Oral Histories of the Title IX Office

Trigger Warning: This story chronicles grooming, rape, sexual assault and abusive relationships. We have decided to include the details of these horrible events to open dialogue within the student body about abuse that is often assumed to not happen at historically women’s colleges. 

 

After Theta Chi protests at UMass, UMass administration claimed that nearly all sexual assault goes unreported to the college. Inspired by this, The Sophian collected four oral histories from three Smith students about their experience with Title IX to understand why the student body often does not trust the campus reporting process. 

We have decided not to reach out to the Title IX office, campus safety [referred to as campus police in the oral history] or the Schacht Center to let the survivors’ stories stand on their own as truths. 

 

When I was a first year [on the rugby team], we had two main coaches and a graduate student who was hired to teach the rookies. The graduate student was in her late 20s and went to UMass. When we initially went to a tournament out of town, this graduate student sat next to me on the bus, tried to talk to me the entire time and asked for my phone number. I thought it was kind of odd, but I just went along with it. I thought, This is my coach, and it feels good to have attention. After that tournament, the coach would text me things that were out of line every day. It started with “What are you doing?” Then it escalated to “Let me take you to this place downtown.”

It kept escalating into different avenues where this coach would make fun of the person who I was dating, and say, “Don’t you want to be with somebody who’s older?”

I would come back from visiting my friends, and she would pick me up from the bus stop. It totally spiraled out of control, to the point where we were talking all the time. It felt weird when we were at practice because there was clearly another dynamic that had been established. 

I was really curious as to whether or not I should report it because I had had a previous negative experience with Title IX earlier that year. I didn’t have a lot of faith in the system. I didn’t know who I would report it to. I didn’t know if there was an athletic side, or if there was a different avenue because she was a master’s student, or whether she was an employee of the college. I was confused under whose jurisdiction she fell, so I let it go. 

That summer, somehow, she had gotten my address at my place of work and sent me multiple letters throughout the summer. I was trying to take a step back and hoped it would stop happening. Sophomore year I came to practice and saw that she was there again, hired as a full-time employee of the college. 

She was going to be our third coach, specifically for the rookies. I didn’t want this happening to other rookies and decided to say something.

I did not want to have direct involvement with the Title IX office because it was traumatizing. I met with my captains, and I explained to them what happened. They asked if it was okay if they disclosed what happened to the coaches, and it was unclear what the trajectory was after that.

We all came to practice the following week. Bonnie May, who was the head of club sports at the time, had come to our practice with [the Title IX Coordinator]. They said, “Just so you know, it’s been reported that there’s been an incident on the team.” The language they used was vague. They never mentioned who it was directly.

For the past two years, I’ve continued to be on the rugby team. It feels like I’ve had little acknowledgement. Maybe that’s because I chose to report it anonymously. 

I decided a few weeks ago, my senior year, that I was going to go up to my coaches and say, “When this incident happened, I was the person who was preyed upon.” I had been sitting on that and wondering if it would change their opinion of me as a player. How will I be seen differently in their eyes? When I went up to my coach and said this challenging, emotional thing, my coach’s immediate reaction was, “We knew immediately from the first week who it was. It was not kept anonymous.”

That was extremely jarring and hurtful to hear because I felt it was my right to be notified that my coaches were made aware of information about me that was private and sensitive. I would have moved through these years differently.

When they had to do the investigation, it could not remain anonymous, which I understand. But when something cannot remain anonymous, typically you’re required to let the person know that anonymity is no longer an option. I was not kept in the loop at any point in the process. 

This was not the first time that this particular person was implicated in this kind of situation. She had done similar things at Mount Holyoke and UMass. Given this person’s history, why is Smith hiring her? 

There wasn’t any productive or healing conversation, it was always “Let’s keep this quiet.”

 

I was raped on campus by two off-campus students and with another Smith student. During the rape the police were called. They showed up at the location while the incident was happening and said, “Hey what’s going on? Is everything okay?”

The people who were committing the act of violence said, “Yeah nothing’s going on, everything’s fine.” 

The police who came to the door said, “Are you sure? I got a call about a sexual assault. Is this true?”

They responded, “No, it’s not true,” so the police left.

Once the police are called in a situation like this, the case has to continue to be fully filed until there is a resolution or closure, regardless of whether you want to report. At the time, I was extremely resistant to doing that because dealing with it would mean it was real. Because I have had an experience with rape and reporting to another Title IX office at another university in the past, I was like, “I’m not going to miss this opportunity.” 

The meeting with Title IX felt weird because the Title IX office is on the top floor of College Hall. Every time I go into College Hall to file any paperwork, I am constantly reminded of going in there to talk about my rape, and it is deeply traumatizing just going into the building. 

