What Victims’ Advocates and Due-Process Supporters Hope to Accomplish When They Meet DeVos

Advocates on all sides of the debate over Title IX enforcement tend to agree on one thing: that the campus process for adjudicating sexual-violence cases should be fair to both parties.

But they remain bitterly divided over the finer points of the way colleges should handle such cases, not to mention the federal guidance on how the gender-equity law applies to campus sexual assault.

When advocates for victims and accused students meet separately with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Thursday, those tensions will be front and center.

Ms. DeVos has not commented specifically on her plans for the guidance, which includes the controversial 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter that came to define a new era of enforcement under President Obama. That document spelled out colleges’ obligations under Title IX to respond promptly and equitably to sexual-assault reports, and made clear that federal enforcement of the law would be more stringent.

But Candice E. Jackson, the acting assistant secretary for civil rights at the department, told higher-education lawyers last month that the 2011 letter is among the Obama-era policies being considered for revision or reversal by a task force on regulatory reform.

On Thursday, Ms. DeVos will first talk for 90 minutes with campus sexual-violence victims and groups that support them, including End Rape on Campus, SurvJustice, and the National Women’s Law Center.

Then she’ll spend 90 minutes hearing from students who say they’ve been falsely accused of sexual misconduct, as well as groups focused on due process, such as Stop Abusive and Violent Environments and Families Advocating for Campus Equality.

A third 90-minute session will include the American Association of University Women and other higher-education associations, though it’s unclear who else will be in attendance. The department didn’t respond to a request for more information.

The half-dozen attendees who spoke with The Chronicle said it would be their first opportunity to sit down with Ms. DeVos. Survivor advocates have repeatedly asked to meet with the secretary this year but until now haven’t gotten the chance, said Jessica Davidson, managing director at the nonprofit group End Rape on Campus.

Since Ms. DeVos requested this particular meeting, Ms. Davidson said she expects much of the agenda to be dictated by the secretary’s questions.

End Rape on Campus is bringing two sexual-assault victims to tell their stories, and Ms. Davidson said she hopes Ms. DeVos will listen and take the time to understand the complex experience of being a victim.

She also hopes to convey why it’s important to preserve robust enforcement and make sure Ms. DeVos understands how recent guidance has made a difference for students who are assaulted.

Standards of Proof

One of her priorities is to fight for keeping the standard of proof that the “Dear Colleague” letter told colleges to use in sexual-violence cases: a “preponderance of the evidence,” meaning it is more likely than not that the offense occurred. That’s a lower standard than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard used in criminal cases. The standard favored by many critics of the 2011 guidance, “clear and convincing,” falls between the two.

There are actions that federal education officials could take to continue improving how campuses handle sexual-assault cases, Ms. Davidson said, but “realistically that’s not going to be the focus of this meeting because this is the first time that DeVos has met with survivors.”

Students’ stories will also be a central focus of the due-process advocates’ meeting, “to allow her to see firsthand what students are experiencing,” said Christopher Perry, a lawyer who works with the group Stop Abusive and Violent Environments, also known as SAVE, which supports students who face misconduct allegations.

Jonathon P. Andrews, a former Hanover College student who says he was falsely accused of sexual assault, said he is pleased that students like him finally have a seat at the Education Department’s table.

“The previous administration never opened up the doors to the other side,” he said, referring to accused students and their allies. “It’s a good sign that they’re trying to take a holistic view of this, instead of relying on the statistics of one side and the stories of one side.”

SAVE representatives also hope to explain to Ms. DeVos why the 2011 letter should be scrapped and replaced, Mr. Perry said.

He’d like a new guidance document to include several additional due-process protections, namely that campuses should make confidential advocates available to both victims and accused students to help them navigate the disciplinary process. And that accused students should be immediately given clear information about the allegations against them when an investigation is opened.

When sexual-assault allegations rise to the level of a potential felony, Mr. Perry said, he believes federal officials should encourage colleges to let law enforcement handle the cases. SAVE doesn’t support the “preponderance” standard, he said.

“The fact that they’re willing to discuss these issues is really encouraging,” he said of Ms. DeVos and her staff, though he emphasized that “I hope it doesn’t turn into a political conversation.”

Mr. Andrews, who describes himself as a feminist, added that “we’re not just going there for our purposes.”

“All of the groups that are going there understand that they’re fighting for victims to be genuinely considered as well,” he said.

Due Process

Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women’s Law Center, hopes to “provide guidance on the reach and scope of Title IX” and dispel some of the myths about what the law does and doesn’t require colleges to do.

For instance, some critics of recent Title IX guidance have alleged that it requires colleges to subject accused students to unfair procedures, she said, when in fact the law’s mandate is equitable treatment.

Adding due-process protections doesn’t have the effect of rolling back victims’ rights, said Laura L. Dunn, executive director of SurvJustice, which provides legal help to student victims. “I’m fine with due process being hand-in-hand with civil rights,” Ms. Dunn says, adding that she’s “happy to go toe-to-toe” with due-process supporters, like the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, to try to help federal officials protect all students.

“What we don’t want is a change in the narrative” within the Education Department, she said. Given that victims are the ones who have historically been silenced and stripped of educational opportunities because of experiencing sexual assault, she said, “we don’t want [officials] to be overly concerned about false reports against young men.”

Ms. Dunn said her organization met with Ms. Jackson, the acting head of the department’s Office for Civil Rights, last Friday. SurvJustice is among a number of victim advocacy groups that have met with her in recent weeks. Ms. Dunn said she lobbied in favor of the preponderance standard, discussed concerns about mandatory reporting of information about sexual assaults by most campus employees, regardless of what the person who confided in them wants, and talked about the role of the campus police in sexual-assault cases.

“We did not make it even a fraction of the way through” the group’s agenda, Ms. Dunn said. She had wanted to talk about how the civil-rights office might resolve its backlog of Title IX investigations. But she’s planning to take the issues that seemed to gain the most traction with Ms. Jackson and raise them again with Ms. DeVos.

Ms. Jackson praised a set of recommendations from a recent American Bar Association task force on campus sexual misconduct, Ms. Dunn said, which could offer a sense of the department’s thinking on Title IX.

“We didn’t spend time fighting for the Dear Colleague letter,” she said. The document is personally important to Ms. Dunn, who is one of the founders of the recent campus movement against sexual assault. “For me, that was my moment of justice,” she said. But ultimately, “what matters is the substance of the letter, not the letter itself.”

Representatives from End Rape on Campus have also sat down with Ms. Jackson. “It was clear from the meeting that Jackson wants to continue the conversation,” Ms. Davidson said.

Still, in advance of Thursday’s meetings, Ms. Davidson is apprehensive about the changes that might be on the horizon.

“We’re already concerned because the way that the series of sessions is set up, there’s a disproportionate amount of time being spent on the interests of the ‘wrongly accused’ instead of survivors,” she said. Beyond that, her impression is that the Trump administration “has no or very little indication of maintaining the status quo on Title IX guidance.”

Ms. Dunn said she hopes she will be able to “figure out once and for all if the guidance will disappear — and if so, what’s the replacement.”

Sarah Brown writes about a range of higher-education topics, including sexual assault, race on campus, and Greek life. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.