Well after midnight, two professors at Occidental College hung up the phone. They had been speaking with an advocate for stronger enforcement of campus sexual-assault policy. The call confirmed that they had to take charge.
The professors, Danielle M. Dirks and Caroline E. Heldman, say the conversation in March clinched their decision to put their names atop a federal complaint that Occidental administrators had mistreated and created a hostile environment for students who reported sexual assault.
The two professors’ unusual role has led to national prominence as advisers for those filing similar complaints against their institutions. As activists nationwide have worked to force colleges to change how they handle reports of sexual assault, faculty members have signed petitions and written open letters. But students have led the complaints in most of the high-profile cases against institutions.
By taking the lead on the Title IX complaint, filed in April, Ms. Heldman and Ms. Dirks have shielded their students from publicity. Having faculty involved, they note, also keeps pressure on administrators as student activists graduate.
But the professors’ involvement has also heightened tensions at Occidental, leading to faculty votes of no confidence in two administrators’ ability to handle sexual-assault cases. Professional risks and personal costs, too, have ensued. The two professors cite nights with little sleep, office break-ins, hours spent working in coffee shops over academic breaks, and the emotional toll of reading accounts of their students’ traumas.
Ms. Heldman has been at Occidental since the fall of 2006. An associate professor and chair of the political-science department, she says students who have been assaulted have turned to her for support at each institution where she has taught—Rutgers University, Fairfield University, and Whittier College. When she arrived at Occidental, which enrolls about 2,100 undergraduates, students told her that the orientation program did not teach them enough about how to identify sexual assault as a violent crime.
Ms. Heldman, who is 40, thinks students have confided in her because she is a woman and a political activist who examines gender in her classes. At Occidental she has collaborated with a sociology professor, with whom she taught a course on controversies in sexuality, in a study that asked their students about their experiences with the campus’s hookup culture. The report showed that many did not have the knowledge or language to identify rape as rape, she says.
The fact that assault victims would approach a young professor for help spoke to the scope of the problem, she says. “It happens everywhere, and frequently enough that people without a lot of power at institutions are asked to assist.”
Ms. Dirks, an assistant professor of sociology, who is 33, started her job at Occidental just over two years ago. It is her first position on the tenure track.
Putting her name on the complaint without having the safety of tenure is nerve-racking, but the risk feels like “literally nothing,” she says, after seeing the injustices students have experienced.
“I wasn’t going to turn people away who were coming to my office on a weekly basis and say, ‘Sorry, I can’t help you, come back in seven years.’”
‘Hard Not to Feel Crazy’
The initial 250-page complaint filed by the professors and others against Occidental says that in its handling of sexual-assault cases, the college violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in institutions receiving federal funds.
By early last year, a small group of students and faculty members had organized to evaluate Occidental’s sexual-assault policies, meeting in Ms. Heldman’s office for six hours on most Saturdays.
The group would become the Oxy Sexual Assault Coalition, and its first project compared Occidental’s sexual-assault policies and programming with “promising practices” culled from academic papers and the U.S. Department of Justice. Of 86 practices, the group said, Occidental’s policies aligned with only 13.
One coalition member was Audrey L. Logan, who had been raped as a first-year student. After she reported the rape, her attacker was found responsible for sexual assault and expelled. When he appealed the decision, Ms. Logan was asked to settle the case, which would have allowed him to return to the campus. She says Occidental’s lawyer tried to discuss the case with her at her campus workplace.
Meanwhile, a friend connected her with Ms. Heldman. “It was nice to have the validation and affirmation that I was not the one that was acting really strangely in the situation,” Ms. Logan says. “Going through a crazy process, it’s hard not to feel crazy.”
Going Public
A pivotal point in the coalition’s activism came last February, when an Occidental student reported that another student had raped her. The college did not immediately release a campus alert about the attack, even though the alert system had told students and professors of a robbery that took place earlier.
Ms. Dirks and another student spoke with a local TV reporter, condemning the administration’s silence.
Jonathan Veitch, Occidental’s president, explained the administration’s decision in an open letter to the campus early in March. Without time to investigate, he wrote, the narrative of events was unclear, and in a small community, public notification could violate privacy.