When I met with [the Title IX Coordinator], I very briefly explained what happened. She immediately began to cry. That is one of the least helpful things that you can do as a professional in that situation. I understand that it is a natural human response to be empathetic. These are really hard things that people don’t want to hear, but they exist as insufferable truths that we have to confront. But as the head of the Title IX office—trained in trauma response and knowledgeable of available support resources—you do not cry.

I think the way the Title IX office, as well as the Schacht Center, handled my case made that traumatic experience so much worse. [The Title IX Coordinator] wasn’t able to offer me much other than saying, “You can meet with the team, we can give you extensions, we want to help you.” She didn’t lay out what an option for reporting could look like. She was even unclear what power the college had in a situation involving off-campus students.

I was walked to the Schacht Center by Title IX people for an emergency crisis appointment. I got my bruises and cuts photographed. I wish somebody from the Schacht Center who was trained in mental health services had been there to tell me my options. It was so unappealing to take my clothes off and show the bruises on my body from this rape. Similar to College Hall, every time I go to the Schacht Center I think of my rape. 

It did not feel like [The Title IX Coordinator] knew logistically what the options were for reporting a rape. She did not know how to talk to somebody who had just been raped and how to present them with options. I didn’t end up going to the Schacht Center until a week later and, at that point, the opportunity to use a rape kit had passed. I also learned that you are not supposed to shower after a rape in order to use a rape kit. I was not informed of any of this by the Title IX office, which would have been helpful at the time. 

My friends were really upset that I was not pressing charges and that I was allowing the case to be closed because I just wanted to pretend it didn’t happen. Two of my friends felt unsafe that the two men who raped me were still out on campus for about a week afterwards, and they requested a trespass order on one of them. I was given this information by my peers, but the Title IX office never addressed that somebody else got to make a decision about my rape. It doesn’t matter if it’s the safer or the better decision. It matters that you give the victim autonomy.

I felt extremely alone and abandoned by the Title IX office because there was no follow-up. One of the reasons I went to a historically women’s college is because I had a rape in high school and I wanted to feel safe. When this happened to me, it was an extremely brutal awakening. It does not matter where you go, it does not matter what community you’re in, rape and abuse of power can happen literally anywhere.

I’ve had one adult who is my support system on this campus. My psychiatrist at the Schacht Center did my initial intake appointment after I was raped, helped me figure out medication and has been seeing me since the first time I saw her, the day immediately after my rape. She has been an incredible resource to me throughout my four years and has been able to hold that anger with me and use it in productive ways.

I think that one of my biggest issues with my peers is that many times when I talk about my experience with rape in the college setting, their immediate response is, “You don’t have to talk about it.” I know it’s really hard to ask specific questions, but it has been the most dehumanizing, traumatizing thing. It is quite literally the refusal to see and know what has happened. There’s a lot of refusal to engage deeply with victims about their pain and the realities of what happened because you’re worried you’re going to trigger them. I’ve been raped twice in my life. This is extremely impactful to my identity, and it is very rare that my peers say, “Can you tell me what happened?” They don’t want to know the ways in which somebody penetrated you against your will, or beat you with a belt, or choked your neck or threw your phone across the room. It allows for this feeling that you need to be quiet and that you need to be silenced. 

I think we need better conversations about how to have trauma-informed classrooms, communities and workplaces. This goes for peers, admin and all people involved in these situations.

 

I left an abusive relationship and was living off campus. Most of my friends were on semesters away. I started to tell my friends on campus about things that had happened to me, and they didn’t believe me. I ended up losing most of the support that I had on campus, and I was completely alone. 

In January 2020, I started feeling like I wanted my life back. I reached out to my ex and told her that I wanted to apologize to her, that I had misperceived her and that I now understood that she had not abused me. When I apologized to her, she wanted me to do an accountability process in order to earn her friendship.

She created a set of rules for my behavior which involved her having access to my social media, my reaching out to anyone I ever told about her abusing me and saying I take it all back, as well as stepping down from Students Against Sexual Assault [an organization on campus] “because I did not understand what sexual assault was.”

She began coming to my apartment off campus threatening suicide. Eventually, it reached a point where I texted her saying that this relationship was unhealthy for both of us and that we shouldn’t see or contact each other anymore. 

She started calling me a bunch of times. Another Smith student drove her to my house where she started pounding on my door for over an hour. She stood there and called me a horrible person and then switched and said, “I know you still love me. I want to know if you are okay.” 

The next day, I went to my class dean and said, “I’m being stalked and harassed by another student. I’m struggling to do my work and I need extensions.” The dean asked if I had called the police. She said that if it happened again I should call the police. I was granted extensions, and that was the extent.

In May 2020, I decided that I wanted to talk publicly about what had happened. I wrote a Google Doc about the last few months. I posted it publicly. Her friends started harassing me over text. Then she reported me to the class deans for harassment.

