Author: Manna Selassie
Despite no confidence votes for Dean of Students Barbara Avery and General Counsel Carl Botterud in May and a whirlwind of activity over the summer, students returned this semester to several serious and persistent concerns regarding the handling of sexual assault on campus. The concerns surround the release of an interim sexual assault policy and a controversial decision by President Jonathan Veitch to temporarily seize some faculty computers.
“The votes of no confidence that were taken by faculty in May were symbolic measures meant to convey the depth of the faculty’s concern over the issue of sexual misconduct policy, and I took them seriously as such,” President Veitch said via email.
The no confidence votes specifically named administrators the faculty had concerns about related to their handling of sexual assault.
“This has been the anatomy of a failed leadership. He [Veitch] has votes of no confidence for Dean Avery and Carl Botterud, and he flatly ignores them,” Sociology Professor and Occidental Sexual Assault Coalition (OSAC) Leader Danielle Dirks said, asserting that the Botterud’s reassignment announced over the summer was semantic. “That was low hanging fruit where he could look like a leader, and he didn’t take it. There have been now 50 complaints that involve her [Avery], and I don’t think there has been any accountability on that front.”
Veitch did reassign sexual assault cases out of Avery’s office and Botterud allegedly chose to leave the college, as his name has been removed from the directory.
Avery was disappointed by the no confidence votes, but she is determined to move forward.
“Even though votes of no confidence are growing increasingly common on college campuses, it’s never easy to be the target of one,” Avery said. “It’s unfortunate that the situation has become so polarized that the faculty felt it necessary to take that action. By the time the vote was taken, many of the changes in sexual misconduct policies and procedures we have seen were already well underway. My staff and I fully support those changes, and we continue to work toward our goal of a safe and respectful campus.”
The no confidence votes came at the end of a contentious year in which students and faculty members formed the OSAC and began strong and public criticism of the college’s administration, accusing it of improper handling of sexual assault. The OSAC website lists some of the specific allegations. According to OSAC, administrators assigned a perpetrator found responsible of sexual assault a book report and reflection assignment as punishment. OSAC also reports administration discouraging survivors from reporting sexual assaults and systematically retaliating against those speaking out about the issue.
As significant tension and disagreement between advocates and the administration led to the filing of two federal complaints against Occidental and several survivors’ hiring high-profile attorney Gloria Allred, the administration hired two consultants to conduct a full review of Occidental’s sexual assault policies and procedures and committed to being a leader on the issue in the future.
President Veitch cites numerous changes made to management and policy he says shows the college’s serious intent to meet its commitment, including forming an interim sexual assault policy, creating the Sexual Assault Misconduct Advisory Board, hiring an interim Title IX coordinator and a survivor advocate, adopting a new hotline, increasing the Project SAFE staff and requiring students to take mandatory educational courses such as Think About It.
But OSAC leaders as well as other faculty and students assert that the administration has not done enough to effectively address the issue on campus.
“Since filing in April with the Department of Education (DOE), the number of complainants has gone up to 50 (from 37), the president has seized faculty laptops under the guise of document preservation for the DOE (which the DOE did not request), the sexual assault hearing process has gone from bad to worse, and we’ve spent about $250,0000 for two PR attorneys to come up with a watered-down sexual assault policy,”Politics Professor and OSAC leader Caroline Heldman said. “In short, the institution is digging in its heels and not making real change at the same time that President Veitch is putting on a good performance of change.”
Philosophy Professor Saul Traiger had his own concerns with the process, including why it is taking longer than expected for the two consultants hired by Occidental to release their review of sexual assault cases filed in the last two years. College officials would not give a specific date but clarified that the report should be released by the end of the semester.
“Some faculty feel that they are dragging their feet. Some feel that they are just defending the administration. The faculty feels that their concerns are being deflected instead of confronted,” Traiger said.
Traiger is also concerned about lack of progress ontraining faculty how to better serve on the sexual assault adjudication boards.
“We were told there would be a training for people interested in being on the panel. It turns out it was just a presentation by one of the lawyers instead of about ways that we can do a better job with the reports and hearings,” Traiger said. “No new faculty have been trained to serve on these boards. It is a concern that the administration is not interested in having faculty involved but rather people that have already served, and we think that is problematic because many of those cases have had problems in the past.”
President Veitch acknowledged differing opinions on the issue but maintains that the administration is committed to the same final result as the students and faculty who have been publicly criticizing its progress for a long time.