He cited a number of steps his administration had taken, such as convening a task force on sexual assault to review policies and procedures. “A number of well-intentioned people have chosen to cast our motives into doubt; vilify dedicated, hard-working members of Student Affairs; question the sincerity of our response; and actively sought to embarrass the College on the evening news,” the letter adds. (He later apologized for his tone.)
The day after the president issued his letter, the coalition publicly announced that it would file complaints against Occidental under Title IX and the Clery Act, a federal law that requires colleges to disclose crimes on or near campuses.
The time Ms. Dirks and Ms. Heldman spent on the issue quadrupled, Ms. Heldman says, as they compiled stories from assaulted students, spoke with reporters, and met with lawyers.
The complaint initially included testimony from 37 individuals, claiming that administrators had discouraged reporting, retaliated after attacks were reported, and showed deliberate indifference.
“We slept two hours a night,” Ms. Heldman says. “Three or four, if you include naps.”
Previously, the two professors had talked with survivors of sexual assault only about the college’s response to their reporting, not about the violence itself. Reading story after story pushed the emotional toll beyond physical exhaustion, they said.
“My heart has been broken over and over again by students who have reported to me that they have been raped by fellow students,” Ms. Heldman said at an April news conference. She and other women at Occidental, flanking a lawyer, Gloria Allred, had just announced the Title IX complaint, and a series of students had shared details of post-traumatic stress, intimidation, and silence.
Ms. Dirks cried when she watched the conference on her iPhone that night. “There’s so much pain,” she says. “You can see it.”
Soon after, the college’s faculty council voted no confidence in Occidental’s attorney, Carl A. Botterud, and the vice president for student affairs, Barbara J. Avery, expressing lack of faith in their handling of sexual-assault cases.
And Ms. Heldman and Ms. Dirks began to draw requests for help from students across the country.
In August, Ms. Dirks, Ms. Heldman, and a team of students and alumnae from institutions including Occidental, Swarthmore College, and the University of California at Berkeley, formalized their work into an organization called End Rape on Campus, in which advisers guide complainants through filing.
“It can take a very traumatizing experience, a person in a dark place, and make them feel like less of a victim,” says Tucker M. Reed, a junior at the University of Southern California who worked on her complaint with Ms. Dirks. “It’s very powerful what these women do.”
Mr. Veitch says Occidental is making progress. The college has revamped its policy to include clear guidance about options for reporting sexual assault and the pace of any investigation. First-year students are required to spend 4.5 hours of orientation in programming about sexual assault, twice as much as in previous years.
The president says that he would like to bring nuanced discussion and research to issues of reporting, administrative procedures, Title IX, and sexual assault as a cultural problem, but that some critics prefer quick sound bites and easy answers. “That erodes the kind of support that one needs to move institutions forward,” he says.
Mr. Veitch says it is difficult not to take criticism personally, especially because both he and his critics are working for student safety. “Your skin and the institution,” he says, “you come to think of them as the same.”
Connecting a Faculty
The climate on the campus remains strained as the federal Title IX investigation, which began in early May, moves forward.
Ms. Heldman and Ms. Dirks say they were troubled when they heard in September that college officials had copied data from the computers and cellphones of several administrators and faculty members.
Ms. Heldman says the “chilling” measure, not required by the Department of Education, sent faculty members the message that if they advocated for students, their privacy would disappear.
Mr. Veitch says the college had received legal advice that copying the data would ensure that all evidence was preserved.
In the meantime, he says, the college will listen to comments on its new policy. Ms. Heldman says the coalition will continue to advocate for students.
The rush of attention given to sexual assault at Occidental has reconnected a once-disjointed faculty, Ms. Heldman says, a connection especially seen in the no-confidence votes.
Recently Ms. Dirks says, some colleagues have come seeking advice. A male professor of mathematics asked her for help this fall. Sexual assault and rape would not arise in his curriculum, he said, but he wanted to tell students that he cared.
Ms. Dirks pointed him toward campus training resources and suggested that he add a line to his syllabus. He should tell any victims who might be sitting in his classroom, she says, that he is an ally, too.
