As part of the ongoing Title IX investigation into Dartmouth’s handling of sexual assault cases, representatives from the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights will revisit the College from Feb. 24 to Feb. 28. The federal attention comes as lawmakers in Congress are calling for increased transparency from the Office for Civil Rights.
On Jan. 29, a bipartisan group of 39 congressmen led by Congresswomen Jackie Speier, D-Calif., and Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., urged the office to better disclose its investigations and activities. The letter went on to request that the office release information regarding the resolutions it reaches with institutions that it investigates.
A Department of Education spokesman said in a statement that the Department will respond to the letter.
“We agree that this is a very important issue, which is why we have prioritized civil rights enforcement and galvanized a national effort to help prevent sexual assaults and to better support survivors of sexual violence,” the statement said.
The letter’s timing coincided with President Barack Obama’s Jan. 22 announcement of a task force focusing on sexual violence at universities.
Dartmouth general counsel Robert Donin said in an email that the Office for Civil Rights’s second campus visit will follow a similar procedure as the first, which occurred during the last week of January. The federal office will prepare a message that the College will send to campus, inviting individuals to contact the officers by telephone or e-mail to schedule an appointment during the visit.
Several members of student groups that provide support for sexual assault victims and promote awareness of sexual violence — including Mentors Against Violence, Sexual Assault Peer Advisors and the Student and Presidential Committee for Sexual Assault — said the office had contacted them as part of the investigation.
SPCSA chair Will Scheiman ’14 said in an email that he and several other committee members had been contacted by the Office for Civil Rights, along with dozens of other students.
“I know that there have been a large number of students who have already spoken with the OCR and that plan on speaking with them in the future,” he said. “Anecdotally, there were numerous students being interviewed, as well as waiting for interviews, on the day that I went.”
Members of MAV and SAPA also confirmed that they had been contacted. Scheiman said he was not asked to inform other students about the open office hours, as a campus email advertised the sessions.
The campus-wide message advertising the January visit was included in the College’s daily email update sent at 1 a.m. Jan. 20, the Monday of the week before the Office for Civil Rights visited. It was the fifth of five announcements, following an advertisement for lunch in “Dartmouth’s tropical paradise” and an Olympics preview.
National campus sexual assault activists said the investigation into the College is unique because it was initiated by the Office for Civil Rights rather than by a complaint, and because the Office for Civil Rights visits have been advertised publicly.
Andrea Pino, a member of End Rape on Campus, an advisory group for Title IX and Clery Act complainants at universities, said that the Office for Civil Rights’s decision to reach out to campus is not the norm.
Pino said that compared to other investigations she had worked with, including those conducted at Swarthmore College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, investigators at Dartmouth seem more active in engaging the community.
Occidental College professor Caroline Heldman, a co-founder of End Rape on Campus who led a Title IX complaint against Occidental, also said the fact that Title IX investigators reached out to the College in addition to the original Clery Act complainants is significant.
“Dartmouth is unusual,” she said. “Your peers filed a Clery complaint, then Title IX investigators reached out on their own volition.”
