While a faculty member’s primary roles may be teaching and research, it isn’t unusual for students to use professors as a sounding board for personal problems, even serious ones like rape. New rules on many campuses, however, now mean that if students confide in faculty members about a sexual assault, the professors are required to report the information to college officials.
That change in the way campuses are interpreting faculty responsibilities under the gender-equity law known as Title IX makes some professors uneasy. They say they are often on the front lines when it comes to students’ venting about both their academic struggles and their private lives. In some cases, students even write about deeply personal issues as part of course assignments.
Faculty members worry that being required to report information they learn about a sexual assault will have a chilling effect on their relationships with students.
“Sexual assault on our campuses is a problem, and there is a lot that faculty can do to help—through lending a compassionate ear, being informed about resources, being empowered to use their best judgment,” says Don Eron, who retired last academic year as a senior instructor of writing and rhetoric at the University of Colorado’s Boulder campus.
But Mr. Eron, who is a member of the Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure of the American Association of University Professors, says institutions should not use professors as the eyes and ears of the campus police or university lawyers.
“With Title IX,” he says, “we’ve already seen how universities are more driven by fear of litigation or penalty than concern for victims.”
Making professors required reporters of information about sexual assault is only one way in which faculty roles are changing as campuses struggle to meet their obligations to prevent sexual misconduct and adjudicate complaints. Administrators on at least one campus have put an assistant professor’s research proposal on hold because they are concerned that if students reveal stories of sexual assault as part of the data collection, the researcher must report them to campus officials, even though subjects have been guaranteed confidentiality.
Professors on many campuses are also being asked to add statements to their course syllabi telling students who have experienced sexual assault that “you are not alone,” and directing them to people at the university who can help. Randy Sullivan, a senior instructor of chemistry at the University of Oregon, which is expected to recommend that professors put the statement on all syllabi, says it is a “no brainer.” Oregon administrators have endorsed the concept, and the University Senate is expected to follow.
“This is a reflection of the priority we want to give this issue,” says Mr. Sullivan.
But Kathleen A. Bogle, an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at La Salle University who studies sexual assault, says there are other, more-appropriate places on the campus to post notices about assault than on course syllabi, which are academic documents.
“If you are a faculty member teaching about this subject, you are talking about it academically,” she says. “The classroom is not a Take Back the Night march.”
Some people who work with colleges to help them meet their obligations under Title IX say the new rules dictating faculty roles in handling sexual assault are a logical outcome of the federal government’s increased scrutiny of how well colleges are complying with the law. About 85 institutions are under investigation by the U.S. Education Department for complaints that they inadequately responded to allegations of sexual violence and harassment.
“There is a changed legal dynamic now where campuses are under pressure to act on reports of assault,” says Brett A. Sokolow, president of the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management, a consulting and law firm that advises colleges.
When it comes to how colleges deal with sexual assault, whether it is in statements on course syllabi or in conversations with students, professors no longer are in the driver’s seat. “This is a universitywide issue,” Mr. Sokolow says. “Faculty members have always acted like they had the privilege of keeping their conversations with students confidential. But that privilege mentality is now coming to clash with federal regulations.”
Q&A Document
Many campuses began informing professors this past summer and early fall that they are required to report information about sexual assault after the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights issued a set of questions and answers on how colleges should interpret Title IX. The Q&A document, issued in April, says employees who are responsible for reporting sexual assault include anyone who has the “authority to take action to redress sexual violence,” or anyone who a student could reasonably believe has such authority.
It is the last part of that answer that campus officials believe requires professors to report information about assaults. That also means it is not up to faculty members, but to a university’s Title IX coordinator, to handle that information appropriately, including deciding whether a case should be pursued, says Mr. Sokolow.
Under the new advice from the Education Department, if a student begins telling a professor about a sexual assault, the faculty member must immediately warn the student that professors are required to divulge all information—including the names of the victim and the perpetrator—to campus officials.
Some faculty members see an upside to the new reporting. “Sexual assault has been the most underreported violent crime, and I see people now who are saying, ‘We can’t let this stuff be hidden,’” says Ms. Bogle, the assistant professor at La Salle, in Philadelphia. “This kind of idea has good intentions.”
But, she says, students often see professors as sympathetic listeners, and faculty members don’t want to break that trust. “It is awful to take someone who has experienced a violation against their consent, like rape, and do something else that’s against their wishes by reporting it,” she says.
Anita Levy, associate secretary of the American Association of University Professors, says campuses are overreacting to the new interpretation of the law. “It’s an abundance of caution,” she says. “Universities don’t want to get dinged by the Department of Education and get investigated.”
But at Furman University, officials are contemplating taking the law even further. They are trying to decide whether a research proposal that would involve asking students about their experiences of racial and gender discrimination might require the assistant professor who wants to conduct the project to report an assault if a student divulged that information.
Ken Kolb, an associate professor of sociology at Furman who serves on the university’s institutional review board, which must approve projects involving human subjects for them to go forward, says the new reporting requirements could halt all research on sexual misconduct.
“If we cannot promise confidentiality to our research participants,” he says, “we cannot collect the data we need to analyze sexual assault and harassment on college campuses.” Mr. Kolb would not reveal the name of the assistant professor who has proposed the study under review at Furman.
Some universities already have made professors conducting research exempt from reporting details on sexual assault if the information comes up as part of a confidential study. And Mr. Sokolow believes that is how the law should be interpreted.
“This isn’t a runaway train,” he says. “There is nothing in anonymous surveys that would put an institution on notice of a sexual assault.”
But John S. Beckford, Furman’s vice president for academic affairs, isn’t so sure.
“We’re going to be reconciling important objectives of Title IX with the responsibilities of supporting scholarship and research,” he says. “We are going to be entering a new era—and things that we haven’t anticipated might wind up changing.”
