Students Say They Don’t Trust Campus Title IX Processes. And They Doubt Their Own Reports Would Be Taken Seriously.

When the results of a survey of 180,000 students were published last week, a troubling statistic was circulated: Despite years of efforts to stop sexual assault on campuses, more than one in four undergraduate women experience a form of nonconsensual sexual contact while they’re in college, according to the survey, conducted by the Association of American Universities. The results are similar to the last time the AAU studied the problem, in 2015.

But as the 33 colleges that participated in the survey released the results specific to their campuses, another fact emerged. Few undergraduates believe that campus officials conduct fair investigations into reports of sexual misconduct. Many students indicated that they believed a report of sexual misconduct would not be taken seriously by officials on their campus.

At Georgetown University, for example, only 20.6 percent of undergraduate women and 20.1 percent of trans, genderqueer, nonbinary, or questioning students reported that they believed campus officials would conduct a fair investigation in response to a report of sexual misconduct. Only 35.8 percent of undergraduate women said they believed a report of sexual misconduct would be taken seriously. At the University of Southern California, it was similar: Only 38.6 percent of female undergraduates and 23.5 percent of trans, genderqueer, nonbinary, or questioning undergraduates were sure that a report of sexual misconduct would be taken seriously by officials, and only 27.7 percent of female undergraduates believed an investigation would be fair.

Over all, only 15 percent of what a report on the survey refers to as victims said they had taken advantage of a program or resource such as counseling or the Title IX office after an incident. Those statistics were alarming but not surprising to advocates who work with college students. University administrations have been slow to take the steps necessary to ensure that students feel supported enough to come forward about sexual misconduct, they said.

“There have been decades of institutional betrayal at many of these schools,” said Michele Landis Dauber, a professor at the Stanford Law School. “Students speak to each other about the difficulty of going through a Title IX process.”

Andy Turner, a Georgetown senior, said he wasn’t surprised that many students at his university and at others did not trust the Title IX process enough to report incidents of sexual misconduct. Part of the problem, he said, is that important positions in the Title IX office have been left unfilled — a common problem among university Title IX offices.

“Students aren’t going to trust offices where there are a lot of vacancies,” Turner said. He added that the survey data don’t break down students’ race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, which would give “a more accurate picture of which communities on campus are going to have higher levels of mistrust.”

A recent editorial in The Hoya, Georgetown’s student paper, called for a fully staffed Title IX office and clarity on the process of hiring officials for that office. The newspaper reported that the Title IX coordinator, a position that had been vacant for a year, had recently been filled by the Title IX investigator, creating a vacancy in the investigator position. An external investigator will examine Title IX cases, according to the newspaper.

A Georgetown spokeswoman said the university is actively looking for a Title IX investigator. In the meantime, several other trained colleagues in the office are conducting investigations, she said.

“These positions are incredibly important to our community and help supplement additional efforts aimed at engagement, prevention, training, and support for survivors,” the spokeswoman said.

John J. DeGioia, Georgetown’s president, said in a statement that students have become more aware of the university’s Title IX policies and resources, and are reporting incidents and seeking help at higher rates.

“While this upward trend is encouraging,” he said, “the numbers show that the majority of students still do not seek university assistance after a sexual assault.”

Michelle Carroll, an associate director at the advocacy group End Rape on Campus, said that when students she’s worked with talk about why they don’t trust their campus Title IX processes, they sometimes single out one campus administrator, but often they view the entire administration as unfriendly to the issue. There’s a perception that administrators “use bureaucratic processes to slow down advocacy,” she said.

“Administrators will nod and say, Yeah we’ll do those things, and then there’s never any change,” Carroll said.

Carroll worried that new Title IX regulations, expected to be issued by the Trump administration, will give greater protection to students accused of sexual misconduct, and will thus make students even less likely to report sexual misconduct.

“We would have liked to have seen higher reporting numbers,” Carroll said of the recent AAU data. “Higher reporting numbers convey that students trust their administrations to do something. With these new regulations, we’ll see a complete decrease of reports.”

She added that students feel comfortable in coming forward when a trained advocate is in place and is able to work with them from the beginning to the end of the process. The new Title IX regulations won’t take that away, she said, and that’s important.

Audrey Williams June contributed to this article.

Nell Gluckman writes about faculty issues and other topics in higher education. You can follow her on Twitter @nellgluckman, or email her at nell.gluckman@chronicle.com.