Real Talk protesters have been in talks with students involved in the "Know Your IX" campaign, a national social media and advertising effort to increase students' awareness about their Title IX rights, said Andrea Pino, one of the campaign's founders. While the campaign itself does not provide legal advice to students, those affiliated with the group have recently helped students at Occidental College and Swarthmore Colleges to file federal complaints against their schools.
While most students typically associate Title IX with equal opportunity in athletics, the law restricts colleges and universities that receive federal funding from discriminating in any education program or activity and upholds strict adjudication procedures for sexual harassment and assault cases.
Under Title IX, students can file a federal complaint with the Department of Education against their college or university for "deliberate indifference to known acts of harassment," and penalties can include program overhauls, fines and possible revocation of federal funding.
While Real Talk protesters have described a "culture of apathy and silence" on campus, the group has not yet filed a federal complaint. Representatives from the group declined requests for comment.
Pino, a junior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, sexual assault survivor and complainant on one of the three federal cases currently pending against UNC, said students are just beginning to understand the full scope of the rights accorded to them under Title IX. Real Talk's protests fit into the context of the national trend, she said.
It was not until the Department of Education's 2011 "Dear Colleague" letter that students began to actively demand these rights be protected, Pino said. The letter was sent to all national colleges and universities receiving federal funding and both expanded and clarified the schools' responsibilities to prevent sexual harassment and assault on their campuses.
"Students hadn't considered challenging the law or utilizing it for their own benefit," Pino said. "It wasn't until the Dear Colleague' letter made it clear that universities were liable for sexual assault that there was any national medial coverage about sexual assault and Title IX."
Pino, working with UNC alumna and fellow student activist Annie Clark, recent Yale University graduate Alexandra Brodsky and Amherst senior Dana Bolger, recently founded a national campaign to increase student awareness about such rights, called "Know Your IX."
The campaign seeks to educate all college students about their Title IX rights by Fall 2014. Students who work on "Know Your IX" also share legal advice about how to file federal violation complaints and participate in informal support groups for survivors, although these activities are not directly related to the campaign.
Pino said she has been in continuing discussions with Dartmouth's Real Talk group since shortly before the Dimensions protest.
Dartmouth began revamping its approaches to handling sexual harassment and assault before receiving the "Dear Colleague" letter, said Evelynn Ellis, Dartmouth Title IX coordinator and vice president for institutional diversity and equity.
Amanda Childress, one of Dartmouth's two Sexual Abuse Awareness Program coordinators, said SAAP educates community members, including Greek house members and undergraduate advisors, about bystander intervention, signs of physical abuse and the definition of consent.
Dartmouth surpasses the minimum requirements for Title IX compliance, Childress said. She said her office is always willing to receive students' recommendations for policy changes or specific programming ideas. SAAP has not planned any specific change in response to the protest.
Dartmouth recently expanded the Dartmouth College Health Improvement Program, the college-focused affiliate of the National College Health Improvement Project, to tackle issues related to sexual assault in addition to high risk drinking, said Aurora Matzkin, SAAP supervisor and advisor for the Student and Presidential Committee on Sexual Assault.
The expansion has included adding new members to the DCHIP committee, such as SAAP coordinators and student SPCSA representatives. The College is developing a sexual assault response team program that will provide survivors with access to campus resources as they recover.
There is no formal collaboration among national colleges and universities on how to handle sexual assault, Matzkin said. Childress said she is actively involved with colleagues at other colleges and universities about best practices for handling sexual assault.
Holli Weed '14, a SPCSA member, Sexual Assault Peer Advisor, Mentor Against Violence and UGA said Dartmouth does not lack resources for survivor support.
She said despite what she sees as administrators' "general good intentions," the effects of sexual violence are not completely nullified on campus.
"I've seen older friends who were advocates be harassed and became involved in advocacy, I've had to deal with awful threats myself," Weed said. "There's a broader set of behaviors that's not being addressed."
Weed suggested education programs for incoming freshmen or a required gender and sexuality distributive requirement to improve campus climate.
SAAP focuses on bystander intervention programs over education programs due to their proven efficacy, Childress said.
A March 2011 complaint filed against Yale University was among the first to garner national media attention. The complaint included a widely publicized instance in 2011, when a group of fraternity brothers marched around freshman dormitories chanting "no means yes, yes means anal."
Brodsky, a 2012 Yale graduate and one of the 16 students who organized the federal complaint, said it represented a critical "boiling point" when students were dissatisfied by repeated administrative "wrist slaps" for harassment complaints.
Last October, former Amherst student Angie Epifano wrote an essay published in a student newspaper about her rape on campus and subsequent mistreatment by college administrators. The article drew millions of views and prompted the college to revamp how it addresses sexual assault.
Amherst students considered filing a federal complaint, but decided to continue pressuring the administration to take action through an active public media campaign, which included a widely circulated series of survivor photos, Bolger said.
Federal complaints have been recently lodged against Boston University, Wesleyan University and Pennsylvania State University.