“Everyone on campus has always shared the same goal: the creation of a safe and respectful campus environment at Oxy,” Veitch said. “In reaching that common goal, we want to make Oxy a national leader. As you know, there have been some disagreements on how best to get there. But it remains a top priority for me and my senior staff, and our work over the summer reflects that. We are determined to get this right.”
Computer Seizure
As part of the sexual assault issue, certain administrators and faculty involved with the handling of sexual assault had to make their computers available to preserve potential evidence, according to Veitch. Heldman said that the action was not required by the DOE.
Other faculty, as well as students, also had issues with Veitch’s actions. “This is a long standing concern. There have been times when I have completely given up using my oxy.edu account and have put all of my email on external servers using external addresses as well as other content that I wouldn’t store on college servers,” Traiger said.
Biology major Daniel O’Connor (senior) had a similar view. “Unless there were concerns about specific professors — which doesn’t seem like the case in this instance — the seizures seem unnecessary, and like a violation of our professors’ privacy, ” he said.
Veitch stated that he was responding to attorneys’ advice and protections have been put in place such as storing the information on an off-site server only accessible to attorneys if it becomes relevant to a case. He also committed to developing a policy that addresses these privacy issues in the future.
“Faculty Council pointed out that Oxy does not have an official policy or process that deals specifically with this kind of e-discovery request, and asked that one be developed,” Veitch said. “That’s a good idea, and we’ll be working with Faculty Council to do just that.”
Underlying Problems
Some faculty and students claim that the sexual assault debate last year, which became extremely heated and made national headlines, was the product of an administration that simply would not listen, communicate, or agree to even the most basic changes without receiving enormous public and legal pressure.
“It was all frustration, lack of communication and no sense of change,” cognitive science major Soumya Choudhury (senior) said.
The situation became especially confusing at the end of Fall Semester and beginning of Spring Semester last year. As activists were planning a “Day of Action” last fall, OSAC claims that President Veitch agreed to change policy and procedure in accordance with demands laid out by OSAC. The activists turned their “Day of Action,” into a “Day of Celebration” for President Veitch, believing he agreed to meet the demands. Veitch would not publicly deny doing so at the time.
But after a controversy involving the lack of public reporting brought the debate back to the forefront Spring semester, Veitch publicly asserted that he never agreed to OSAC’s demands and penned a letter to the community in which he denounced activists for embarrassing the college in the media. While Veitch would later apologize for the letter and eventually make several changes demanded by OSAC, the organization responded by moving forward with two federal complaints and launching an aggressive earned media campaign. Soon after, campus safety started to notify the student body when sexual assaults were reported. The latest such notification came at 8:00 p.m. on Monday, saying that a sexual assault occurred on September 7 in a residence hall.
According to Dirks, however, OSAC members had spent years attempting to work with the college directly before starting their public activism efforts.
“We [OSAC] worked with the administration for almost seven years to change sexual assault policy so that it treated people with dignity,” Dirks said. “When the school continues to do nothing about it, we really have no choice.”
Additionally, OSAC has consistently reported numerous allegations that members of the administration retaliated against members of the community who spoke up before and during the debate. Veitch acknowledged that there was a trust deficit last year and said that he hoped his work this summer would help improve the campus climate.
“It is my hope that the progress we made over the past several months, including all the actions we took over the summer, represent a significant step toward moving us in a positive direction and restoring a sense of trust.”
Interim Policy
One of Occidental’s actions over the summer was releasing an interim sexual misconduct policy. It replaces the one allegedly written by administrators and lawyers without the student or faculty input at the center of the debate last year.
However, the interim policy does not reintroduce the “verbal consent” requirement that was removed and the subject of one of OSAC’s clearest and most substantial demands. Veitch says that such a change is still on the table, but that he did not want to make it without more discussion and deliberation.
“We consciously deferred making changes to the definition of consent and zero tolerance over the summer because we felt strongly that these issues required further deliberation by the entire community,” Veitch said. “There are strong arguments in favor of moving aggressively on these fronts and equally strong reasons to be cautious in doing so. I want to make sure that members of our community who will be most affected by these changes—the students themselves—have an opportunity to understand the issues involved and to ‘own’ the policies we ultimately adopt.”
Veitch said he would ask the Sexual Misconduct Advisory Board to initiate a discussion about the policy sometime soon as part of the process of shaping a permanent one. Meanwhile, the community is awaiting critical reports and findings from the college’s hired consultants, the federal Office of Civil Rights and the Department of Education as next steps are determined. There are no set release dates for any of those documents according to Director of Communications Jim Tranquada, but at least some should be released before the end of the semester.
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