Healing Outside the Title IX Office
Scan any college’s webpage on resources for survivors of sexual assault, and there’s a good chance the contact information for the Title IX office, police, counseling center, and hospital will be prominently placed. Want info on cultural or spiritual resources? You might have to keep looking.
But these outlets, experts say, can be critical for survivors of sexual assault, especially survivors of color.
Among college students, Black women are less likely than white women to report a sexual assault to police. Reasons for this may include prior negative experiences with reporting, fears of not being believed, and concerns about implicating another student of color.
Nadeeka Karunaratne, a doctoral candidate in higher education and organizational change at the University of California at Los Angeles, is writing her dissertation on the experiences of undergraduate students of color who have experienced dating violence. Karunaratne has interviewed 35 students at three separate four-year public colleges on the West Coast.
“Very few of these students, across multiple institutions, have utilized formal reporting practices, formal Title IX structures, or police, whether that’s campus police or local police departments,” Karunaratne says.
Instead of turning to formal reporting systems at their institutions, experts say, many women of color seek out community support to recover from the mental and physical harms they experienced. This can include regaining control of one’s body through yoga, seeking out support from peers, and processing trauma in academic spaces.
Karla Aguilar Marquez, also a doctoral candidate in higher education and organizational change at UCLA, meets with students one on one as part of her research on how survivors of color heal from sexual assault.
“A lot of the students that I work with don’t choose to go do formal processing because it doesn’t result in the healing and the accountability they’re really hoping for on campus,” Aguilar Marquez says. “So they tend to seek out the care of sexual-assault resource centers or their cultural centers to really find support.”
Advocates say these behaviors should inform how colleges support survivors of sexual assault. An overemphasis on Title IX compliance, experts say, can leave some survivors feeling ignored.
Karunaratne and Aguilar Marquez say advocacy offices and counseling centers should pursue collaborations with cultural hubs, such as a Native student-resource center, to better reach students healing from sexual violence. That requires institutions to invest more in these offices.
“These centers are really the only staff and students that see survivors from point zero to the end,” Aguilar Marquez says. “Title IX and student conduct only really see a portion, and that’s only if survivors choose to report.”
Before coming to UCLA, Aguilar Marquez directed UC Riverside’s CARE program, which stands for campus advocacy, resources, and education. There, she created a holistic-healing program that included trauma-informed yoga, art therapy, and a community garden.
The CARE program also helped build healing spaces within cultural centers. Each space looked different depending on cultural norms.
The healing space for Middle Eastern students, she says, “looked very different than, for example, the space that we built with our African student program center.”
Working with African student programs, the CARE office facilitated discussion about sexual violence and healing “in the context of Black Lives Matter, racial trauma, and the experience of policing in the U.S.,” Aguilar Marquez says. Events incorporated Black feminist thought, poetry, communal drumming, and singing.
In collaboration with UC Riverside’s South Asian Federation and its Middle Eastern Student Center, the CARE office held a “chai talk” for students to discuss healing from sexual assault. The South Asian Federation regularly hosts “chai talks” on a range of topics as “a way to come together culturally and share conversation and dialogue and stories over chai tea,” Aguilar Marquez says.
At UCLA, Aguilar Marquez continues to center students’ identity in her work.
When she meets with Indigenous students, for example, Aguilar Marquez incorporates grounding and prayer into sessions. She identifies as Indigenous and Latina.
“That one-on-one piece for me is always really important there because that’s where a lot of transformation can happen,” she says.
Earning Trust
Experts say there are things colleges can do to make existing structures — the Title IX office, police, and other resources — more welcoming to students of color.
Tanyka Barber, a partner at TNG, a risk-management firm that works with colleges, says colleges need to make sure their campuses are supportive of students of color before a sexual assault even occurs.
“It’s even beyond Title IX. It’s the culture of the institution that schools would need to think about,” she says. “And if I don’t feel like I belong here, that my voice matters, of course I’m not going to come and report a sexual assault.”
Colleges should ensure students of color can speak to professionals who look like them, including in student-health and counseling centers, Barber says.
“Working with practitioners of color, people there that look like me and that I feel can understand my experiences, my culture — that will help me again to feel more comfortable and supported,” Barber says.
Omar Torres, director of strategic partnerships and client relations at Grand River Solutions, a higher-education consulting firm, says officials should attend cultural gatherings on campus, like heritage-month celebrations, to build trust with marginalized communities.
“The macro part of [administrators’] work is really doing what they can to show face so that they can show support for the general community,” says Torres, who previously served as associate vice president for student affairs at Clark Atlanta University.
Doing so, Torres says, opens opportunities for dialogue and creates trusted relationships between students and officials.
“Showing face,” he says, “may go a long way.” —Kate Hidalgo Bellows
