Endeavoring to Do Better
Endeavoring to Do Better
2010s Carleton Spotlight
2010s Carleton Spotlight
Deja Vu All Over Again, Part Two
Deja Vu All Over Again, Part Two
Student outrage about rape complaint process fuels calls for a dedicated, full-time Title IX coordinator.
In between Eva’s second rape in 2013 and her lawsuit in 2016, at least two other students were raped at Carleton: One divulged in a Take Back the Night speakout that she had attempted suicide after she was raped by another student. The other went through a campus adjudication process that she described as “eight weeks of hell,” where her assailant had had the benefit of a private attorney and an expert witness but she had not. The CBSM determined that the student had raped her, but his punishment was merely to be placed on “disciplinary status of censure and warning.” He was also required to write a paper on what he had learned about consent. Appalled by the leniency of this outcome, the survivor created a Change.org petition in January 2015 and circulated it on campus. She called on Carleton to make substantive policy changes and commit to increasing funding and resources for staff, including making the Title IX coordinator a full-time position. In a letter to the editor in the Carletonian she explained, “Though Carleton takes a punitive approach in other forms of misconduct, such as academic, sexual violence is considered a ‘learning opportunity.’ I’m not opposed to educational or reparative justice when done correctly, but Carleton has no real way of facilitating this ‘learning opportunity’ and “should be willing to finance legal help for survivors.” Unbeknownst to this survivor, Carleton students had objected to a similar disparity back in the late 1980s: then it was administrators’ explicit condemnation of plagiarism compared to their relative tolerance for sexual assault. They’d asserted that there was “no crime that we can do anything about other than an academic crime.” In the winter of 2015, dean of students Carolyn Livingston put together a “Title IX student visioning team” to solicit input on concerns and priorities. The all-student group met weekly for two trimesters and came up with a list of recommendations. One concern was the way class inequities affected adjudication on sexual misconduct. Federal law now permitted the hiring of private attorneys for campus adjudications, though Carleton specified that they were not allowed to speak during hearings. They could, however, write their clients’ opening and closing statements and bring in expert witnesses. The Visioning Team suggested that the college partner with the HOPE Center, which offered free support to victims of violence in Rice County, or the Minnesota Justice Foundation so everyone could afford counsel. They also suggested increasing prevention training, imposing a minimum penalty for sexual assault of suspension followed by probation, better support for nonbinary students, a full-time Title IX coordinator and a new staff positon of survivor’s advocate. According to a member of the team, they submitted these proposals to Dean Livingston but never received a reply. In May 2016 copies of Eva’s lawsuit began to circulate on campus, and the newly relevant Change.org petition now had nearly 400 signatures. A student who had drafted a similar petition to submit directly to administrators explained, "It was started after years of hearing concerns around Julie Thornton, current Title IX coordinator, being visibly under supported by the campus administration," she said. "Deans work long hours, and combining this position with that of Title IX coordinator negatively impacts implementation of Title IX procedure." She added that a full-time Title IX coordinator "would allow students to be more fully supported.” As in previous eras, students resorted to surreptitious Student outrage about rape complaint process fuels calls for a dedicated, full-time Title IX coordinator.
means to warn each other: more than 500 students
received an email from a fake address listing
the names of ten current and former students.Students also pressed for an internal review of the Title IX process. The Carletonian pointed out similarities between the suits of 1989 and 2016: both described administrators dissuading survivors from filing formal complaints to initiate adjudication processes and assailants violating no-contact orders and remaining enrolled after being found in violation of the policy. Though the article didn’t note it, the plaintiffs were also united by the common experience of PTSD, suicidal thoughts, and academic distress unrelieved by accommodations. As with the lists of predators that had circulated on campus and appeared on bathroom walls in previous eras, students resorted to surreptitious means to warn each other. On May 24, 2016, more than 500 students received an email with the subject line, “Campus Update on Sexual Misconduct” from “carletoncollegedean@gmail.com.” The message, sent from a fake address, contained the names of ten current and former Carleton students and ended with the statement “This is not an exhaustive list.” The college quickly deleted the email, and the Internet security officer who took it down confessed that though he had spent a little time looking at the list, “I have been asked not to look harder.” A day later, more than 100 students showed up to a meeting on how to best support assault survivors. Title IX coordinator Julie Thornton also hosted a series of sessions for students, where they discussed issues such as the need for separate processes for minors and non-students. Then in July Thornton was gone. Administrators made no announcement about her departure and declined to answer questions about it. In the fall, Livingston announced some changes, possibly in response to student advocacy: she said she was working on a “restructuring” of the dean of students’ office and was launching a search for the newly created position of full-time Title IX coordinator. Associate athletic director Heidi Jaynes was named head of the search committee, which included students, staff and faculty. Assistant dean of students Amy Sillanpa became the interim head of the Title IX office, and Laura Riehle-Merrill, director of the student volunteer program CCCE, took on supplemental duties as the deputy for support, or Sillanpa’s number two. Livingston called upon the Student Visioning Team to interview the top candidates. The settlement of the 1989 lawsuit had included a provision that “Carleton’s president will be advocating [for] more extensive training and education” on sexual assault for all students, faculty and staff. Now, 30 years later, new students and all faculty would be required to complete an online sexual assault prevention program, training would be added to new student week, the bystander intervention program Green Dot would be offered to anyone who wanted to take it, and trauma-based training would be provided to the Community Board on Sexual Misconduct. Although a focus of the major policy revisions of 2010 had been to create an accessible and transparent complaint process with a single point of entry for starting a formal process, the revisions apparently hadn’t held up well. Livingston expressed hope that the new coordinator would “be able to streamline support and resources for our students.” She went on, “I think there were challenges in knowing who to go to before, but now I hope it will be crystal clear.”As the search committee welcomed the three finalists for full-time Title IX coordinator to campus in early 2017, Livingston and Jaynes emphasized the importance of having an inclusive and transparent search. Livingston said, “I think students have a particular interest, so I want them to be engaged and be engaged fully.” The CSA working group on rape culture gave the three candidates a set of questions based on student input, informing them that a recent study had showed Carleton students, compared to those at peer institutions, were “less likely to use our institutional procedures to formally report sexual assault." Each was also invited to give a brief presentation. In March, Dean Livingston announced in an all-campus email that she had asked the search committee to renew their efforts. “Consensus did not emerge for any of these three candidates as clearly the right fit for Carleton at this time,” she wrote. Asked by the Carletonian to explain, Jaynes concurred, and a student on the search committee added, "We had candidates that had a lot of experience, and we had candidates that were very personable, approachable and passionate and had all of these ideas they wanted to implement in the position, but they didn't have as much experience." They said a new search timed to better match the school-year calendar would “cast a wider net.” But another student on the search committee told the paper, "I'm really not sure why none of these candidates were hired by the college. Even though I was able to attend the meeting where we discussed each candidate, the ultimate decision on who to hire was not necessarily made by us." The new plan was to invite new candidates to the campus in May and have the position filled by July.This time around, Carleton staffer Laura Riehle-Merrill was included in the pool. Though some on the Student Visioning Team had reservations about her lack of relevant education and experience, Riehle-Merrill was appointed Title IX coordinator that summer. Interviewed in October in the Carletonian, she noted that she had "over a decade worth of experience working closely with Carleton students, and so I think I'm really fortunate in that I'm starting this job with some trust already built up.”
