Discussion List for campus-based and allied personnel working to end gender-based violence on campus.

Dear colleagues;

Pasted below you will find an excellent new piece by the Boston Globe's Joan Vennochi about Title IX and the Campus SaVE Act.  

Also, stay tuned for an upcoming comparative review of about 25 schools in which the quality of their compliance with Title IX's ideal standards (rather than subpar/unconstitutional SaVE Act standards) is assessed. Several issues are examined and schools that apply subpar standards are coded RED.  At this point, most of the elite schools are RED, and many lower tiered schools, interestingly, have relatively good unified policies.  The primary question being examined is whether a school has a unified policy such that all violence and harassment that occurs "on the basis of" ANY protected class category is redressed under exactly the same standards and policies.  For example, is the civil rights standard of "unwelcome" applied to determine whether an offense occurred - as opposed to the unfair and much more difficult to prove criminal law standards such as "non-consent" and "force?"  If a school applies the standard of "unwelcome" to determine violence on the basis of race and national origin, etc., but "non-consent" and "force" to determine violence on the basis of sex, the school will be coded RED to indicate that the school subjects violence against women to less protective/worse standards compared to violence against other protected class categories.  The chart also looks at things like whether the preponderance standard is applied and what "prompt" means in terms of the time frames within which a victim's complaint is FINALLY resolved and determined.  At this point, only Harvard and Princeton apply a standard more onerous on victims than "preponderance."  Some schools, such as MIT, are silent on the burden of proof.

Sadly - many of the elite schools no longer promise "equitable" treatment of sexual assault and other forms of violence against women, which is disturbing but not surprising given that the SaVE Act eliminated the Title IX mandate of "equitable" treatment, thus allowing subjugation in the redress of campus sexual assault, domestic and dating violence and stalking (in other words, ONLY for civil rights violence against women.)  

Wendy Murphy 

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/05/09/harvard-more-focused-its-own-brand-than-protecting-victims/qmXvXMFePal1W3zk4W7Y2K/comments.html