For responding to issues of sexual misconduct or discrimination and harassment on campus, Tufts has departments including the Center for Awareness, Resources and Education and the Office of Equal Opportunity. However, despite being organized and managed differently, there remains confusion in differentiating the offices.
Alexandra Donovan, director of CARE, and Jill Zellmer, executive director of OEO, have spoken on the functions of their respective groups in the hopes of providing clarity for those who need it.
“CARE is set up to respond to anyone who’s been impacted by sexual misconduct. We offer confidential support for that,” Donovan said in an interview with the Daily. “We are unique in that we are the only office that offers confidential support around sexual misconduct.”
Unlike OEO, CARE contains several affiliated student groups aimed at student education and outreach.
“Green Dot and the Sex Health Reps are student groups that are attached to CARE,” Donovan said. “They are considered department student groups, which means that they have a staff adviser from CARE, but they are run by students, for students in our peer-to-peer education programs.”
Donovan also touched on specific things CARE can do to provide support, including communicating with OEO on behalf of students who may not feel comfortable reporting an incident directly to OEO. CARE can also accompany students who may feel nervous about going to the Tufts University Police Department about their problems.
“We have a lot of flexibility in that regard. With OEO, they are upholding policies, they are responding in a very systematic way. They don’t have that flexibility of what they offer … so it feels very different in that way,” Donovan said.
Zellmer noted that Tufts is, by law, required to have an organization like OEO to serve the community.
“There must be an office at all institutions that investigates discrimination and harassment of all protected categories, including sexual misconduct,” Zellmer wrote in an email to the Daily. “The OEO serves this function for the university communities at all our schools and its oversight includes faculty, staff, students, patients, visitors, etc.”
As an institution of higher education, Tufts must adhere to specific government guidelines.
“When we conduct investigations for Tufts, we must follow federal, state, and local laws and regulations such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) and the MA Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD),” Zellmer wrote.
Because of OEO’s compliance function, Zellmer described the office as naturally more reactive. This sentiment led to students asking for a more proactive office, leading to the creation of CARE in the 2014–15 school year.
“The CARE office … was implemented … as a department under AS&E’s Office of Health and Wellness,” Zellmer wrote. “The CARE office is policy confidential. … However, CARE still has to report de-identified data to TUPD for federal … purposes and is subject to the laws and regulations of the state. Only clergy, medical providers, and clinicians acting in those capacities for Tufts are confidential by law.”
Zellmer noted that, while OEO collaborates closely with CARE when possible, OEO does not oversee the Sex Health Representatives or the Green Dot program, a student-run organization which focuses on teaching bystander intervention to students. Zellmer also suggested that confusion about the role of the two offices may have stemmed from shared leadership between the offices in the past.
“If there is confusion among students about the differences between OEO and CARE, it may have developed because the Executive Director of the OEO used to supervise the CARE managers. Tufts moved away from that model over 5 years ago in order to better support students,” Zellmer wrote.
Donovan spoke to the confusion regarding the two offices.
“The confusion between OEO and CARE comes up a lot because we both do this work, we just do it in very different ways,” Donovan said. “Sometimes CARE will accompany someone to OEO … but we are two distinct offices. I don’t know who comes to see them, and they don’t know who comes to see me.”
Donovan explained that CARE specifically gets confused with counseling or another confidential resource on campus, whereas the organization is specifically concerned with offering support surrounding sexual misconduct.
The issue of misidentifying Green Dot and Sex Health Representatives occurs less commonly, Donovan said, because they are both student groups, neither one of which offers confidential care. They offer peer-to-peer education around prevention.
Another distinction between the groups is that OEO reports their numbers, whereas CARE does not.
“Having a CARE office that doesn’t report to OEO allows students to have a more private place to talk about sexual health, sexual education and consent awareness, among other things,” Zellmer wrote. “Both OEO and CARE have more autonomy, transparency, and authenticity this way which benefits students.”