I got an email from the dean’s office saying that they needed to have a conversation with me, but they did not say what it was about. I had a meeting with them where I laid out what had happened and they said that this was a Title IX issue. I explained that I didn’t trust Title IX to handle this well and I did not want to open a case. The dean responded, “Regardless, you have to stop talking about this. If you don’t, it becomes an issue with the disciplinary board.”

They told me to sign a no-contact order. They said it meant that I could not discuss my abuser with anyone or talk about anything that she had done in private or public spaces. If I didn’t comply, it would become a disciplinary issue. 

I complied with all of it, and then she graduated. So, as far as I know, now I can talk about it.

I talked to a pro-bono legal aid in California and found out that what was going on with me should have been reported to the Title IX office in late February of 2020 when I went to the class dean. Instead, no report was made until after I had been reported for harassment — when they told me that I couldn’t say anything. 

I feel like it’s really important to say that other students and alumnae that were in my life did not believe me. A lot of abuse that happens on this campus doesn’t involve men, and for that reason, it gets perceived as lesser or non-existent.

I’m a transfer student, and part of the reason I came to Smith is because my other school was worse about the same thing. I don’t have any easy answers about what Smith could do better. A lot of people come to Smith after being abused by men and after having experiences with misogyny and violence. They feel like this space is going to be really different and then it’s hard to confront that it isn’t. It can be easier to not think about the fact that lesbian relationships are abusive. 

My whole fucking heart is going out to the survivors of the violence of Theta Chi. I largely saw Smith students condemning it, which is good, but they did not reflect on the way that we have similar structures of violence on our campus.

 

I started talking to the Title IX office my second semester my first year, Fall 2020, after a sexual assault that happened with a fellow student on campus. I had gone there just to report it. I found quickly that all the work was on me. Every time I consulted with them, they’d tell me answers, but if I wanted to continue talking with them, I would have to make appointments myself. They do not keep checking in on me. 

Coming back to Smith, I have had a lot of concerns about being on campus with an abuser which has been really difficult to maneuver. I think that the Title IX office is a super legal entity in the sense that they are limited in what they can and can’t tell students. This poses a big barrier to safety, especially for myself. We need definitive answers in order to imagine a better time at Smith. I have PTSD from my sexual assault and I need to be protected from being triggered on campus. 

The Title IX office laid out a no-contact order in my case. This holds both parties to the same strict standards. If I were to walk into the same room as my abuser, we could both incur violations from the honor board. It struck me that I was also going to be held to this strict standard. Clearly we both have rights and should be treated fairly, but this leaves a dynamic where I am left hurt with the same rules hanging over me. The office can’t support me because I am getting the same spiel as my abuser. 

I wouldn’t have gone through with a no-contact order if I knew it was going to complicate my life so much. I have to walk around campus just as mindful and watchful as if I did not file the report. Sometimes I feel like I could do a better job protecting myself than Title IX. 

My abuser has friends so now there is this whole group of people that I can’t associate with. It just gets really complicated because, due to the no-contact order, I can’t communicate through a second party. Not only that, but an overwhelming number of people who know what’s happened to me are completely complacent in the sense that they associate themselves with that person. I don’t know anyone who has ever said anything to my abuser about the situation. 

The assault happened my first semester, but I reported it my second semester. All protocols followed in my case were established under President Trump’s administration. If I had reported the assault later, it would have been under Biden’s policy. The Title IX office had to follow the laws from the last administration for my case. 

I finally went to the Title IX office because the situation began impacting my academics. I originally turned to my community to rectify the situation. When I realized that others did not recognize what had happened to me,  I decided I needed housing accommodations to get outside of the situation so I talked to the administration. My roommate was best friends with my abuser so I had to get out of the room. 

[The Title IX Coordinator] isn’t allowed to say she is on one side, so in meetings she would often say, “I feel for you,” but not actually support me. She would also say things like, “This is voluntary,” and “You can leave if you want to.” If my abuser were to not cooperate, I would have to do all the work myself. 

I feel like the Title IX office does not provide a lot of resources. I wish the office would be able to tell me if my abuser was in the classes I signed up for. I came to the first day of classes, and had to awkwardly walk out of class. I dropped the class and scrambled to find a new one. The office could easily tell me ahead of time, and give me the power to change classes before the rest of the student body does. 

What has been most frustrating for me is not the Title IX office but the Smith community. When bad things happen, communities should step up. My community didn’t and that is really disappointing. My community did not isolate this person and did not separate them from me, and that led to my turning to the Title IX office. It amazed me how people could be so social justice focused but not believe me when I told them that their friend was an abuser. 

I know from my experience that I will never perpetuate rape culture, and that’s a win there.