and steps within the investigation are carried out by Curran, AU’s law degree-holding Title IX Officer .

AU was one of the five colleges nationwide to earn the EVERFI 2017 Excellence in Sexual Assault Prevention award. EVERFI is a technology company that creates digital curriculums and provides students with access to technology.

Still, Curran, Yzaguirre and Vizvary all admit that the Title IX process isn’t perfect.

Emotionally-fueled cases involving sexual assault and rape very rarely end in an outcome where either party is fully happy.

“Just because we have trained people and are all really passionate about our work and do our best, it doesn’t mean that things always go perfectly,” said Yzaguirre.

However, Yzaguirre said she hopes that AU’s programs will continue to educate students about sexual violence.

“I’m not saying you should be worried about your interactions,” Yzaguirre said. “But if it’s causing people to have more conversations about sex before they get to college, then I think it’s a really good thing.”

Karissa Waddick is a sophomore majoring in communication, legal institutions, economics and government (CLEG) and journalism.