The number of reported sexual assault cases at Dartmouth has increased significantly in the past two years, and campus experts think this reflects changes at both the Dartmouth and national levels that make survivors feel more comfortable sharing their experiences.
For the past 11 years, the Committee on Standards, run through the judicial affairs office, had averaged three reports of sexual misconduct per year. Last year, there were 17, though not all of them resulted in a COS case, judicial affairs director Leigh Remy said.
“It was a huge jump,” Remy said. “I wasn’t sure what would happen this year.”
The report with this year’s numbers will come out this summer. Since last June, there have been five investigations of sexual assault and two other Title IX complaints that were not related to sexual assault.
The Clery Report, which includes reported sexual assaults on campus and on other Dartmouth-owned or -controlled property, has shown an increasing trend in sexual assault reporting. There were 35 reported cases in 2013, 24 cases in 2012 and 15 cases in 2011, but Title IX coordinator and Clery Act compliance officer Heather Lindkvist said that the 2014 numbers are even higher, though she cannot disclose them at this time.
The Clery Act requires all colleges and universities that participate in federal financial aid programs to collect, retain and disclose information about crime on or near their campuses or other college-owned property.
In addition to the fact that not all disclosures go through the judicial process, Clery report and judicial affairs office numbers differ in that the Clery report includes a larger geographical area and includes anonymous reports. There are also tallying differences — Clery numbers include reports throughout the calendar year, while judicial affairs numbers are only counted during the academic calendar, Lindkvist said.
Remy listed a few potential reasons for this trend. Last June, the College enacted a new sexual assault policy which calls for, in some cases, mandatory expulsion of those found guilty of sexual assault and for an independent investigator to examine complaints. It also streamlined and clarified how to report sexual assault at the College. While in some ways this increase is in response to national legislative change, it was mostly sparked by feedback from the community about why students did not report and what factors served as blocks to reporting, she said.
Reporting can happen in various ways. It could be telling someone and seeking support, notifying the College without taking action or asking the College or police to take action. The new policy attempts to show students what it means to report and that they have options, Remy said.
Lindkvist says that she has seen an increase in people — including students, faculty and staff — coming to disclose sexual assault to her, even in the nine months she has been acting as the College’s Title IX coordinator and Clery Act compliance officer.
Disclosures help people get information about the resources and services available and the processes through which they can go, Lindkvist said.
The new sexual assault policy was also intended to eliminate perceived barriers to reporting. The new policy included information about retaliation and clarified the definitions of consent and incapacitation. The code also set forth a community expectation that there are certain actions that, if the independent investigator determines to have happened based on a preponderance of evidence, the individual who committed the actions will be expelled. These actions include certain types of sexual contact via physical force, threat or intentional incapacitation, sexual assault motivated by bias or if the responding person has been previously found responsible of sexual assault. Previously, the policy was strongly worded that expulsion was likely to happen, but did not mandate it, Remy said.
The last key change was taking the investigation and adjudication processes out of the COS and handing them over to an external investigator, which came about in response to feedback about students feeling uncomfortable discussing private and personal information with other students and faculty, Remy said. Both parties are also no longer present in the room at the same time, but rather speak to the external investigator separately. Remy clarified that the issue was not that the COS did not perform an adequate job, but that many people thought “you should have a level of expertise or specialization in this type of investigation.”
Another change that Remy thinks may have provoked an increase in reports is the non-gendered wording of the policy, saying that the change is “trying to counter this prevailing notion that sexual assault is not only a women’s issue. It may be subtle to most people, but to me it was profound.”
Remy said that a decrease in reports to the judicial affairs office — down to seven currently from 17 last year — may be because of Lindkvist’s more prominent role on campus. She said with Lindkvist available as a resource, students affected by sexual misconduct may be choosing options other than reporting to the judicial affairs office. Lindkvist arrived on campus last August. She was previously the Title IX officer at Bates College.
“I think that what ended up happening is that because our office was so closely and visibly connected to the policy change, I think students were coming here who this year might have chosen to go to [Lindkvist] first,” Remy said.
Because of the focus that has emerged since the Office of Civil Rights’ “Dear Colleague” Letters in 2001 and 2011 and an increased focus on sexual assault on college campuses, there is more recognition that the mandatory Title IX coordinator should be a full-time position, Lindkvist said.
“My role has been to centralize and coordinate efforts related to sexual violence, intimate-partner violence and assault on campus,” Lindkvist said. She is responsible for overseeing cases and making sure that all cases are fair, equitable and prompt, she said.
There have also been several national changes recently that have raised awareness for the issue of sexual assault on college campuses. Remy emphasized that the trend of increasing sexual assault reports is not particular to Dartmouth, but is rather “a cultural shift on our campus and on other campuses about how people talk about this.”
Peer institutions have experienced a similar trend of increased reporting. Brown University reported 21 sexual assault cases in 2013, 16 in 2012 and seven in 2011, Columbia University reported 22 in 2013, 14 in 2012 and four in 2011 and Harvard University reported 40 in 2013, 38 in 2012 and 26 in 2011,
Sexual Assault Awareness Program coordinator Amanda Childress called the national increase in reporting something that “those of us in the field who work with advocacy and survivors view as really positive.”
An increase in national visibility means that survivors are more knowledgeable about the resources they have and feel less alone, Childress said, which may make them more likely to report offenses.
“It may encourage them or help them feel more comfortable that if they do report they will be supported by their peers, by their families, by their institutions,” she said.
Childress cited increased national attention such as the White House task force developed by the Obama administration to address sexual violence on college campus. The task force published a report on the subject under the title “Not Alone”. There have also been some recent amendments relating to college campuses made to the Violence Against Women’s Act.
“A lot of this all together has really started this movement,” Childress said.
