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The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Thursday, March 28, 2024

Tufts OEO: "If we're not in compliance, I'm just wondering who is"

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Tufts University plans to meet with the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights within the next week to determine whether its current sexual assault policy violates Title IX. Busy with today's White House endeavors to fight sexual assault on college campuses, the OCR has not confirmed when it will be available.

Following a four-year investigation into a Title IX complaint filed by a student in 2010, Tufts had signed an agreement on April 17 with the regional Boston OCR in which the university promised to make a slew of changes to its sexual assault policy. But when the central OCR in Washington, D.C., notified Tufts several days later that its current policies remained in violation of Title IX, the university revoked" its agreement on April 26.

"The central office would not meet with us, would not talk to us and would not give us any details about what they found," University President Anthony Monaco said. "I could not, hand on heart, keep us within that agreement."

Although Tufts will continue to implement recommendations from the agreement, including developing additional resources for survivors and increasing staff and faculty training, there is a disconnect between what the university and OCR intended these revisions to represent. The OCR could not be reached for comment in time for publication.

"The agreement, negotiated between Tufts and the regional OCR, concluded that we had made a lot of changes, which put us in a position where we were compliant with Title IX," Monaco said. "We can't have this dichotomy of regional and central offices telling us different things."

As the White House today released guidelines for how campuses should handle sexual assault, the influence of Washington politics on Tufts' investigation resonated, Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president at the American Council on Education, told The Boston Globe.

"They are very anxious to be seen as taking a very tough and aggressive stance," he said in an April 29 Boston Globe article. "I think, frankly, they were probably looking for somebody to make an example of, and Tufts just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Harvard University and Columbia University are also under investigation by the OCR for similar matters -- there has been a recent spike in these lawsuits, according to an April 29 Inside Higher Ed article. These suits come amid a number of highly publicized sexual assaults at colleges nationwide that led to President Obama's creation of a task force to address campus rape.

The OCR began investigating Tufts in September of 2010 when a female student filed a Title IX lawsuit after facing problems in the school's process of investigating her sexual assault report. Concluding this investigation with a "voluntary resolution agreement" -- what Tufts signed on April 17 -- is par for the course. The University of Montana and the State University of New York System also partook in this process after issues arose with their Title IX compliance.

But Tufts is the first school to revoke its agreement, according to the Department of Education.

Although the university acknowledges it was not compliant with Title IX in 2010, Mary Jeka, senior vice president for university relations and general counsel, said Tufts has followed this federal law since 2011. If she had known the OCR believed Tufts has violated Title IX, Jeka said she would not have signed the agreement.

Since the 2010 case was filed, Tufts has added a Title IX coordinator, trained staff and faculty about the issue and altered several components of its sexual assault policy and procedure.

"If we're not in compliance, I'm just wondering who is," Office of Equal Opportunity Director Jill Zellmer said.

When the OCR sits down with Tufts, Monaco said he is willing to sign a new agreement -- even one that acknowledges Tufts has violated Title IX -- as long as the OCR explains how the university has broken the law and "is very clear about what we have to improve."

The Department of Education has warned Tufts that it risks being cut off from federal funds if the university does not become Title IX-compliant within 60 days.