The Department of Justice this Tuesday reached a Title IX agreement with Case Western Reserve University addressing sexual assault and harassment on campus.
“This settlement sends a strong message that sexual harassment on college campuses will not be tolerated, and the measures in the agreement will help protect current and future students,” said U.S. Attorney Rebecca Lutzko for the Northern District of Ohio. “We acknowledge and commend the students from CWRU whose efforts shined a light on this issue, and we look forward to working with CWRU to implement this important agreement.”
Per its agreement with the department, CWRU has promised to:
- Publicize Title IX policies and protocols to ensure the campus community knows how to report concerns and access resources Present annual training for students and employees
- Implement new policies, protocols and trainings to reform the university’s Greek Life programming
- Provide resources to students who experience sex discrimination to prevent educational disruptions
- Fund the university’s women’s center, Office of Greek Life and University Health and Counseling Services to support students affected by sex discrimination
- Conduct outreach and analyze trends to strengthen prevention and response to sex discrimination
Stories of sexual misconduct by both students and university employees have made headlines in recent years. The Instagram account @cwru.survivors shared hundreds of harrowing anonymous reports of assault and harassment from former and current CWRU students. The submissions depicted a culture of sexual assault that permeates sports teams, campus organizations and, especially, Greek life.
“We have to recognize that this is a campus-wide culture, and it’s embedded in so many organizations at Case,” one admin told Scene in 2020. “Our social groups aren’t immune to it either.”
Lack of support from the university was recurrent theme in many of the anonymous submissions. Accounts cite a Title IX process at CWRU that was unhelpful at best and further traumatizing at worst. Others say they never filed formal reports because they feared they wouldn’t be believed or nothing would change.
An investigation by the DOJ found that the university’s response to “known student-on-student and employee-on-student sexual harassment and to a well-known climate of sexual harassment in its Greek Life program” violated Title IX and its regulations.
“CWRU’s policies required it to investigate all alleged violations of the University’s policies governing sexual harassment and to respond appropriately. Yet, the CWRU investigatory process did not comply with Title IX with respect to various sexual misconduct allegations, which ranged from sexual assault, to sex-based stalking, to retaliation for filing a complaint, to rape.
The report also concluded that employees failed to report sexual harassment complaints to the office responsible for responding to allegations and providing students with support and resources.
The university issued a statement on the agreement that reads in part:
“CWRU takes the moral responsibility to protect our campus community very seriously and we recognize that there is always room for improvement in our efforts to do so. In addition to its own internal review and in connection with the DOJ investigation, CWRU engaged Bruce Berman, a nationally recognized TitleIX expert and partner in the law firm of WilmerHale, to review and evaluate CWRU’s compliance with TitleIX policies and procedures. While the DOJ’s findings do not align with these assessments, we have identified additional ways to enhance our Title IX processes.”
Subscribe to Cleveland Scene newsletters.
Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Or sign up for our RSS Feed
