Transparency in Title IX (Team_404, Track 4)

Collecting and Open-Sourcing Comprehensive Sexual Assault Data to Increase Trust, Accountability, and Effectiveness in the Management of Title IX Reports

Comment

We were inspired by widespread student activism around Title IX that criticized universities’ misconduct of sexual assault and sexual harassment cases. Each of our individual schools has faced unique issues with Title IX, but we realized that none of us knew much about their specific processes or outcomes. That ambiguity prompted us to write this policy proposal, which we hope will better allow survivors and activists to advocate for more just and effective Title IX practices.

Our policy brief sheds light on some of the issues with transparency in Title IX processes in colleges and universities throughout the United States. We propose a solution consisting of a federal mandate, in the form of an executive order followed by legislative action, to require schools to release more comprehensive data regarding Title IX reports including:

  • the number and type of reports filed;
  • the outcome of each report, including any sanctions;
  • demographic information on the parties involved, including gender identity, race, sexual orientation, and their role in the community (e.g. undergraduate student, faculty member);
  • the names of the administrators responsible for each report and its outcome;
  • the preventative measures taken by universities.

To write this proposal, we spent hours together researching and reading news articles, papers in law journals, existing federal legislation, and the reports of our respective schools. After gaining a more comprehensive understanding of the situation surrounding Title IX data collection and publication in the status quo, we sat down to discuss the logistics of our proposal and how we could make it the most effective and feasible. That ultimately led to the brief you see now, which we also put together through hours of writing, editing, and polishing.

Some challenges that we ran into were the lack of consolidated data regarding Title IX incidents in individual schools. While there are a multitude of statistics and reports regarding the widespread number of sexual assault and harassment cases on campuses, there is not enough information about what is happening at specific schools, which populations are the most vulnerable, and other crucial details. Additionally, the data that we analyzed as part of our case studies was varying in its description, the terms used, and the amount of information given in Title IX reports, causing difficulty and confusion in making school-to-school comparisons using the data.

We are proud of how our brief situates its proposal in the current political climate, arguing why right now is the best time to advocate for the passing of this federal legislation. Rather than just proposing a policy, we were able to connect it to current events both in terms of Title IX activism and in terms of the Biden-Harris administration’s recent actions. We are also proud of how we did specific case studies into our own schools, which made the project much more personal while also letting us take away valuable knowledge about what Title IX looks like in our own lives.

Through our research, our team learned about the extent to which a lack of transparency contributes to mistrust of school administration among students, as well as how measures can be taken to improve Title IX processes through data collection and publicly reporting crucial information. Additionally, we were able to gain insight into what is being done to resolve this issue right now and why previous initiatives have had limited success.

We hope to continue to advocate for open data collection and publication regarding Title IX processes, both at our schools and nationally as well. Like we wrote in our brief, there is a politically opportune moment right now to advocate for legislation just like this, and we hope to take advantage of it to help make Title IX practices better across the United States.

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