“The Hunting Ground,” a film about sexual assault on college campuses, is really troubling to view, said University of Alaska Southeast Chancellor Rick Caulfield, “but it’s a really important film to look at and understand.”
Caulfield introduced the film at the UAS Egan Lecture Hall to an audience of around 30, which included students, staff and community members.
“It really reflects a profound failure by people in roles like I have to respond appropriately and keep a campus environment safe,” Caulfield said.
UAS showed the film, which was released in 2015, earlier this month to coincide with Sexual Assault Awareness month.
The University of Alaska Fairbanks also showed the film on campus for the first time about six months ago, but for a different reason. The university had just come clean about a series of mishandled sexual assault cases where perpetrators were not disciplined appropriately. UAF’s interim chancellor publicly apologized for the university’s lack of response and used the film as a jumping off point for campus and community discussion.
Last week, an Anchorage law firm released an independent audit initiated by the University of Alaska President Jim Johnsen that confirms UAF failed in its handling of five sexual assault cases between 2011 and 2014.
“UAF’s failures can be attributed to multiple factors, including the lack of an informed and capable staff for a period of time, insufficient allocation of resources to student discipline and Title IX compliance, a lack of oversight by UAF administration, a lack of early guidance and oversight at the statewide level, and UAF’s tendency to handle matters internally,” the report stated.
Here in Juneau, Lori Klein has been working hard to make sure those types of oversights aren’t happening at UAS. In January, Klein became the Title IX Coordinator for UAS, a position previously combined with the human resources director.
“The university made an investment to separate the two positions,” Klein noted in a phone interview Monday.
In this role, Klein is responsible for making sure UAS doesn’t violate Title IX, a federal law that protects people from discrimination based on sex or gender and guarantees access to education in institutions that receive federal funding.
Not properly handing instances of gender-based discrimination, harassment or sexual assault on campus is a violation of Title IX.
Since August, Klein said UAS has received less than a dozen Title IX complaints. They range in scope from reports of crude sexual drawings in campus bathrooms to sexual assault. According to the Juneau campus crime statistics that looked at 2012-2014, the latest figures available, there were two rapes reported in 2014, one on campus and one in residence facilities. There were also five reports of sexual offenses classified as “fondling”, two on campus, two in residence facilities and one at a non-campus building.
All UAS employees — except counseling staff — are required to tell Klein about possible Title IX violations. At this point, about 75 percent of all UAS employees have received training on this.
“For example, an academic advisor is talking to a student and he discloses that he’s being sexually harassed, that advisor has to report that to me, and I act on it,” Klein said.
Acting on a report means following up and doing an initial assessment.
UAS has eliminated a traditional adjudication process that involves victims and alleged perpetrators going before a panel of faculty or staff for a hearing. Klein said that takes away “the courtroom-type atmosphere.”
Instead, Klein is responsible for doing the review.
“If there is a call for an investigation, I do an investigation to determine whether or not there was a violation,” Klein said. “I would meet with all parties and any witness that they would ask me to meet with and take all of that information.”
If there were a violation of Title IX, Klein would make a recommendation to student conduct if it involves students, or human resources if it involves an employee. Student conduct and HR are responsible for issuing sanctions.
“If a student is found responsible for sexual assault, typical sanction is suspension or expulsion,” Klein said.
But there are checks and balances.
“If my finding could result in a suspension or expulsion, all parties then have the ability to appeal that recommendation for suspension or expulsion. There’s a multi-step review before a student would be suspended or expelled,” Klein said.
None of the Title IX complaints this year have involved campus sexual assault.
“We’ve had sexual harassment in the classroom. We’ve had reports of students who were sexually assaulted off campus by non-students,” Klein said.
As a Title IX coordinator, Klein said she doesn’t investigate reports that involve non-students or non-faculty.
“We talked to the victim about their options to report to law enforcement and then we offer any number of support for their continued academic success,” she said.
Klein doesn’t have staff under her but she does work with and rely on other UAS employees to help her out. She’s working on implementing resource staff members on the Juneau, Ketchikan and Sitka campuses. They’ll receive extra Title IX training and students can turn to them to report potential violations.
In addition to responding to reports, Klein also has to think more broadly about how to create a campus environment where sexual assault, gender-based discrimination and harassment doesn’t happen.
Klein is working with the Title IX coordinators at UAF and University of Alaska Anchorage to write policy and regulation that applies to all three universities.
University of Alaska Board of Regents member John Davies is chair of a sub-committee on Title IX compliance. He visited UA’s three major campuses last month and held listening sessions with faculty, staff and students.
One of the most urgent issues that came out of those sessions, Davies said, is the need for victim advocates on campus that are separate from the Title IX office.
“We don’t have that in place at any of the campuses at this time,” Davies said. “So it’s still a problem that students going through the investigative process are often going through it on their own and don’t have somebody at their side that’s looking out for their individual best interests.”
Klein said at UAS, students are connected to advocates at AWARE, but she is working on having advocates on campus. Davies hopes all universities will have them in place within the next two months.
He said the Board of Regents will ensure there are adequate Title IX resources at the campuses.
“We’ll be carefully querying the president as he brings his budget forward to make sure that that issue is going to be adequately resourced in spite of the budget difficulties,” Davies said.
The Board of Regents also expects to hear from the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, which launched a Title IX compliance review of the UA system two years ago.
“Any month now I expect to get a report back from them. My fervent hope is that every single issue that they bring up in that report, we’ve already addressed,” Davies said.
Overall, Davies said he’s pleased with the change of campus response in handling sexual assault and gender-based harassment and discrimination.
“I’m not pleased with the fact that we still have serious Title IX and sexual assault issues that we have to deal with, but that’s just a fact of our society,” he said.
At first, Davies said he was daunted by the fact that universities were being held responsible to changing problems ingrained in society.
“But the more I thought about it, the more I thought, ‘What’s a better place to start than at the universities,’” he said.
Davies said he now embraces the task.
“I think the university can be a catalyst for change.”
UAS student government member Hannah Wolfe-MacPike was at “The Hunting Ground” viewing in mid-April. During a discussion afterward, she said as a student she sees some of that change.
“Last semester, I had a student come up to me and tell me they were sexually assaulted and another person they knew of was sexually assaulted on one of our campus paths, and that student asked me what channels to go through,” Wolfe-MacPike said.
At that time, she said she didn’t know what to suggest, but she does now.
“It’s really great that we now have a Title IX coordinator, the UA system has Title IX coordinators and the administration of the UA system has stepped up,” Wolfe-MacPike said.
But she said students aren’t involved enough in the issue. She was disappointed with how few of them were present at the film.
“I don’t see enough of us having that conversation. It’s an uncomfortable topic and it’s not something that a lot of my peers are willing to talk about,” she said. “It’s important and it affects all of us, and I think students need to start doing some of that work on campus.”
• Contact reporter Lisa Phu at 523-2246 or lisa.phu@juneauempire.com.
